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On the Trail

I’m a bit puzzled by all the things I haven’t written about in this category—no descriptions of gorgeous wilderness (there’s been plenty), no talk of camping (there’s been a little), no tales of mountaineering prowess (you’d think I’d have some by now). Actually, I found very few accounts of these and other powerfully appealing elements that really have been substantial sources of joy and might actually prompt someone to try this kind of motorcycling.

The stories that do show up here are among those I was most excited to tell and count among my cherished memories of off-road riding. That may be partly a function of the terrain where they took place: the steep, craggy slopes of the southern Appalachians. Single-track trails can be strewn with anything from loose, fist-sized rocks to car-sized boulders and covered in cement-hard clay (slick even when dry) or peanut-butter-like mud that is somehow both impossibly slippery and incredibly sticky (accumulating tenaciously on bikes and riders). Good traction is a rare find and is typically interrupted in short order by snarls of tree roots, downed branches, or pools of black water that might be a couple of inches or several feet deep.

Having spent my teenage dirt-biking years in flat, sandy Florida, I’d never seen anything like these trails, much less knew anything about riding them. Spurred on by how my first guides deliberately hunted for the most insanely treacherous passes to attack, my off-road riding quickly became a proving ground for not only skill but also bravery and perseverance—if you weren’t crashing on a regular basis, you weren’t trying hard enough. While that may sound like crazy machismo (and, no doubt, there’s some element of it involved), I learned that this kind of riding requires a tremendous amount of careful, albeit often swift, tactical planning—at least as much as I’ve ever exercised on street bikes. And, while we can usually ride more slowly through a worrisome stretch of road, many situations on the trail require some minimum amount of momentum for the rider to have any chance of making it through or over what lies ahead. So, confronting one’s fears, displaying fierce determination and keen insight, and employing physical balance, coordination, and stamina all leave a rider both thoroughly spent and possessing a sense of great accomplishment; and that’s what I tried to convey here.

Dirty Thoughts

September 2002

Since returning to the dirt after this column, I’ve always kept at least one off-road bike in my stable, even though the pendulum of my interest swings back and forth between street and trail. There’s just no substitute for getting dirty.

A friend of mine has a teenage son who’s got it bad. It’s all the boy can think about, day and night. He’s feverishly preoccupied, and he spends every possible moment scheming, searching for that magical combination of words and gestures that will persuade his parents to give in and gratify his desire. His torment is palpable to anyone who’s been in his position before, and I figure almost all of us have. He desperately wants a dirt bike.

The parents in this case are actually on the verge of yielding. In fact, the father and I have already been doing some surreptitious shopping, checking out the most promising ads in local papers. And not just for the son, either; Dad is going to get a bike to ride with his boy. Relief is not far away for this lad, though telling him now would only intensify his agony during the wait that remains.

The excitement presently surrounding this father–son pair is contagious, at least for me. I haven’t owned a dirt bike for something like fifteen years, although that’s what I started out on, and I owned half a dozen before becoming a street-only kinda guy. Not that I haven’t snagged rides on a few since then. It’s just that the moto-pleasure center of my brain has been satiated with the innumerable joys of asphalt, and there’s been no need—or room—for any other form of vehicular stimulation. Although that may be about to change…

Another of my friends has a six-year-old boy who just got his first “gear bike” (his term for a bicycle with multiple gears). It’s a mountain bike that begs to be ridden in the open field near their house. I recently accompanied him out there with a few of his bicycle-riding buddies, and they allowed me access to their secret test track. I didn’t tell them I’d seen the likes of their facility before: a raggedly cleared oval path with several dirt-mound “jumps” along the way.

These boys had a blast racing around their beloved speedway, trying to catch and overtake one another. But the big thrill for them was in the jumping. None of them was strong enough to actually get any hang time, but the simple change in altitude while ascending each ramp (no doubt accompanied by an internal movie of awesome aerial acrobatics) was enough to provoke gleeful squeals every time. I couldn’t help but wander back in time to my own early jumping, first over the curb in front of my house (actually over and over and over—what did the neighbors think?), then on a little course like this one (made more elaborate as the neighborhood kids got access to nails and plywood), and later—finally on a real motorcycle—on trails and tracks set up by unknown adults who’d come before me with earth-moving equipment more powerful than a handheld shovel. As I watched those old reruns in my mind’s eye, it was always the jumping that was the best.

Street riders don’t get to do much jumping. Some roads offer sharp elevation changes, and there’s the occasional rise that results in brief flight, but the visceral sensations are confined to roller-coaster effects. Air travel really isn’t part of the deal. And, unless we’re highly skilled road-racer types, spinning that rear wheel through corner after corner is out of the question, too. Wheelies are a lot more difficult on a street bike, and the intimidation factor of a machine at least two or three times its rider’s weight is hard to ignore. Then there’s the issue of the perception of safety: while one can certainly get just as badly injured in the dirt as on the street, the idea of taking a tumble at relatively low speed onto “soft” ground (never mind the rocks, trees, etc.) is a lot easier to live with than fantasies of high-siding at warp six onto pavement in front of oncoming traffic. I’ve been starting to wonder if dirt bikes are so popular because they may actually be the most fun. What have I been doing without one all these years?

Two-stroke dirt bikes—easily identified by their bulging exhaust pipes—are light and nimble. In the old days, they had no power down low. Modern ones hit hard at every engine speed. Big fun, with a deft right hand. This one has been the author’s most trusted companion.

So now, as I help my friend look for a couple of dirt bikes for himself and his teenage son, I’m also starting to check out the possibilities of one for myself. The delay between wish and action is the best time to investigate the nature of desire; that’s when motivation is laid most bare. What is it about all that hopping around that holds such powerful appeal? Why does street riding suddenly seem like such a cerebral activity by comparison?

If you haven’t already seen Spider-Man, I’ll put in a plug here. Overall, I found the dialogue and much of the action disappointing. But the final clip, just twenty or thirty seconds long, made the entire thing worthwhile. Whereas up to that point we mainly watch the superhero swing through space above our heads, during that last segment we’re actually flying with him. The effect is quite impressive, evoking real motion sensations in many viewers’ guts (certainly mine); we get to feel the g-forces, the speed, the freedom of flight. On the right road, on the right street bike, it’s possible to get the first two of those. But the third is possible only in aircraft—and machinery that jumps.

Leaving the ground is one of the most direct and concrete acts of autonomy known to humankind. It defies (savor that word for a moment) the “law” of gravity, even if only for a short while. Just repeat as needed if you didn’t get enough. It’s a celebration of freedom, adding the dimension of height to one’s domain. Moving through space unfettered by friction is a qualitatively different experience than traveling on the surface of the planet. The appeal seems to be hardwired into humans at birth, despite our physical limitations as a species (ever watch an infant giggle with delight while being tossed upward and caught?).

Add to all that jumping the ability to leave behind man-made structures, to surmount gnarly obstacles, and to traverse raging rivers (OK, maybe just angry streams), and you’ve got a tool that winds up the brain’s omnipotence center like few others. Little kids know how to tap into that, though they can’t articulate much about it. They certainly need experiences like that to offset the enormous limitations they face every day as the dependent, vulnerable, constrained creatures they really are. Teenagers might be able to put a little more into words, but they won’t admit to any pleasure they think you might take away or prohibit. But I don’t mind saying that I love to feel powerful, and, at the moment, it seems like a dirt bike could give me an effective antidote to the genuine helplessness I must routinely endure in other areas of my life.

There are gravitational fields in all of our lives that we cannot escape. Responsibilities and obligations, prohibitions and limitations can leave us feeling hemmed in, weighed down, mired in the mundane and familiar. It’s amazing what a few leaps into the air can do to provide much-needed relief.

Half the Fun

March 2003

The sequel to “Dirty Thoughts”—what goes up must come down.

I’m standing ankle-deep in black mud, doubled over, trying to catch my breath and waiting for the family jewels to descend from somewhere above the pit of my stomach. This is the unpleasant aftermath of the most dramatic moment on my maiden voyage aboard the first dirt bike I’ve owned in nearly two decades. Apparently, whatever I knew in my younger days about how to take a jump has been completely lost during the intervening years of street riding. Through the churning cloud of pain and disorientation that surrounds me, I can barely make out the frantic babbling of my friend, who may or may not have just immortalized this humiliation; he’s clutching his camera excitedly and yelling something about me popping up off the seat at least three full feet. Almost as clearly, I hear my newly acquired DR-Z400E chuckling derisively an arm’s length away.

This is not the scene I had in mind when I purchased this motorcycle. For many months prior, I’d been increasingly preoccupied with glorious fantasies—both visual and kinesthetic—constructed, collage-like, of both memories and media images, all involving freedom of movement in three dimensions and knobby tires. Somehow, I’d been able to superimpose the effortless grace of wide-angle supercross coverage onto dim recollections of my own slightly airborne ancient history. I’d imagined myself hopping blissfully, jackrabbit-style, over all sorts of obstacles, reveling in the miracle of flight made possible by lightweight horsepower and long-travel suspension.

Surely, there must have been some precedent for these expectations. I spent many a childhood day constructing dirt and plywood jumps for the neighborhood bicycle gang. Those had to have been good for several inches of “air.” And what about those adolescent years tearing across suburban boundaries on my Honda Trail 70? No doubt the two of us spent a few seconds free of the earth on occasion. The KDX175 and RM250 that followed had good flight credentials; they wouldn’t have failed as partners in crime, breaking gravity’s law.

While there must be some legitimate historical basis for my anticipation of aerial acrobatic success, all I can actually recall right now—and I remember it most vividly as I stand here, panting shallowly—is a single contraindicating incident: a catastrophic crescendo of whoops, released suddenly while riding way too fast in uncharted territory on my last off-roader from the pre-street-bike era, a powerful but ungainly (in my hands, at least) XL600. I remember that sick feeling of recognizing my certain doom well in advance, how the seconds stretched out surreally to provide lots of time for regret and self-reproach while awaiting my punishment. I experienced a sudden calm that accompanied my involuntary departure from the bike and the unnatural perspective of that mental snapshot taken postlaunch from waaaaaaay up there: tilted horizon, crossed-up machinery, and splayed extremities, all seemingly paused, observing a moment of silence before the awful thud. Miraculously, neither rider nor bike was seriously damaged in that fiasco. The entire payment for my foolhardiness was extracted in the form of wind; I think it was a half hour before I could inhale again.

Four-stroke dirt bikes are relatively friendly, with less abrupt power delivery over a broader rev range than two-strokes, but they’re usually heavier and cost more to maintain. Then again, they sound terrific! Decisions, decisions... The author recommends one of each.

So what happened here? After all that buildup, all those dreams of flight, was my excitement delusional, based on a collection of grandiose fictions (my face featured in magazine ads) that have now nosedived—quite literally—into the immovable, albeit soggy, ground of factual reality? Was I seduced by a too-selective memory that conveniently left out the rest of the story? Maybe buying the DR-Z was a stupid mistake…

An old sourpuss uncle of mine, whenever he detected some sort of excitement brewing among the children within his earshot, was fond of saying, “Remember, kids: the anticipation is always greater than the realization.” A lengthy lecture on the principle would follow. Those among us who took his advice to heart were promptly pre-disappointed and thereby inoculated against whatever letdown might occur during the execution of our adventurous plans. I’m sure this left my uncle feeling quite pleased with himself; he’d passed along the wisdom that had kept him safe from anything resembling disappointment—along with anything new and exciting—for his entire adult life.

What my uncle never noticed was how much the kids whose sails he had emptied missed out on. Without the fuel of excitement in their tanks, they often didn’t even try to reach for something not already within their grasp. By avoiding the possibility of disappointment, they never found out whether it was lying in wait for them or not. Those of us who were undaunted certainly tasted the bitter pill of disillusionment at times, but for that price we got to sample real success in the face of risk and the occasional surprise ending that was far better than we’d hoped. None of that good stuff would have happened if we hadn’t given ourselves over to excitement.

Not only does it set us up for potential disappointment, but excitement can be uncomfortable and distracting, too. Looking forward to something can make the tedious parts of routine life much harder to tolerate. Nobody likes feeling bored and impatient. And the more a person’s life in general lacks excitement, the more problematic it is for that person to allow the entrance of any excitement. The feeling is something like letting yourself out of prison briefly and then having to wrestle yourself back into your cage, with no clue when you’ll get your next chance to breathe free. It’s less disruptive and disturbing to eschew excitement altogether when it’s a rare event.

Excitement can also make us foolish. We can ignore important warnings, rush impulsively into disaster, and rationalize all sorts of poor decision-making. Obviously, excitement without any measure of reason and self-control is almost certain to come to a bad end. But reason and self-control without excitement are dead and have already come to a bad end. Ideally, the energy of excitement is harnessed in the organized pursuit of our goal and helps us plow through the necessary planning and hard work that stand between us and satisfaction. It provides us pleasure, via our imagination, during the wait, soothing our injuries and restoring our motivation along the often rocky road to achievement. And even if the end is less than we’d dreamed, it’s more than what we’d have garnered by sitting still, paralyzed by the false logic of purchasing security at the cost of vitality.

Motorcycles, by virtue of their copious visceral thrills, archetypal status, potential for enthusiastic camaraderie, and countless opportunities for skill mastery, offer infinite possibilities for excitement—as well as for calamity. I could abandon my fantasies of soaring through the air, casting them off as unrealistic and resigning myself to some more sedate use of the DR-Z. I could avoid further testicular displacement (not to mention broken bones) this way, be the subject of fewer funny photos, and preserve some sense of dignity as a middle-aged man who will episodically find himself amidst buzzing hordes of slightly postpubescent McGrath wannabes out on the trails. But that would mean enjoying my motorcycle only while I’m riding it (a tiny fraction of the time frame of ownership) and enjoying it much less in between those times when I’m standing next to it, doubled over. Sounds like a bad trade to me. I’d be giving up more than half the fun and possibly cheating myself out of even greater joy later on—if I can make it through flight school.

Back to School

June 2003

I’ve probably taught more people to ride in the dirt than on the street. That’s partly because new riders often feel less intimidated away from traffic and pavement, but it’s also because many basic skills are easier to learn on dirt bikes, which tend to be much lighter and more easily maneuvered at slow speeds than their road-going counterparts. This is not to say that off-road riding is inherently easier; in fact, it can be much more daunting than street riding, depending on the terrain. Selecting a location that offers just the right amount of challenge is key. Most off-highway vehicle (OHV) parks, like the one that served as backdrop here, offer widely varying geography and learning opportunities.

At the teaching hospital where I did my clinical internship, the staff was fond of repeating the admonition “learn it, teach it, know it.” This sometimes seemed like a justification for handing off pedagogic responsibilities: a sleep-deprived intern or resident would be assigned the task of presenting some portion of an upcoming seminar, thereby relieving the faculty of responsibility for preparing a lesson stimulating enough to hold the attention of our bleary-eyed group. With many years’ distance on that ordeal, I now appreciate the great wisdom captured so succinctly in that little phrase.

To be able to explain something clearly, answer questions coherently, provide good examples, and integrate your point into some larger frame of reference, you must really understand the concepts involved and know exactly how they fit together. Vague impressions won’t do. An intuitive grasp might suffice for your own practical purposes, but you can’t communicate that to someone else without articulating the details and clarifying the relevant links. This can be quite challenging because many important ideas are difficult to get into words. You have to lay out complex interconnections in linear language, even when they actually exist as a three- (or more!) dimensional web. Visual images can help, and the student’s own personal experience may be an essential component of mastery—repeatedly trying, failing, making successive approximations, and eventually getting it right. But the verbal interactions between teacher and student are almost always the glue that holds the rest of the process together.

Obviously, the strategic preparation for giving a lecture or leading a training exercise involves learning on the presenter’s part. Ideally, this person will have mastered not only the material to be transmitted but also a compelling means of delivery. These two don’t necessarily go together. Many a university researcher—who undoubtedly understands his subject better than most anyone he talks to—has no clue how to make his or her knowledge digestible to the horde of semicongealed young minds to whom he or she is “Professor.” Of course, it’s also true that a presenter can conceal much shoddy thinking behind a slick performance or befuddling barrage of jargon.

Small dirt bikes make excellent first mounts for young (and not-so-young) riders. They’re cheap and easy to maintain, and allow for relatively low-stakes exploration of traction limits. Lessons learned here transfer readily to less-forgiving pavement later. Here, Dylan perfects his power-slide.

But, in addition to what must take place before the teaching moment, there is the potential for discovery in that moment and after it. Someone might pose a question from an unanticipated direction, opening up a new realm for exploration or exposing a weakness in the current model (or an area of the teacher’s ignorance). This is part of what keeps the work interesting for professional instructors (the better ones, at least) charged with covering the same topic over and over again: the information may not change, but the angles from which it can be viewed are infinite if it is presented to new people. Teachers also get tremendous gratification via their vicarious participation in students’ breakthroughs; a student’s thrill can rekindle the original delight that the teacher experienced long ago.

And so it was that I took my new riding buddy out for a spin…

Granted, the odds were stacked in favor of my seeming a more geyser-like font of knowledge than I really am. Jack was a robust, adventurous guy (he took up rock climbing in his late fifties), but, at sixty-two, he was twenty years my senior. He had only recently swung a leg over the saddle of a motorcycle for the first time, whereas I’ve been riding for nearly thirty years. And the bike he was riding was dwarfed by mine in both power and agility. Did I mention we were going to cover some genuinely intimidating (even to an experienced rider) terrain? It was a perfect opportunity for me to exploit Jack’s newbie status and don the oily mantle of Motorcycling Guru. The master’s genius is sometimes merely a function of the novice’s ignorance!

Nevertheless, I did have something of value to offer. As a multiple-decade subscriber to numerous enthusiast publications and student at half a dozen riding schools through the years, I’ve learned a fair amount about the basic mechanics, techniques, and physics of motorcycling. I have language—not just an experiential understanding—for all that stuff because I’ve read it and heard it all many times. So, when Jack kept stalling his bike on uphill sections, I was able to explain what was happening inside his engine (idle set too low, not enough flywheel effect), why he needed to compensate by keeping the gas on and modulating his speed with the clutch lever (the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s “friction zone”), and how momentum stabilizes the bike over uneven ground (resist that urge to shut the throttle when scared!). It all made sense to him pretty quickly, and Jack gained competence and confidence with every round of practice. By the end of the ride, he looked markedly better on steep hills, and he was having a lot more fun moving instead of trying to keep his mount balanced upright on an incline while jumping up and down on his kick-starter.

In some ways, it was more fun for me, too, because I didn’t have to go back and check on him as often. But all the stopping and coaching had been enjoyable in its own right, and it was well worth the effort. He grinned big while telling me what he was learning, which was more than what I was teaching. He’d notice a nuance here or relate two sensations there—things I’d never thought of. I kept finding myself on the lookout for an experience he’d described when I got back on my own bike. And I felt warm waves of memories as Jack’s excitement called up images of my own early struggles. It was deeply satisfying to be able to pass along the joys of riding and to harvest yet another type of fruit from past labors.

On our ride, I went back to school—only this time, I was the teacher. At least that’s what someone looking in from the outside would say. Actually, I was learning right along with Jack. Although I do have a lot of words for how it all works, there are still some aspects of riding that remain primarily visual or kinesthetic or reflexive for me. Getting those aspects into plain language forced me to think more clearly about how I ride. There were times when we discussed—or I observed—his difficulties, and I didn’t have a neat package of answers like I had for the slow-uphill problem. Then I had to do some fresh analysis and some experimenting of my own. There are things he didn’t even know to ask about at this stage, and things he couldn’t learn until he learned something else first.

I had my own blind spots, too, although I expected to illuminate them (for both of us) by Jack’s future queries. Teaching an absolute beginner forced me to prioritize and sequence the various lessons of riding, and I realized that the order in which they should be taught is nothing like the order in which I learned them. And that insight explained some of my bad habits, as well as suggested how I might fix them.

So, take a new rider with you somewhere soon. He or she just might teach you a thing or two.

Near-Life Experiences

July 2003

I’d like to say this was the first time I’d unwittingly placed a new rider in harm’s way, but I must confess there’s been some precedent—enough, perhaps, to generate skepticism about just how unwitting I’ve actually been. I can’t argue with the accumulation of evidence, but I’ll argue what it’s evidence of. I believe I’ve been proven absurdly unlucky in these events, while the neophytes riding with me have been fortunate beyond belief. Allow me to explain…

In a previous article, I mentioned my friend Jack, a daring sixty-two-year-old who had recently taken up motorcycling. He’s been putting around on his XR100 in what amounts to a large yard for about six months. Prior to the ride I’m about to describe, he’d made only one foray into terrain more challenging than a golf course. On that day, the ground was dry and the abandoned power-line road over the mountain was wide enough for me to stand nearby and watch/coach him as he picked his way through ruts and rocks. We could turn around at any point and zip back down to safety if the going ever got too tough. Jack did quite well, acquiring basic off-road skills on a steep learning curve. We decided to try a local OHV park for our next outing, and that’s where the current story begins.

The maps we received at the park entrance showed a spiderweb of trails rated easy, moderate, and difficult. Trail #1, labeled moderate, led into the park from the front gate; other options were nearby. I’d say that the aforementioned power-line road reached a moderate level of difficulty at its worst, and Jack had made it through those stretches—not quickly or gracefully, but he was successful and enjoyed it. I think of myself as a rider of intermediate skill in the dirt. So numero uno seemed the obvious choice for launching our exploration—why even consider starting elsewhere?

Moderate, it turns out, is a relative term.

Trail #1 was only 1.4 miles long, seemingly short enough to endure even if it proved challenging. And if it was too much, we’d have easier choices at its end. However, after rounding the first few friendly turns, Trail #1 quickly became a nightmarish repetition of impossibly steep, boulder-strewn inclines (anyone bring a trials bike?); Loch Ness-like mudholes; slimy tree-root staircases; detours around fallen timbers that required threading the needle between closely spaced upright trees on the nearly vertical mountainside adjacent to the trail; and ruts so deep that the footpegs of my DRZ400E hung up on both sides at once.

We’d have promptly admitted defeat, reversed direction, and made our escape, except there were virtually no areas wide enough to allow swapping ends. Initially, we were simply incredulous: “Surely a moderate trail can’t go on like this. That had to have been the worst of it, right?” After a while, the intensity of our struggles made it seem as if we must have covered more than half the distance already, whenever we might have turned tail (I’ll remember to reset my odometer in the future). Two and a half hours later, we finally made it to the next trail, which was indeed much easier. But we were so worn out and beat up by Trail #1 that we couldn’t enjoy much about it or go play in the many other wonderfully inviting areas we had passed on our single-minded trek back to the entrance (along super-tame Jeep roads we could have taken from the start!).

Off-road riding can be grueling, depending on the terrain covered and the fitness of bike and rider. However, certain vistas can’t be reached any other way. Dylan and friend take in the view.

I’d been vaguely amazed at Jack’s resilience throughout the journey, even though I was completely unable to stop and offer the kind of help I’d provided before. Trail #1 simply had taken every ounce of skill I possessed just to keep myself from falling down the mountainside or smashing against a pile of rocks. I stopped and waited for Jack to catch up when the surface allowed a pause, but there was no going back to supply pointers. He took what he’d already learned and built on it, making ecstatic reports when we’d stop to catch our breath: he’d been able to control the throttle better by using such-and-such hand position. He’d figured out how to keep his revs up and control his speed via clutch modulation. He’d actually fallen fewer times on this excursion than he had on the power-line road! He was incredibly pumped by this experience, making me feel like a curmudgeon as I dreaded the soreness that the next day would bring. I feared we’d have to be evacuated by helicopter at times, and I cursed whatever sadist or idiot had deemed Trail #1 “moderate.”

Jack bubbled over all the way home, delighted about overcoming such formidable hurdles and enthused about returning; he called me the next day to reiterate that he’d had a fantastic time. I could only view the day as primarily a disaster, fraught with very serious dangers and my own costly errors in judgment. Was it Jack’s naïveté that allowed him to remember it as so glorious? Was it the rush of invincibility one feels after a brush with death? He explained later that he’d felt little danger on his tiny mount and had (unseen by me) paddled his way through those grim passages with much effort and determination but little drama. It was simply the joy of accomplishing difficult things; doing so made him feel more alive. With another day’s passing, I started to enjoy the memory myself.

As I recounted it to my friend Bill (another midlife beginner), he chuckled and reminded me how I’d taken him through Deal’s Gap—in the dark and during a thunderstorm—on one of his first out-of-the-neighborhood street rides. Deal’s Gap (Highway 129 on the Tennessee/North Carolina border) is a tortuous collection of 318 mountain curves over 11 miles in the middle of nowhere. It’s intimidating and treacherous for advanced riders, let alone a newbie. The idea had been to ride much more relaxed roads nearby, but a sudden, extreme weather change and the premature darkness it produced made it imperative to take the quickest way home. Bill, though terrified during his 10-mph traverse of this sportbike nirvana (in good weather, that is), felt exhilarated afterward.

The same goes for Bill’s first long-distance tour, riding with me and yet another middle-aged greenhorn, Dave. Hurricane Opal chased the three of us halfway across the Blue Ridge Parkway and eventually caught us. The dense fog and torrential downpours blinded us and made it potentially lethal to keep going (and hit something we couldn’t see) or stop (and be hit by something that couldn’t see us). Again, the degree of difficulty determined the thrill of victory. That was the hardest thing I’d ever done on a motorcycle; the same was even truer for them, given how little experience they’d had. As miserable and terrified as we were during the ordeal, we all remember it reverently as a peak experience when we had withstood a test far beyond any for which we’d prepared. Surviving, and even making headway during the storm, proved something about our mettle. It was a demonstration of our ability to keep our heads in spite of our fears, evidence of our fortitude, our vitality. It wasn’t just that we were still alive; it was that we’d been more fully alive. We’d had to be.

Motorcycling forces us to confront dangers and difficulties. I never would have willingly chosen any of the aforementioned events (or others I don’t have room to relate here). And I certainly would never deliberately send new riders into such perilous situations. But each time, the deeper we had to reach within ourselves and the further we had to stretch, the closer we came to being our best selves—the selves we fully inhabit only when we have no choice.

Pain Management

May 2006

Although this is another column that may seem to make the case against instead of for riding motorcycles, one has to get all the way through the story to find the redeeming aspects. Just for the record, all involved in this ordeal considered it worthwhile afterward. Pain alone doesn’t yield gain, but it can force us to learn.

I’m freshly returned from a midwinter ride. It’s tough to type with frozen fingers, but I wanted to get this recorded before the seductive comforts of indoor life make the cold seem distant and surreal. Oh, did I mention I had to climb up the stairs to my study on crutches, too? Here’s the story…

We get lots of rain in eastern Tennessee (we’re right up there with the Pacific Northwest and the Florida Peninsula). That can detract from street riding, but it usually adds to the fun of making our way through the high-contrast topography in our rocky/boggy/mountainous woods. When the mercury rises a bit in the wake of a storm front, it just might be the perfect time to load up the kids and the dirt bikes and take advantage of one of the few opportunities we’ll have to ride with friends between December and March. It’s risky, though, because the deep water we will no doubt encounter—stuff that provides a welcome relief from the heat elsewhere in the calendar—can instantly plunge anyone it captures into a world of pain that will last the rest of the day. Temps in the 40s just feel refreshingly brisk when wrestling a bike through highly technical terrain at a snail’s pace, as long as we’re reasonably dry.

You know what’s coming, right?

The whole gang was able to stay upright through many swampy sections until late in the day. Then it became clear that everyone was more excited than in shape; we were becoming tired when we still had a long way to go to exit the woods. As concentration decayed, obstacles that had been fun to negotiate earlier now felt treacherous and worrisome. Crashes were increasing in frequency, and it was only a matter of time before somebody fell into a water hazard. Meanwhile, our slowing pace meant daylight was waning rapidly, and with it the barely adequate warmth with which we’d started this adventure.

Finally, the inevitable occurred. Dylan, my ten-year-old stepson, went down face-first into a knee-deep “puddle”— more like a small pond—and got thoroughly soaked. He was already spent and discouraged from his dogged (and ultimately unsuccessful) efforts to climb a wickedly steep and slimy incline a mile back. The addition of bone-chilling muck was just too much, and he crawled over to a secluded spot off the trail to cry in private.

After my usual pep talk failed to fan any embers of determination within him, and he showed no improvement after a few minutes alone, I knew we were in trouble. There was no way for his physical condition to improve until we could get back to the truck, and he couldn’t obtain that relief without pulling himself together. In the meantime, the sun was setting, and he would only feel worse—and lose even more of his ability to ride—as he spent more time being that much colder. He had to ride out and do it right now. But how? I’ve had to ride out of bad situations before, so how did I do it? Looking back, it was hard to say. Something had happened automatically for me, but it wasn’t happening automatically for this little boy. Sometimes the most basic psychological principles are the hardest to explain.

I knelt down to think, and my knee gave way, causing me to tumble over and bury my arm in an icy bog I hadn’t even noticed beside me. Only a short while prior, I’d wrenched that knee badly while helping one of the kids get his bike up though a nasty pass; I’d simply stumbled backward while on foot, but the toe of my boot had gotten caught for a split second under a root as I was falling, and I could actually feel, quite vividly, the bones in my knee pull apart and snap back together on my way down. I knew this wasn’t good, but as long as I didn’t put much weight on that leg, I could make do. And I was so focused on shepherding the children back out of the woods that my pain receded into the background; I’d forgotten all about this problem while wondering what to do about the disintegrating child a few yards away.

Motorcycles need protection, too. In addition to wearing armored gear, off-road riders outfit their bikes with skid plates, radiator guards, and other items to keep parts functional after the inevitable tumbles. This was a particularly resilient and forgiving machine.

Then it came to me. Duh! People block one thing from awareness by putting something else in its place. When I rode out of the woods with a broken rib a couple years ago, I had to concentrate on riding with extreme smoothness; not only was my pain reduced when I encountered fewer shocks to my torso, but, more importantly, I was focusing my mind on a task instead of the scary fact that it hurt to breathe. When I once found myself suddenly engulfed in zero-visibility fog on a long stretch of mountain switchbacks with no shoulder for refuge from blind traffic, I pressed on by narrowing my attention to the tiny strip of white line I could barely see a foot or two ahead of me on the road’s edge. That time, it wasn’t an issue of physical pain but of sheer terror after having been very nearly sideswiped by a car driving by in the opposite direction!

There also have been numerous times when I’ve had to keep going through unexpected downpours on the street or when night and temperatures fell quickly while I was still a long way from civilization. Sometimes I could wrap myself in a blanket of imagination, thinking about how good the hot shower would feel at my destination. Sometimes I could detach myself from physical sensation altogether, retreating into my mind so completely that signals from my body registered only as neutral information, stripped of any compelling impact. Sometimes I have repeated a song over and over. But mostly the trick has been to focus my attention sharply on a key element of riding technique—something I was continuously doing right now, and right now, and right now.

Obviously, impending hypothermia and other physical dangers cannot be ignored indefinitely. If you’ve ever ridden while extremely cold, you may have found yourself entering a sort of trance state involuntarily; that’s not what I’m suggesting as a goal here. Certainly, there are many times when we must simply stop riding and find another way to deal with our dilemma. But, in situations wherein riding to safety is a better risk than stopping, it’s useful to know how to manage the distractions of pain, discomfort, and fear.

What works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another. I trotted out all my examples while gently insisting that Dylan remount and complete the trek back to the truck. I thought that there was no viable alternative but to strap him on my back and return for his bike later. Dylan didn’t think the situation was quite that drastic; however, he didn’t like any of my suggestions about what to focus on for the twenty minutes more he needed to ride. So I left it up to him to find something on his own through trial and error; after all, that’s how I learned what worked for me. At least he knew he needed to focus his mind on something—something other than how much his hands ached and his face burned and how raw and weak his whole body felt.

He finally crept down the mountain and out of the woods, repeating a mantra he’d heard years before at many a bedtime reading. He filled his helmet with the words like protective insulation, not only from the cold but also from despair: “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can . . .” It was enough to lever his attention out of the ditch so his body could follow. What’s your way?