One of my favorite things about motorcycling is its versatility as a mood-change agent. Need some soothing to calm frazzled nerves? Take a relaxing cruise through the countryside or perform a bit of routine maintenance to savor perfect order in one small corner of your world. Need some excitement as an antidote for the mind-numbing tedium of daily routines? How about a little canyon carving, a trip to that bucket-list destination, or taking on the challenge of a new accessory installation? Feeling lonely? Head down to bike night at your local hangout or call several riding buddies to plan an outing this weekend. Need a break from the human race? Take off solo or schedule some quality garage time with a stringently enforced No Interruptions! policy.

Being a motorcyclist comes with countless options for replacing unwelcome emotions with their opposites, though some of these remedies can seem like contradictions of each other. It’s amazing how the same thing can deliver both relaxation and tense anticipation, both communion with others and escape into solitude, to name just a few of the possibilities. To enthusiasts, motorcycling is a Swiss army knife for the soul.

Here’s another pair of dimensions that appear to be at odds: Discovery and Creativity. Consider the person who is trying to find themself. Is this a matter of gradually learning who they already are, with certain aspects coming into focus at sequential stages of development? Or is it a matter of volition, with willful decisions determining what unfolds? The former is more passively receptive, although a committed quest may be required. The latter is more actively assertive, but could still involve surprises requiring surrender and acceptance. Does a musician, artist or writer merely open up to their Muse and serve as its conduit, or do they deliberately craft a piece of work, forging structure where there had previously been only chaos or absence? Obviously, there is no single answer for such questions. These processes vary across people and circumstances; they can even occur simultaneously in parallel.

While Discovery and Creativity may seem to go in opposite directions, they usually lead to the very same place: Vitality. It’s like coming to a T intersection, only to learn that turning left or right ultimately lands you at a singular destination. Whether we’re taking in novelty (discovering) through our senses and inquisitive analysis, or producing novelty (creating) through our initiative and problem-solving, it’s our encounter with what was previously unknown/non-existent that creates the precious spark of Vitality. Discovery can be inspiring. Inspiration can lead to Creativity. Creative acts lead to new learning. Wherever we enter this cycle, we feel a Life Force flowing through us. This is definitely true in the realm of motorcycling.

Let’s exit the Ennui Interstate west onto Discovery Lane. At the bottom of the ramp, we find it splits into three branches: Saddle Highway, Bike Boulevard and Garage Avenue. Each option holds its own appeal, and each rider will rank them according to their priorities at the moment they approach this intersection. On a different day, a different choice might be made.

A trip down Saddle Highway leads to Parts Unknown—in more ways than one. Of course, there would be new destinations and unfamiliar routes to explore. Maybe a map is involved, but maybe not. We could just chase the horizon and worry about getting back home whenever we reach the halfway point in our time allowance for this excursion. We might then just retrace our “steps” and see what they’re like in the other direction, or flip on the GPS and check out its suggestions. Aside from such geographical movement, Saddle Highway offers another area of exploration that doesn’t require much travel at all. We can learn new skills (and fortify old ones) in a nearby empty lot with (or without) some small cones or tennis balls cut in half. Or, since we don’t know what we don’t know, we can sign up for a round of professional training at a riding school. The latter is more expensive, but also vastly more efficient and well worth the investment. Curiosity is the best mindset for doing drills; it’s much more likely to yield progress and enjoyment than lofty expectations and pressure to perform. Those glorious “Aha! moments,” when we realize a certain detail was detracting from our technique, open up thrilling new vistas of safety, performance and pleasure. Discovery pays big dividends.

Bike Boulevard carries us to a more intimate setting where we’re introduced to the subtleties, nuances and intricacies of our machinery. We’re already familiar with our motorcycle’s exterior contours, colors and textures, but what’s hiding beneath all those easily seen surfaces? Where do those wires, tubes and linkages lead, and what purposes do they serve? What are those black boxes beneath the seat and behind that fairing panel? How do we navigate the menus and submenus on the dash or tickle those ancient carburetors just right to facilitate a cold start? We may have paid little or no attention to various engineering and design elements before, but there’s a tremendous amount to discover upon closer examination. In addition to these static aspects, how does this particular motorcycle behave dynamically? What quirks and peculiarities characterize its handling, power delivery and braking response? After learning what suspension adjustments are available, we can then learn how different settings affect riding comfort and control—and quite possibly discover we can achieve a better fit between our wishes and this specific bike’s demeanor. Who knew?!

Garage Avenue leads to an industrial region. Here, our encounters with the unknown usually involve tools; some dis-assembly required. It needn’t be an extensive engine tear-down or frame-up restoration to involve exposure to new frontiers. Simply adjusting chain tension, performing an oil and filter change, or swapping out spark plugs on an unfamiliar motorcycle will provide novel stimulation. How do we achieve the necessary access? What physical contortions and special devices are required to perform a given operation? Will we be impressed and grateful in response to decisions made at the factory, with maintenance and repair work made easier by thoughtfully located components? Or will we curse whoever came up with the awkward configurations we find? How carefully will we follow the instructions in a shop manual or accessory package? Do we prefer to figure it out on our own as we go, consulting such documents only when we’re stumped? Perhaps we consider it most rewarding to find our own way through the wilderness, even if it costs more time and money. Or we could love learning “by-the-book” procedures a professional mechanic would have been taught. Troubleshooting is a voyage of Discovery, with diagnosis almost always involving the exploration of multiple dead-ends before we find the through-street we were searching for.

What if we’d gone the other way and taken the Creativity Turnpike east off the Ennui Interstate? Even though it seemed to point in the exact opposite direction, we find the same three choices at the ramp’s terminus, but there are differences.

Now Saddle Highway—is this just the other end of the same thoroughfare?—promptly takes us to a visitor center, stocked full of big, fold-out maps, highlighters and drafting tables. We’re invited to plan trips anywhere and everywhere, including exotic destinations in distant lands and mundane stops close to home, but we must get to the latter using playfully strange new routes! Sure, we’ve already established the fastest option for our commute, but why not devise another that’s most fun? This would likely involve some trial-and-error, or at least a comparison test of the various possibilities. Hmmm… that sounds like it’d include an element of Discovery, too. As we pull out of the visitor center parking area, we’re reminded of figure-8 drills we did in a different lot. We add a little extra flourish on our way around the curbing, dipping the bike to the right as we counterweight with our torso to the left, just as we’d learned to do in those drills—another overlap between Discovery and Creativity. This really is just the other end of that same road! For the rest of our ride, we implement technique with greater attention to artistry: carving the most perfectly smooth arcs through corners, shifting so cleanly a passenger would only detect gear changes from the altered exhaust note, and delivering “limousine stops” with our deft squeezing and releasing of the brakes.

Taking Bike Boulevard leads directly to Dealership Row, not one block away. The Creativity of motorcycle ownership begins right from the start: which bike will serve as the best expression of our tastes and concerns? Maybe we need it to be a very close match in stock trim, or maybe we think of any machine, no matter how fully optioned from the factory, as merely a blank canvas awaiting our personal brushstrokes. Shopping for farkles and mods, whether primarily functional or aesthetic, may be done with as much enthusiasm and attention to detail as the search for the right bike, all revealing the owner’s unique combination of interests and resources, as well as the image they want to project. We don’t have to bedazzle our motorcycles with a thick layer of accessories for them to be artistic creations. A meticulously curated minimalist approach to customization is just as revealing as more flamboyant versions. Even someone dressed in the most anonymously conventional outfit is broadcasting a chosen persona—just as there’s always weather, despite any lack of dramatic conditions.

We quickly realize Garage Avenue is transporting us to that same industrial zone we visited earlier, albeit from another angle. The Discovery aspect of troubleshooting is now joined by Creativity, as we come up with new questions and answers, or at least hypotheses to test, in response to each bit we learn along the way. The two dimensions complement one another in series, incrementally ratcheting us toward a solution. This is the process of problem-solving. While understanding various categories of science and using the scientific method are undoubtedly of tremendous value while working on our motorcycles, intuition and innovativeness may make the difference between success and failure on a project. Thinking “outside the box” is absolutely an act of creativity, even though it must also respect the constraints of physical reality. To be broken well, rules must be followed at the outset; a musician who wants to improvise has to first learn their scales! If we need to concoct a special tool from miscellaneous pieces handy around our workbench, we better have had lots of experience using a wide range of proper store-bought tools in the past.

Finally, we notice elements of both Discovery and Creativity in relation to other riders, regardless of which turn we take. There are new people to meet and new things to learn about those we already “know” (incompletely). And there are new things to actively try in our interactions with them. What if we take a different role on the next group outing, doing more—or less—of the planning than usual and seeing how others react? Perhaps we invent a novel mode of collaboration and community-building, like an informal practice day with a few exercises laid out in an empty lot (paved or not; dirt skills require practicing, too!). “You get the drinks; I’ll bring the cones and measuring tape!” Or how about a tire-changing party; many tire irons make light work and pizza keeps the workers working. As with most of the other examples given here, the process is basically an endless loop: create something, discover how well it suits us, devise adjustments as needed, learn how they do, refine and repeat.

If we’re to truly live as long as we’re alive, we need the refreshing Vitality afforded by Discovery and Creativity. It doesn’t matter which turn we take, either eventually gets us both.

The Ride Inside with Mark Barnes is brought to you by the MOA Foundation. You can join the BMW Motorcycle Owners of America quickly and easily to better take advantage of the Paul B. Grant and Clark Luster training reimbursement programs offered by the Foundation.