How To Classify People You Meet On The Road

Traveling alone in a motorcycle tends to get you a fair amount of attention wherever you are passing by. Basically it gets you a lot of opportunities to have brief interactions with a few people (around 12 - 15) in hotels you stop for food or lodging, wayside tea stalls or just some random place in the middle of nowhere where you stop to rest for a while. The interactions can leave you in a state of mixed emotions but generally it keeps you humoured on your way. Classifying a motorcycle rider based on their behaviour and motives is something a lot of you may have come across but there is very little research on classifying the locals based on their behaviour that a motorcycle rider meets briefly on the road. So I present a humble attempt on my part to understand and explain these people based on two factors - Curiosity and Shyness.

Now to understand a person a brief interaction helps. Trust me just keeping on stalking their facebook profiles has its limitations. So let me first take these two factors - Curiosity & Shyness and explain through the help of a flowchart as to how based on the amount of curiosity or shyness you can make them interact with you by using these helpful activities 'A', 'B' & 'C' as shown in the flowchart.

Now when you stop somewhere and you see a person, instinctively you first have to identify whether that person is

1) Low on curiosity - if yes do activity 'A'
2) Either High on curiosity or Low on shyness - if yes do activity 'B'
3) High on shyness - if yes do activity 'C'

For all the activities please do ensure you are in the line of sight of the person you are trying to interact with

Activity A

• Take out the road map and keeping a confused look in your face draw out directions in the air with your fingers
• Start your engine and pretend to look in the bike as if there is something wrong with it. Ensure that you keep on revving it up to make a lot of noise 
• Pretend that you are talking to your Mom on the phone and say things like 'Todays ride is so exciting. 3 months back when I started from home I had no idea that even after 15000 Kms on the road I would still be all excited'. 
• I guess you get the hint of this activity. The whole idea as you would have guessed is to be subtle enough to increase curiosity in the people. 

Activity B

• Take your helmet off and shake your head to feel the hair ruffling. Wash your face and wet your hair with water and run your fingers through your hair.
• Just act cool. They will come and talk to you
• For best results sport long hair before you start the ride

Activity C

• If possible block all paths of entry and exit and then smile at them
• Ask for directions even if you know them
• Once they are done telling the directions smile and then prolong the conversation by asking the directions for the same place again.
• Repeat the above till you get bored or till he takes out a gun or any other sharp object

So now that you have an idea of how to interact with people let me go ahead and classify the people based on the two factors - Curiosity and Shyness this time taken together. The below graph where Curiosity is plotted on the y - axis and Shyness is plotted on the x - axis gives us four different scenarios which help us to formulate archetypes of people we meet on the road.

The various archetypes are

1) INDIFFERENT (Curiosity - Low, Shyness - Low)

• They are low on shyness but are low on curiosity too. So they generally don't give a damn about you
• Not really good for your self esteem.
• You can't act all cool in front of them

2) INTIMIDATED (Curiosity - Low, Shyness - High)

• They are almost like the Indifferent people. The only thing is because they are highly shy you can intimidate them a bit
• Slightly better for your self esteem

3) INTRUSIVE (Curiosity - High, Shyness - Low)

• These are highly curious people with low shyness. 
• Questions like when do you plan to get married, how much do you earn and a lot of personal questions can also be expected
• A little too friendly for comfort
• But on the bright side, good for your self esteem

4) PLEASANT (Curiosity - High, Shyness - High)

• These are the people who just make your day
• Most people you meet would be in this category
• A high level of curiosity combined with a high level of shyness just brings out the sweetest of smiles from people. A sentence is always spoken with a shy smile on the face.
• If this happens to be a very pretty woman, trust me you will never be able to forget that smile. 

So next time if you happen to travel and you meet people try to put them in one of these boxes. After all what fun is life and meeting people if we can't stereotype them.

About Me:

A 7 month motorcycle ride that took me to every state in India, parts of Nepal and Bhutan and one town in Burma. These blog entries are inspired by this trip. Stories about people I met, stories about places I saw. Things that intrigued me, things that amused me. They say traveling changes you, they say traveling inspires you and they say a lot of other stuff. I don't know. I think a gun on the head is a better way to change people. I just hope that my travel stories entertain you

Right now I am in the process of writing a book based on this trip and figuring out the difference between a writer's block and procrastination.

You can find more information on my Facebook page and Instagram account