Why We Ride. Mark Barnes, PhD
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.