I try all things; I achieve what I can.
A year ago, as I was going through a mound of keepsakes my Mom transferred to my
custody (I have reached that age, yes), I came across a little book I made in
kindergarten describing my first bicycle crash, which I attributed to rolling over a
pine-cone. I have very little recollection of the crash itself - I only recall
sitting, high up on the passenger seat of the minivan, with a towel pressed to
my forehead and anxiously asking, "B-but can you see any BRAINS?" What I remembered
best was the jewel-like redness of the bloody wound I drew on my forehead when
recounting the crash:
Methinks my body is but the lees of my better being. In fact take my body who
will, take it I say, it is not me. And therefore three cheers for Nantucket;
and come a stove boat and stove body (ed: brain) when they will, for stave my
soul, Jove himself cannot.
I was surprised as I flipped through to the end of my book and read the
comments from my parents and grandparents. I did not remember at all what my
Dad wrote - that the very next day I was back on the bike. As an adult, reading
that, I felt a sense of pride - whether in the approval, or in my five-year-old
tenacity, I couldn't say.
These recollections bring to mind a similar event that happened with my son
when he was about six. Interestingly, my Dad was also present to bear witness in
one of those inscrutable Jungian coincidences. It happened like this: my brother
and his family were in town visiting, and my son and his cousin took their
scooters to the top of the long hill outside my Dad's house in order to race down.
My nephew's scooter had two wheels, but my son's had three (two in front spaced
a half-foot apart, and one behind). By the second or third run, all fear had left
them, and as they reached critical speed, my son's three-wheeled scooter began
oscillating violently until it lurched and threw him off. He got a chipped tooth,
a scraped back and a very bloody nose. My Dad came running out of the house with
a towel again, and, seeing the profusion of blood, as quickly ran back. Blood
is not our scene in my family. A day later my brother texted me to ask how Connor
was doing and I sent him a picture of Connor riding his scooter, to which my brother
replied something along the lines of "You still don't have a helmet on him?!"
That same day Connor found five dollars on the ground. In my household, anyways, I think we must also believe a great deal in luck.
This same brother and I rode our bikes all summer long, growing up in a quiet
neighborhood near Brookside, in Kansas City. There were old sidewalks, long
disjointed by the growth of tree-roots, which made excellent bumps to use to
pop the front wheel in the air. I remember a feeling of triumph when I rode
my bike, no hands, all the way around our block, switching from street to
sidewalk from time-to-time. I felt a sense of confidence and mastery, freedom
and joy, when I rode my bike, that is inseparable from that larger, better
feeling of just being a child during the hot, lazy summer. It wasn't long
before I was dreaming of a motorcycle.
So much has been written about motorcycles, but the one image that has stuck with me the most came from Pirsig when he described how a motorcycle puts you in
the scene while in a car you are an observer of the scenery. For me, it gets
to the truth that the spirit of riding a motorcycle is simply the experience -
that indivisible moment when you are piloting the machine and nothing else.
Being aware of the demands of the machine and the environment when riding is
one thing, and to ride well is everything.
There is a 20-mile stretch of winding, two-lane country highway between my home
and my former office. It skirts the old boundaries of farms as it winds
between Topeka and Lawrence, and it became a ritual with me to ride it as aggressively
as I could, pushing my corner speed higher and higher. Eventually I found my
way onto the racetrack, though not racing competitively. I never pursued that,
it seems I was always racing myself and my own expectations and demands. I
wanted to be always right at the extreme edge of my limits, pushing to grow, to
be a little bit faster, a little bit more precise. On the track I found the
perfect place to abandon myself to this impulse. There were always faster guys
to catch, though it was not from a desire to dominate - it was to learn to
emulate what they were doing and apply it to improving my own riding. There was
always that one corner I could've hit a little better, that one spot I could've
kept the throttle open a little bit longer. Next lap I'll nail it.
Unfortunately, our track shut down
a few years ago, and the widespread belief was that it would never reopen. It
had been through similar drama in 2015 and it seemed that this was the end.
Shortly after this I bought a street-legal dirtbike and decided that from here
on I would be a dirt rider. I also really wanted to get good at wheelies, and
the prospect of looping-out while learning on a 125hp supersport was just too
daunting. The first time I ever saw someone do a sick wheelie I had been sitting
stopped at a red-light, when coming through the other way I saw a guy on a
clapped-out old bike - he glanced over at me and then in the middle of the
intersection popped up a high wheelie and zoomed away. The nonchalance with
which he did it, and the sense of awe I unconsciously felt filled me with a
desire to learn.
I began practicing wheelies the winter after the track shut down. In February
I looped-out twice in two weeks, both times because my confidence had exceeded
my ability. After the second crash I sat up in bed and let it all out to my
wife - my fear that I would never figure it out, that I was fooling myself that
I could, the shame that I had crashed up my bike again, maybe I should give up.
She looked at me and said, "I know you'll be able to figure it out. Who cares
if you crashed your bike, remember this is what you got it for!" Now, I know
that, if I asked her for her own opinion on whether learning to wheelie a
motorcycle is an important life skill for one to acquire, she would not have
any hesitation saying "no, absolutely not". But she knew how important it was to
me, and the love and understanding she showed me then, made such an impression
on me. It was exactly what I needed to hear, and le coeur a ses raisons que la
raison ne connait point. I mean, wheelies?! It is so arbitrary as to be
ridiculous, and yet there it is, my truth.
I learned from necessity (and YouTube) to repair all the shit on my bike that
I broke in these crashes because I was too embarrassed to take it to the mechanic
(a friend of the family) and explain what had happened. I fixed my bike and got
right back to it, this time really focusing on building the muscle memory to
use the rear brake.
I'd like to make an Ishmael-ian interlude here to explain how a wheelie works. Controlling a wheelie involves three distinct operations:
- Popping it up - this is done by pulling in the clutch and giving the engine a
hearty rev, winding up the motor, and then dropping the clutch and
transferring all that power in a sudden burst. This is what lifts the wheel.
- Balance point - using the throttle to lift the front wheel higher and the
rear brake to keep from looping all the way backwards. You are constantly
making small adjustments while the wheel is in the air to keep the bike at
balance point. Below balance point you will be gaining speed as the engine
must continue supplying acceleration to keep the wheel up. Behind balance
point, the rear brake will gently slow the bike.
- Side-to-side balance - because you're only on one wheel, you have more
degrees of freedom, and maintaining side-to-side balance becomes more
important the longer the wheel is up.
You know that feeling when you're sitting in a chair and kinda playing with
tipping it backwards, and then you tip it a little too far and instinctively
flail your legs and arms wildly. When that happens on a motorcycle in a
wheelie, the only way to bring it back down is with light pressure on the rear
brake. No brake or not enough brake you loop.
Too much pressure and you mouse-trap.
After a week or two of practice, slowly building back my shattered confidence,
the day came when I felt that sickening falling-backwards feeling and instead
of looping out or jumping off, smacked the rear brake and brought it back down.
This was the turning point. Later that year I was riding them for over a mile.
For all the Freudians in the house.
What does it all mean? Nothing at all, objectively. In fact, the goal was so
silly and arbitrary that I felt almost apologetic for devoting so much effort
towards it. But somehow learning this skill has been incredibly rewarding
personally. Before I learned how to wheelie well I would have these dreams
where I hopped on a bike and rode them effortlessly - in my dream I would
think, "Is this all there is to it? Why, then, did it seem so hard? This feels
incredible, though!" And as soon as I could wheelie reasonably well, the dreams
stopped, they had crossed-over into my reality.
I've been experiencing something similar with riding off-road. At first it felt
impossible, coming from the track where managing traction is of such importance,
to riding on terrain that shifts underneath you and is endlessly variable. I
stuck with it, though, and then last Fall something clicked. I had the same
feeling as when I hit the rear brake the first time - a whole new world had
opened up before me.
I'm embarrassed to come right out and say that the motorcycle, then, is a
vehicle for self-discovery, but what have I been talking about all this time? A
measuring-stick? The source and destination of meaning, which ultimately boils
down to the choice of the participant? Of course it must be these things, and
more, or perhaps it's no different from the games of children.
And what does it say about me, but that I'm just like everyone else who
loves these machines. The riches I have been given have been those moments of communion when
everything flowed perfectly, connecting a corner exit to the next corner entry,
floating the front wheel down a long stretch of road, flying through the woods
as the bike slides and weaves snake-like along the winding trail.
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