Turning Cards
Turning Cards
UP FRONT
MARK HOYER
EVERY TIME YOU PUT ON YOUR PROTECtive gear, you are quietly accepting the fact that your ride may not end as planned. We accept this risk because of the exceptional rewards offered by riding motorcycles.
The more we ride, the more experienced we get and, hopefully, the less likely we are to make an error that may lead to something terrible. But the more we ride, the greater our exposure to danger. Again, we take the risk because it's worth it.
I was having breakfast recently with my friend, Bill Getty, who has spent a lifetime riding all kinds of motorcycles on all kinds of great adventures. We were taking about this very subject and some of the people we've known who have been hurt. "To some degree, it's a bit like all the soldiers getting suited up for the D-Day invasion. Every one of them is sure that they'll be the ones who make it."
He's right. If you knew for certain you wouldn't make it, well, wouldn't you walk to the coffee shop instead? Not that a D-Day soldier had a choice, but we do. My old friend Eugen Light was fond of the saying, "I plan on living forever. So far, so good."
There's something to that. Riders I've known who get hurt typi cally try to ride again before they're supposed to and rarely give up the sport. And all they usually talk about as they mend is getting back in the saddle. Cut off your cast so you can ride? Happens all the time. Think of Dick Mann in On Any Sunday.
We, of course, put supreme faith in our skills and all try to learn something every time we ride. So, what about the truck tire that flies over the center di vider on the freeway or the unseen sand midcorner that puts you on the ground in the path of an oncoming vehicle? We work our asses off to control as much as we can, but we can't control everything. Still we ride~
What puts this all at the top of my mind are not only my experiences in motorcycling, but also those I have gained in being a reserve firefighter. I've fought huge brush fires for eight days straight, gotten up in the middle of the night for medical aids and traffic collisions, ventured off into the local mountains to use ropes to get injured mountain bikers off steep hillsides and helped hook them to hovering helicop ters so they can be flown to hospitals for care.
That work is a lot like motorcycling in the sense that you work to mediate risk and train to strive for the optimum outcome. You use protective gear that
is a balance between being able to ac complish the job and protecting you if things go wrong. You use cool equip ment to accomplish specific jobs, you go places and see things many other people never do, and you bust your ass to keep that equipment in top shape so it works perfectly at the precise time you absolutely need it to do so.
What motorcycling and firefighting have also taught me is the seemingly contradictory fragility of the human form and its insane resilience and durability.
When I brought all this up with Technical Editor Kevin Cameron, he was his usual thoughtful self "The mo torcycle will never become unfashion able or fall out of favor because, like when humans first got on the horse, we find our capabilities are amplified," he said. "You can travel at tremendous speed, leap over things. You have super
powers. It's delightful, and we can't live without it. Getting back on the bike af ter a crash is, I think, a bit like whistling past the graveyard but also that we sim ply want to get back to the good stuff.
"So many people go through life just plodding along, never really experienc ing `real' things and going through the motions. For those people who are for tunate to have something they really love, they're in love with it." -
Past crashes or near crashes I fear most are the ones I never came to un derstand. I still have not figured out how I lost the front on my Velocette riding fast on a coastal road north of San Francisco about five years ago. I was shocked as the tire smeared along the road and the bars began to cross. I didn't fall, but I had to stop to inspect the bike and tire, and venture back to the corner to see if there had been sand or oil or other debris. There wasn't. I'd been through hundreds of similar cor ners before that moment, and continued on to negotiate hundreds more on my ride down to Los Angeles. Why that corner? It still makes me shudder. When I crashed with no apparent cause on a straightaway in a national enduro years ago, not only did I need to
rush back to the machine so I wouldn't lose my spectacular, hard-fought 125th place, I also wanted to make sure I taught my "horse" a lesson. "People get back on right away so they can get past it," said Kevin, "to transcend the crash. `I am this thing in motion not some fallen meteorite! Yes, I seek transcendence! I seek edu cation and improvement. I seek mas tery of my mind and machine! After responding recently to a particularly brutal two-wheel traffic incident in which I knew one of the victims, I vowed to refresh my efforts at being a better rider and wear the best gear I can afford.
Everything I've ever done in life that is worth doing has involved risk. To some degree, we're just turning over the cards when we ride. Do your best to stack the deck in your favor.
Riders I've known who get hurt typically try to ride again before they're supposed to and rarely give up the sport. And all they usually talk about as they mend is getting back in the saddle. Cut off your cast so you can ride? Happens all the time.
