You come alive slowly: a hand on the mudguard, a shake of the silencer, a jiggle of thegear lever. An eye runs over the oil lines, a glove wipes the dew from the seat.

Tutu with the tickler till fuel drips out; a couple of swings on the kick-start with thedecompressor lever in. Now a good one – two (maybe a ‘Bang’) – and Brummmm! Theshout of the engine tears the morning calm, drops to a low rumble as the throttle staysopen a moment to get those big lungs moving, then settles to a steady beat as thewarmth of combustion seeps into that big lump of alloy.

Out with the chain spray as the back wheel spins on the stand; chokes eased, luggagechecked. Toolbox locked in place – check. Scarf, jacket, helmet gloves, glasses. Astrideand off the stand. Click into gear: you move into a new day.

Your muscles are loosening, your oil is warming. Through the sleeping village, the lowrumble reverberates; you try not disturb the neighbours, your throttle only cracked open.It’s good they sleep: the road is clear. Past the limit signs, onto the hill climb, morepower feeds on. Still cool, you take it steady, gently winding up the hillside, rapidlywarming up. Through the cloud base, deep fog, but it clears as quickly as it came. Theroad flattens; there is a pull in. You stop for a moment, motor beating gently andrhythmically, the view is that of peaks rising from a sea of cotton wool, the village youjust left has gone forever. You will never come this way again.

Now you are warmed and fully awake. The cool mountain air has filled every nook ofyour lungs, your oil has reached every cranny of your motor. Your gears have spun, yourchains have eased, your eyes now bright, your ears clear, your hands supple. Footworks with pedal, hand works with lever; ear in tune with the voice of the engine, tyresfeeling the road ahead as the eye feeds back to the ‘bars. The rising sun is behind you,warmth on your rear, clean tar for tyres to grip. The twists come faster as you looseyourself in the road. No thinking, no planning, no talking. You are Motosync.

You have no thought as to which gear you are in, you are only in gear. The eye feeds tohands and feet, the pedals feed to brakes and gears, time to deliberate has no place inthis seamless flow that powers you around a long flowing bend, and pulls you up sharpas a hairpin appears out of nowhere. The cool air sharpens both power and senses.

You cross an invisible line: a change of district – country? – this road is cracked andslumped from winter freeze and no repair. Eye shortens, speed slows, you almostcrouch as hands and feet prepare to spring on controls, and wheels and gears to speedand weave, as potholes and cambers challenge your way. But in three miles yoursmooth way is back: a pocket of road of a fold in a boundary, no wonder no one takescare of it. You run down a mountain, a deep rumble bounces off rock walls as a closedthrottle does much of the work. Down, down… to a lake; a lovely run: open country now,the lie of the road shows far ahead, bright sunshine as the shadows shorten, long,sweeping bends - a straight here and there - that follow the lake along the valley floor.

Now a Junction. A person awakes; where to next? But as the person is kicking in -‘Coffee would be good’ - the wheel has already turned: Motosync is heading back up themountain: the long way to coffee, Riaño 35 km.

Motosync is that state that breaks you from normal existence: trapped into the being ofwhoever you are, wherever you are. Since time immemorial, people have mused uponthe human condition, the ‘mind-body’ ‘conceptual gap’ ‘Cartesian existence’ whatever wemight wish to call it. The experience of life is very largely defined by each individuals’separations from another, person and thing. But slam you finger in the car door and themind-body is one as you scream with the pain! There is a more pleasant way to exit thecondition of normality, and motosync is one that suits many.

We have a word for a man or woman who operates a motorcycle: a Rider. We have aword for the machine itself: Motorcycle. But there is something that comes into existenceonly when the machine is being ridden, that dynamic state, yet we have no word for this.But that entity does things that neither rider or motorcycle can do on their own.Understand that, and you understand Motosync.

The person is one thing: lives, loves, learns, laughs and cries; the motorcycle is another;revs, roars, rusts, and breaks down. But put them together and we have something thatonly exists when the two parts are there: motosync. It can only do what it does when theparts cooperate and tune in together: no one to kick that starter, no power to take to theroad. Mind-body is an illusion, albeit a powerful one, that defines so much of how weeach live in our respective worlds. Motosync is to experience interconnection, unity,‘oneness’: hand on throttle, engine on gears, chain on wheel, tyre on road, road on earth- the mother of all things. The interconnection fades out the further we extend fromMotosync as the links sprawl into the surrounding world. This is an entirely dynamicnetwork, no stasis here to stop and inspect: this is acting fast as clutch and throttlemove, no time to think, a feed-back loop that modifies, moment to moment. A steadyingtouch of the brake was responding to momentum, lean and eye. Thinking has no placehere. This is Kanneman’s Fast. The map is the Slow.

A thought springs into the conscious part of Motosync; ‘check those rear wheel nuts’. Itgoes again and is lost. The conscious is often a stream of thoughts, whilst you go aboutyour business of changing gears, measuring distances, tweaking bars, shifting weight,spinning your wheels, pumping your lifeblood. The wise one drops that wheel nutthought into a different pocket, to be retrieved by the rider once they leave the machinestationary, and then checks those wheel nuts. Why did that thought arise? Where does itcome from? But the wheel nuts need checking: maybe one is loose, just starting, just atouch? But a nip now is nothing: one loose nut soon means all loose nuts, and a mess.

Once stopped, the motosync is rearranged in space, but not in time. The rider is also thecarer, the mechanic; the machine can do many things the rider cannot, and it works theother way too. Check tappets? No obvious reason to do so, but check them the ridershould, why did that idea come? Where did it come from? Did Motosync feel what ridercould not hear?

Ahead is a green traffic light. You slow in anticipation, but is stays green. It turns yellow.You have responded, opened throttle or applied brakes, looked around, the timeavailable to cross already apparent and the calculus made. Meanwhile, the conscious isevaluating the situation, but it is rare that it will break in and override motosync and theactions already in train, the conscious can’t move that fast.