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This book has been with me since 1985. It is worn, it fell apart. But this is one of the most important books I ever read.
It's not about Zen practice in particular
It's not a book to teach you motorcycle maintenance either
Yet the title of the book is entirely correct.
A man and his son are on a road trip by motorcycle across the USA, heat and dust included. They add a lengthy walk in the woods to the mix. But all of that is not of big importance.
There are at least two gems in there.
The book has a vivid and imho fairly accurate description of problem solving. The motorcycle would not work properly. So you have one or more symptoms. In your mind (or on paper) you create a map of components, how they interact with each other, and whether they could be responsible to produce the observed sympton. For each of the possible causes (hypotheses) you then come up with a test to check, whether your hypothesis is right or wrong. In many cases you will find the cause of the symptom.
However, sometimes you don't. What then?
You need to sit in front of the damn thing for some time and let you mind wander. And with some luck, a tiny fact will knock on the door of consciousness. If you admit this tiny thing into your mind, very often it will lead you closer to the source of the problem. Mostly just by casting a doubt on something you thought was understood or done. It removes the certainty you had and forces you to go over it again. However, if you dismiss the knock, you will wait for a long time.
I personally support this description wholeheartedly. The motorcycle is just a vehicle to illustrate the process. It could be anything else.
The other thing that I kept was the attempt to define, what quality is. And it was done by trying to remove it alltogether. So the term "better" would not make sense any more. I guess, this spoke to me quite a bit, because I hate things, that are made to not last long, be not repairable, break completely, when try to open or fix them.
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