. Fanfare for the Common Man ............

. Or Woman

There are three types of riders:

�  Nervous newbies who fight demons along the length of their ride
�  Working class riders with moments of glory
�  Studs who simply own the road

For many years I was a nervous newbie. I enjoyed riding, but it was an arduous task. Every curve was a bit of a mystery and I frequently pulled over to let cars by so I could relieve myself of performance pressure. I didn�t understand any of the theories of riding; the bike more or less turned when I moved the bars this way and that. What was countersteering? Body positioning? It was nothing. There was no art in riding � it was all plain execution. I�d come home from a hundred mile ride absolutely wasted and in need of a long nap to recover.

Fast forward many years later. I get on a track for the first time in my life and have my first motorcycling epiphany: Man, you can really lean a bike over. I took this knowledge back to the street and found that the death grip I never realized I had had for so many years was starting to dissipate. With my newfound awareness of my body on the bike, I tried some subtle physical set-ups. The first one that stuck with me the most is a bit of an embarrassment, but I�ll share it with you because if you�re still struggling in turns, it might help: Pretend you�re farting. That�s right, a little gas-relief role-playing made a huge difference for me. Pretend you�re sitting on your couch at home and you�ve had a big Salisbury steak for supper, and it�s got to get out. While you�re going into a turn, just lift the cheek that�s higher up. That little weight shift towards the lower side of the bike helped me get the bike through the corner with greater ease. You may also find that the incredible absurdity of �air farting� on your bike makes you relax, and relaxing is a key to not locking your arms straight and driving your bike right through a guard rail.

So, absurd as it may seem, that was the first big breakthrough in my riding career. Still, I was more or less a shit rider. Confidence was not my constant co-driver and Chris still had to wait at stop signs along the backroads for me, sometimes long enough to wander off into a farmer�s field to take a leak and shake it off twice before I�d show up. I tried really hard and rode every single weekend. I wasn�t a natural; it came slowly and with a great deal of frustration. I�d look at every guy on the road and think the same sexist thought of how it came so easily to the guys because they just had �that� ability. They were all junior racers after the first few weeks and there I was, years later, still trying not to totally crap my pants when I�ve gone hot into a blind decreasing radius turn.

A few more track visits continued to help me improve. I had no formal instruction, but I�d pick anybody�s brain who was willing to talk about it. I asked them how they approached their turns, where they put their weight, what they did with their arms, where they looked. I knew nothing. I had to learn everything. And so I did. Back on the streets, every month or so one small thing would click into place. It was small gains made in a very long, ongoing battle. It seems the one true talent I had was stubbornness: just say �no� to �saying no.� To call it �tenacity� would be too romantic a notion. Tenacity suggests an honorable, driving inner-power that would lead one to a noble goal. I was just stubborn; I knew I�d be forever sullen and moderately angry if I didn�t succeed, so I had to stick with it to avoid the self-loathing.

Finally, it came: the ability to ride proficiently. Somewhere along the timeline, unbeknownst to me, I turned into a working class rider. I could do most anything at a good clip and not fuck it up. I rarely doubted myself and I returned home from rides refreshed instead of ground down. Chris no longer had time for biohazard breaks as I was always with him. But now, I coveted something new: to be a stud.

It is in man�s nature to desire more, to never be satisfied with what we have, isn�t it? I suppose that is not necessarily bad. Excessive self-satisfaction would lead to complacency and then we�d be a nation of underachievers. When I started dating Chris, I started watching motorcycle racing on TV and I saw a species of riders who could do unspeakable things on a bike. I knew I could never be them, but I could be more like them, couldn�t I? It was then I was overcome with a simple desire: to drag my knee. It seemed stupidly puerile, but it became an inexplicable need that dogged me. It was as if I were a teenager with a tingling deep inside me and I was transitioning towards adulthood, but I needed to do one important thing. I needed to lose my virginity: I needed to put my knee down on the pavement. It�s just what the fast people did. It�s what the �grown-ups� did.

So it was more track days of leaning and leaning and leaning. I hung off, or at least I thought I did, and stuck my knee out. Still, I scraped nothing but air. I suppose I was a bit scared. What was it suppose to feel like? Would it scare me? Perhaps shock me so much I�d crash? Then, as with all the other gains, it just happened one fine day. It seemed like quite a grinding racket when I did it, but I suppose I was just filling in the huge blanks with my imagination. There wasn�t much to show for it on my kneepuck since I barely touched down, but there was still evidence of a drag. Just like that I had hair on my chest.

By now you�ve probably read my accounts of racing, which was the latest grand step in my riding career. I didn�t go into it lightly. I didn�t really want to do it at all, but it seemed like a rite of passage I had to endure for myself. My life isn't about my career or raising kids or seeing new places or buying pretty things. It may sound one-dimensional, even pitiful, but I just live life looking forward to the next ride. That�s all. It seemed a fair and proper test of my self-definition as a motorcyclist to try racing.

Now after a few years of racing, I�ve turned into a very good rider, one I never thought I would ever be. I considered myself �a highly evolved working class rider with moments of curve-handling brilliance.� I�m still not bomber-proof, though, as I doubt I can handle anything thrown at me at any speed. I am best, as most people are, in my own territory where I am familiar with the roads. I know I will forever be a work in progress because even on roads I�ve traveled hundreds of times, I can�t memorize them. I can only trust that a road will or won�t bite me in certain sections at certain speeds. I can ride hard, but I always keep a proper buffer for miscalculations.

All the explanation above leads us up to today�s ride, which was a peculiar departure. I wouldn�t say that I had an epiphany; it was more like I had become temporarily possessed by some other rider�s mind. I went into every turn knowing exactly where the bike had to be and where every muscle should be balanced over the bike. It didn�t matter that I couldn�t see through a turn that I didn�t exactly remember what it did � every inch of pavement that my eye was reading in transit would tell my body exactly what it needed to do. It was like no matter what speed I was at, I could do no wrong. There was no thinking involved; I had found this primeval level of synaptic execution that was better than any high level thought process. I knew without a doubt what I had to do exactly when I had to do it. Not that I am anywhere near their level, but is this how professional riders operate? Do they know what they need to do and just do it? It was so pure that I was dumbfounded and thinking to myself, �This won�t last.� Indeed, I�m afraid the gift will be taken from me and that the next time I get back on a bike I�m going to be Cinderella without her glass slippers. I�ll wake up and I�m going to be the same working class rider I�ve always been.

Maybe even that�s not so bad. �To love and have lost is better than to have never loved at all.� Even if I don�t recapture today�s feeling, at least I know what was in me at one brief moment in this lifetime. I won�t know for sure what has happened until I get out for my next ride. 

I don�t know what level you�re at, but maybe you see some of yourself in this. If you do and you�re struggling, just know that I came from the Land of Skillessness, a place where the inherently talentless cling to each other in fear. I�m really not being trite when I say, �If I can do it, anyone can do it.�

Update: Although I'm not at �stud� status every time I go out, riding perfection has happened more than once. I would love it if it happened all the time; it would never get old. All your senses are perfect, down to your relaxed and metered breathing. Amazing state of mind and that's all it is – the bunmaster exercises I've been doing can take no credit.  

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