Crow Landing.

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Riding on Serenity the other day, I’d just stopped at a light, and watched as a crow adroitly landed on a nearby street light’s arm. Pretty impressive, from cruise through stall to touchdown on a target only a few crow’s feet wide.

Then I thought of my landing, from the crow’s perspective. Cars? Just boxes that stop. But motorcycles have visible bipeds on them. Now a motorcycle landing isn’t the same as the bird’s, in that we don’t have to hit a spot. We do, however, have to coordinate feet down with speed. And this is where I fantasized the bird having admiration for my skill.

As far as a bird’s concerned, we’re managing to control, reign-in, or safely land a 50,000* bird-powered device. With apparent aplomb, and even a tad bit of grace.

Now think about that scaling factor—the power of the device—and up it to human scale. Wonder why a Bugatti Veyron costs $1.7million? It’s because you can start and stop it without a ground crew. VW spent all that R&D money to make it civilized in the sense that you could just hop in, start, go, park, stop under the conditions of any car. Well, if you don’t care about it lasting, you can, but you get the idea. So back to the bird appreciating the motorcyclist. Honestly, in the bird’s view, the scaling factor makes the motorcyclist darn close to an alien landing his spaceship, in terms of energy-controlled. At the rider’s beck and call is such a huge amount of bird-scale power, that even if it can’t leave the pavement, it’s more impressive than flying. To a bird, remember we all want what we don’t (or can’t) have, so it’s thinkin’ “Wow, that’d be the way to get around!” While the rider’s wishing he had wings. Wish

es not being known for considering the rational implications. (How would the bird control the bike? How would the human walk with a breast bone that’s 6 feet long and the attendant chest muscles, forgetting the wings.) Still, back to the “alternate PoV” thing, it is fascinating to think of the similarity in spite of, or because of, the differences.

*I’m totally guessing here, my moto’s around 50-60 hp, I’m guessing a bird can pull ½ pound.