It is true I have not been killed or crippled, been a loser in the stocks, or had to forswear my fatherland, but I have not quite gone free and have a right to say something.

Being by the nature of my upbringing, all my energies having been directed to one channel of activity, crippled from other activities and made helpless even to live.

Yes, the riders can get crippled and even killed. But that's just the way of the West. They ride for love -- not money. Well, that and for beer and to impress young girls. I guess some things never change.

I am NOT a loser, and I have never been a quitter.

Poetical appreciation is only newly bursting on me.

I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on.