Why We Ride. Mark Barnes, PhD
a train at 350 mph with his wife and kids on the back. All of ‘em burst into flames and died instantly. Killed some people who weren’t even there when it happened. They’re still finding pieces of that motor scooter all the way across the state line. You’d never catch me on one of them things. Death traps, I tell you! Where’d you crash? On a racetrack? Are you crazy? Foolish thing to do, a man your age out racing around on a suicide machine like an irresponsible teenager! Did I tell you a friend of mine had one of them things? Got run over by a Greyhound bus in his own driveway. Broke every bone in his body. Terrible thing! Nurse friend of mine says the same thing happens to somebody in town every eleven minutes. What? You wanna go back again? What are you, some kind of daredevil or just plain stupid? Didn’t you learn your lesson? Did I mention a friend of mine had one of them things . . . ?”
We’ve all heard the stories. It seems that everyone—and I mean just about everyone—who hears that you ride a motorcycle always knows someone somewhere who had some hair-raising, awful crash that either prevented the person from ever riding again or convinced the rider and all of his or her friends, neighbors, and relatives that motorcycling is the most surefire way to incur extensive physical injury known to man. And they feel compelled to tell you about it. Again and again. Punishment for youthful exuberance comes swiftly, surely, and severely—if you believe these stories. Which I don’t.
Sure, motorcycling is a dangerous activity, and accidents really do happen, sometimes with very serious consequences. But that’s only part of the story. Non-riders tend to leave out (maybe because they never heard) other important factors, such as the seventeen beers ingested immediately prior to the ride of death, the absence of appropriate riding gear, or the lack of good training and experience (or common sense and maturity) on the part of the rider. Nor is there any accounting for the millions of people who do not instantly detonate upon contact with the doomsday device supposedly lurking within each and every motorcycle.
For most who offer their unsolicited horror stories about a friend of a friend, the facts about motorcycle safety won’t mean a thing. Try as he may, my friend Bill will be wasting his breath explaining that he really wasn’t hurt that badly and that he gained a very valuable learning experience on the way to increased mastery. It won’t matter that he hasn’t had a wreck on the street in nearly four years of riding, or that the racetrack is by far the very safest place to practice and improve one’s skills (no oncoming traffic, medical crew at the ready, mandatory full leathers and track-worthy machinery, same corners over and over, and so on). And he had better not even mention anything about the exhilarating freedom, grand camaraderie, and thrilling adventure that make the expenses, risks, and injuries all worthwhile. They’ll have none of that, thank you. Which is too bad.
Just as the litany of crash descriptions repeated by the riders prior to practice managed their anxieties, the stories told by non-riders manage theirs. But the typical anti-motorcyclist’s anxieties aren’t about risk, damage, and injury; they’re about missing out on life. You see, they need to reassure themselves that taking chances always ends in disaster; this is the justification for all of the “safe” conventions they’ve adopted. Never mind all the lost opportunities for enriching experiences, the important discoveries about one’s own abilities and limits, or the bonds that form between people who face challenges together—what they want is certainty, safety, and security. As if these really exist.
The only guarantee in life is death. Risk is everywhere, all the time; it is simply a part of life. To spend one’s life eradicating risk is to hurry death, not avoid it. People can be dead long before they die. If something can be said about motorcyclists as a group, it’s that we understand that security is an illusion. This doesn’t mean all things are equally dangerous or that we should arbitrarily disregard potential consequences. And it doesn’t mean that we face risks without fear (as an analysis of the aforementioned dinner conversation easily reveals). But it does mean that a respect for danger can allow the pursuit of wondrous and exotic pleasures with a minimum of cost. American society is presently swarming with people who feel entitled to a no-risk deal in life, fleeing any and all responsibility for their actions and decisions, holding someone else to blame for what really amounts to chance, and expecting life to provide unlimited enjoyment for free. Lamentably, some of these people are motorcyclists: witness the absurd litigation directed against helmet manufacturers because riders sustained head injuries in accidents. While we should certainly expect well-developed protective gear, it’s thoroughly unrealistic to think it will keep us completely safe in every eventuality, and no helmet is sold with any such assurance.
The bottom line is this: everyone is responsible for his or her own choices, and all choices involve risk. The real issue is not avoiding risk but managing it. Once people accept risk, they can take responsibility for dealing with it. Acknowledging risk leads to a more careful approach and a better chance at achieving the desired goal. Denying risk leads to carelessness in the pursuit of the goal and decreases the chance of success. Avoiding risk means abandoning desires and goals and settling for something less from life—without desire, how can you achieve satisfaction? The question isn’t whether or not you’ll wreck, the question is whether or not you’ll try, taking the risks seriously, addressing them as best you can, and treating the inevitable mistakes made along the way as opportunities for learning. Obviously, this doesn’t apply only to motorcycling; it applies to every area of living.
My friends Bill and Dave chose to embrace risk, not because they had some secret death wish or because they’re irresponsible. Quite the contrary. They have a very strong life wish. They want to live so much that they’ve spent a lot of money on good safety equipment. And they went to considerable trouble to get everything to Talladega, where they could hone the rough edges of their riding techniques as safely as possible, knowing that it would improve their odds on the street. That doesn’t sound like being irresponsible to me.
But the bigger issue involved here is that they are taking full responsibility for their own desires instead of ignoring them, pursuing life amidst its myriad risks, and foregoing the illusory security of those who will preach abstinence upon hearing that a person has “one of them motorbikes.” They had very different experiences at Talladega, but Bill and Dave both lived that day to its fullest. I guess that’s one of the reasons I love this sport so much; it attracts people who really want to live while they’re alive. And if that means having some wrecks along the way—motorcycling or otherwise—so be it.
The “Trust Me” Line
September 2000
This part of learning a racetrack is among the most harrowing and the most satisfying. As in so many pursuits, taking up greater challenge opens up the possibility of attaining greater reward—another life lesson potentially embedded in the imagery.
Turn Six at Road America is a 90-degree left at the crest of a steep rise. The entrance passes under a walkway bridge, and visibility is extremely limited. It’s possible to carry considerable speed through there, and then Turn Seven is a 90-degree right-hander waiting for you down the short chute between those two corners. In order to connect them well, you have to set your trajectory blindly while rapidly approaching the immovable earthen embankments that the bridge spans. Scary business.
During a CLASS (California’s Leading Advanced Safety School) track day at Road America, instructor and racing legend Reg Pridmore explained that Turn Six requires the use of a “trust me” line: a path that offers no apparent reassurance of its ability to carry you safely around the corner. You have to carve a predetermined arc based on what you’ve learned on previous laps rather than on what information is available to you in the moment. This requires a certain geometric memory, along with a faith that your chosen line will transport you safely, even though you can’t see where you or it is going. Without that faith, you’ll be tentative, second-guessing your decision, and either you’ll wobble through slowly and sloppily or you’ll make enough recalculations and line adjustments to put yourself squarely in the gravel trap on the outside of Seven.
With practice comes knowledge—real knowledge, based on trial-and-error experience (as opposed to, say, a plan based on the paper map you studied before arriving at the track).