To most people, motocross is a demolition derby on bikes, a pastime for lunatics and adrenaline junkies of the most irredeemable sort. But the truth is that motocross racers don’t like confronting danger anymore than the average person. They just like remembering confronting danger.

After all, motocross isn’t really about the feeling you have when you’re racing. It’s about the elation you have afterward. When you’re racing, there is virtually no time to reflect on the experience one way or another, because if you did take the time to reflect, you would most likely be passed, or you might even cartwheel yourself into the ambulance--either of which would promptly end your revelry.

Instead, the best part of the race day is when you’re safe and in dry clothes, reliving the exciting bits of your motos. From this vantage point, it is easy to enjoy the experiences, because even though they are over, the excitement still resonates, leaving you in the enviable state of having emerged safely from chaos, but still close enough to it to bask in its mind-altering vividness. It’s a wonderful place to be.

Yet few outsiders understand this. To the uncomprehending, motocross racers might only seem happy in the moments when they are putting themselves in direct peril, which is a ridiculous notion. I am human too, so I pucker as anyone else would when I swap on a fourth-gear straight. It’s not the pucker that I’m after though. What I’m after is the feeling that follows from doing something that demands more strength and concentration than, say, making a sandwich, or even driving on a busy freeway.

For reasons likely tied to our evolution as a species, there is an intrinsic reward offered to those who successfully chance their minds and bodies against danger. Otherwise, we might have chose suicide as a species over our actual history of fleeing predators and challenging dangerous prey. And though we no longer need this reward to keep us going out for food (there is little elation involved in making it through a drive-thru unscathed,) the pattern survives as an now-optional way for us to light up our brains in satisfying ways.

And most of that lighting up of the brain happens after the fact. Just as ancient hunters surely struggled to achieve conscious happiness in the moments when a saber-toothed cat nipped at their heels, we save our real satisfaction not for the moments when we’re riding out fourth-gear swaps, but for the quiet ride home when we can relive the same incident in peace.

So next time your neighbor shakes his head at your participation in so dangerous a sport, sympathize with him. “I know, I know,” you should say. “The danger is a terrible downside. But if the danger wasn't there, I can’t imagine where I’d get any dangerous memories.”

There's no point in explaining any further if he doesn't understand why you would need dangerous memories. You would need to either get him on a motocross bike or in front of a saber-toothed cat to let him understand, and, for many people, the chances of each are equally remote.

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