Automobile drivers and non-touring riders alike wonder why we're out there punishing ourselves for what must seem like endless days, merely to get somewhere an automobile could take us much more comfortably. Yet, strange as they may be, there are reasons why we tour. Let's begin by agreeing with the suspicions of non-initiates: touring riders are different. What's acceptable and  easy does not matter to us. Motorcycles possess the active virtues of braking, acceleration, and handling, plus a view and a mystique. The motorcycle's appeal always has been located not in the head, but in the heart and guts. Likewise, there lies the answer to why we tour.      Touring riders, because we are such a long way from the stable, can't duck home when the weather frowns. We experience more intensely the emotions of riding because we ride under changing skies. We feel the elation of rolling through a curvy, sunny day; we face the subdued anxiety when it clouds over, the desperation when the rain roars at us in a moving, silvery wave, the sense of relief when the downpour stops and the sky brightens.      Touring is different. Alone on tour? Solo maybe, but never alone for long. Other bikers wave and nod. Children in cars peek over the window ledges and grin, giving pudgy-armed, two-finger waves. Gas pump sages are quick with questions and gossip." How you like your bike? Just get it? Where you from and where you headed? It's good and it's friendly and it's appreciated. Waitresses flirt just a little and share intimate bits of information, like what's good on the menu. Why do people pay more attention to motorcycle tourers? Possibly it's because the American majority has always  revered lunacy. (remember, this is from 1980)What else could explain the ratings of "Real People", the celebrity status of Billy Carter and the popularity of programs by Chuck Barris. Face it, there is something loony about taking on the road and the weather with nothing but a duffel bag and a few threads between you and the elements.     The sight of touring riders may well awaken in others those long-suppressed desires for the roaming life glamorized by writers Zane Grey and Ernest Hemingway. Long haul motorcycles represent to many people their dreams of chucking it all and drifting like  a seed to no place in particular. Just as space abhors a vacuum, so do our senses. Deprive them of  their emotional and sensual inputs and starvation sets in. One reason I enjoy touring is for those clear, rushing, unobstructed sensory inputs which whirl around and through me. I become part of them. Touring is a declaring of life and a road test of our inner selves.     The answer to why we do it lies not in our equipment, but in our hearts and in our guts. Touring is my declaration that I am alive!