Why We Ride. Mark Barnes, PhD

      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.