Over the nearly two decades that I've been road-testing motorcycles, I've become something of a chameleon, as I've learned to ride each genre as to the manner born - but it's more than a riding style, it can become a state of mind.
Whenever we're out testing a laid-back cruiser, Herself complains that I slump in the saddle like a melting snowman, and she constantly has to wait for me. I don't consciously ride cruising bikes more slowly, but I become more aware of the sights and smells of the countryside we ride through, I take longer to savour the flavour, to stay in the moment.
And the top speed runs seem less important, more a necessary chore than the adrenalin-pumping pinnacle of the ride. We do them, but I find it difficult to get excited about them - unless the bike gets unruly, as some cruisers do when you twist their tails, but that's hardly the sort of excitement you're looking for.
And when we get where we're going, I often take a minute to gather my thoughts after I switch off the engine, getting back into my skin before I get off the motorcycle; Herself often remarks that I am more than usually uncommunicative at our traditional breakfast conference after taking a cruiser over our standard test route.
So, is it true that riding a cruiser turns your brain to mush?
On the available evidence, it would seem so.
But when you're cosseted in comfort on a full-dress tourer, with Vivaldi on the stereo, hands and bum toasty warm thanks to heated grips and seat, the ride is always too short, the familiar twists and turns of our standard test route somehow a little unsatisfying.
The talk is never about the bike - although some of them, such as the BMW K1600 GTL and Honda's Gold Wing, are technically astonishing - but always about the far-away places it could take us to if we had the time.
In fact, after we'd done our regular test route on the Lead Sled, we took another whole day to cruise a long loop through the southern Cape, to places we hadn't been for years - because that bike turned us into Long Rangers.
THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED
Adventure tourers, on the other hand, bring out the Selous Scout in me. No sooner do I settle into the long-legged, ready-for-anything seating position of a heavy duty beetle-crusher, than I feel the need to take the road less travelled, to go my own way, to visit the wild and lonely places.
Even if I didn't bring back photographs, it would be enough that I was there, that I saw them; it's actually a very selfish point of view.
As is the slightly superior feeling you get when you commute on a big bush-bike, as if the bike you are riding says to all those around it, “I am here today; tomorrow you will still be here, but I will be way out yonder, seeing things you will never see.”
I'm not sure why, but Herself isn't keen on me riding adventure tourers, although she thinks they're brilliant motorcycles.
THE ARTISTRY OF GETTING THERE
Sports bikes concentrate the how and why of riding into one intense feeling, where each corner is the destination and the goal is perfection. Each entry, hard on the brakes, is a leap of faith, each apex an adventure, each exit, hard on the throttle, an adrenalin rush.
It's not about the destination but the artistry of getting there. There is poetry in motion in the perfect S bend, a rhythm so sensuous in a sequence of fast, open corners that the best ones within riding distance of where I live are called 'Dancing across the Sky'.
But that kind of riding is also so focused that you simply don't see the world beyond the edge of the tar.
When I tested the first Ducati 1098 in private hands in South Africa, then and now the yardstick by which such things are measured, I rode it 545km in one intense day, stopping only for fuel, from the West Coast to the South Coast and back.
I can recall in vivid detail almost every bend of the coast road, where I met just two cars the whole way, so clearly that I can almost taste it - but I can't tell you what the weather was like that day.
Isn't that a bit of a waste?