[Elecraft] Wayne's Story - "On Second Thought, I'll Take The Stairs

[hawley, charles j jr]

I've been riding a motorcycle for 50 years...now I know why. 
I did read Pirsig's book when it was first published, but didn't remember this. I did remember that his friend rode a BMW and Pirsig made shims for the BMW's handlebar mounts out of a beer can, but was careful to never tell his friend, John I think, where the shims came from.

Jack BMW Motorcycles
Chuck KE9UW
c-hawley at illinois.edu

Sent from my iPad

> On Jul 12, 2020, at 3:51 PM, Jim Ewing <ewinginator at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Relevant to what Wayne said is this quote from Pirsig:
> 
> *“That's all the motorcycle is, a system of concepts worked out in steel.
> There's no part in it, no shape in it, that is not out of someone's mind
> [...] I've noticed that people who have never worked with steel have
> trouble seeing this—that the motorcycle is primarily a mental phenomenon.*
> They associate metal with given shapes—pipes, rods, girders, tools,
> parts—all of them fixed and inviolable., and think of it as primarily
> physical. But a person who does machining or foundry work or forger work or
> welding sees "steel" as having no shape at all. Steel can be any shape you
> want if you are skilled enough, and any shape but the one you want if you
> are not. Shapes, like this tappet, are what you arrive at, what you give to
> the steel. Steel has no more shape than this old pile of dirt on the engine
> here. *These shapes are all of someone's mind. That's important to see.*
> The steel? Hell, even the steel is out of someone's mind. There's no steel
> in nature. Anyone from the Bronze Age could have told you that. All nature
> has is a potential for steel. There's nothing else there.”
> ― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry
> Into Values <https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/175720>
> 
> So, it's important to see a main reason why these radios are so excellent;
> because they come from the minds of people who can express their love and
> talent for cw in radio circuits, just as eloquently as Wayne does in his
> story.
> 
> Jim N4TMM
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