Why We Ride. Mark Barnes, PhD
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