Was It Worth It?

All Rights Reserved © 2013 Thomas W. Day

[As the copyright notice above indicates, I wrote this one in 2013 when I first began to consider the fact that the end of my motorcycling life was approaching. I had just retired from my teaching gig at a music college and my wife and I were planning a retirement vacation trip that might have resulted in our selling off everything except what would have fit into a small camper and going on the road until we could no longer do that. That did not pan out well at all. ;-) I intended for this to be the last entry to my Geezer with A Grudge blog and the odds are good if you're reading this one, I'm dead or incapacitated by age, injury, or both. At the least, I will have sold off my last motorcycle and ended that part of my life. So, this is it. Thanks for reading my thoughts and stories and I wish you all have at least as much fun and luck as I did on two wheels.]

Recently, I spent a fine summer afternoon hanging out with a couple of young friends. One of them is an occasional motorcyclist and the other is not. During a bit of that discussion, we touched on crashes and near-crashes and the odds that getting into serious trouble on a motorcycle are pretty high. Nick, the non-rider, asked, "So, is it worth it? If you are that likely to crash and get hurt, why do it?"

Risk-taking has a bad rap these days, and some of that is for good reason. Bankers, investment brokers, real estate speculators, and the rest of the Vegas gamblers who play with the public's money as if it were a child's toy are a waste of air. They reminded us that hanging out on the edge of sanity is something less than sane. We didn't learn that lesson well enough to accurately apply discipline where it is needed, but we did become more conservative/timid/terrified-of-the-future. That move has been a highlight of failed empires since humans started writing down the steps taken before the barbarians stormed the walls and we all went back to banging the rocks together to make music.

Combine our general decline in courage and intelligence with a brand new phenomena my wife likes to call "old parents" and we're raising a generation of kids who think buying an Android-based smartphone instead of a safe-but-expensive iPhone is risk-taking. These fearful near-geriatric "helicopter parents" are responsible for the collection of pseudo-psychological maladies used to excuse bad manners, poor work ethic, and an education system too terrified to fail even the worst slackers or, even, outright idiots. These low-flying hovering parents think a skinned knee is cause for both medical intervention and systemic overhaul of every playground, school activity, and television program within the 1/4-block territor their child is allowed to free-range. It's also true that the average age of the American parent is increasing and there are some biological reasons why that might not be good news, especially for over-35 men and women. The Genetic Literacy Library summarizes this problem, "As more children are born to older parents, increasing numbers of babies are at higher risk for a range of health problems, many with a genetic basis and possibly resulting from epigenetic changes—functional changes that are generated in the DNA as a product of longevity and environmental interactions." So, we're a nation of declining health and growing conservatism. In other words, we're afraid of everything other than sending other peoples' kids to war. Ideally, other people we don't know. Shades of China, Greece, Rome, Denmark, Spain, England, and every other Empire Gone Bad.

The first part of taking physical risk is physical activity and even the fattest of us knows that physical activity is crucial to good health. The advantages of taking on physical risk is less well known. Freud, that famous couch-potato, sex-deviant, thought that any sort of adventure was evidence of an "innate human death drive." His years of smoking cigars eventually led to cancer of the mouth followed by a successful plea to his own kid for assisted suicide, so his death-drive-drivel was probably just self-diagnosis. More rational psychological studies have found that nature has built in significant biological rewards for risk taking. Endorphins and adrenaline crank out chemicals that give athletes and daredevils a "high" similar to sexual activity. Our hearts speed up and become more efficient, our minds focus, our respiratory system kicks into high gear, and the bio-chemical response to peak moments of excitement can't be matched any other way. Afterwards, we relax and more fully appreciate our everyday life.

Of course, some people get nothing but terror out of almost any kind of risk and they have no way to empathize with any of this. To them, taking physical risks is just crazy and inconceivable. Couple that with all of the characteristics of old parents and it's easy to understand how we "progress' to a conservative state deluded into believing that creating an economically inequitable, unsustainable, always-on-the-edge-of-disaster economy is a rational substitute for actually showing some courage occasionally. This produces stress and stress does not provide the same positive effects as physical risk. They might feel similar to those unused to a physical life, but they aren't.

In the film, Moto 4: The Movie, desert racer Kurt Caselli says, " Do one thing every day that scares you, live your life on the edge. It makes you feel good . . . and alive" Watch him race across the desert, full of life, riding and living on the edge, doing what most of his generation thinks they are doing when they play video games and you will immediately know why we do this crazy thing. In the same movie, WORCS champ Taylor Robert said, "For me, it's my escape to life." For some humans, there is no other way to get this far sideways and getting sideways is absolutely necessary.

My least favorite thing about getting old is the growing fear of getting injured and not being able to recover. It makes me appreciate how the rest of the world spent their whole lives in terror of getting hurt, afraid of taking real chances, worrying about every little thing so they do no big things their entire lives. Life kills us all. Sooner or later, you will be nothing but a memory, if you're lucky. Would you rather be John Glenn, the Marine combat aviator and test pilot who was the first American to orbit the planet or John Glenn, the man who slipped on a bathroom rug and might have spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair or worse from that incident? I know from experience that some pretty boring activities (like working on my house or yard) can result in some awful injuries. So, "I'd rather be shot out of a cannon than squeezed out of a tube." With all of that in mind and a lifetime of injuries from bicycling, contact sports, household chores, motorcycle racing and adventure touring, I can easily say, it was absolutely worth it and still is. Thanks for asking. 

Stereotypes and Typical Behavior

A few weeks ago, on a warm Saturday, my hometown was infested with the usual collection of bozos on bikes. Traffic on Old Main Street was jammed up and loud as a 1950’s drag strip. Driving through that section of town is usually miserable on a warm summer afternoon and if I didn’t have business there I would never venture down that street weekends. That day, I had business so I was stuck.

After I finished my Saturday transaction and tried to back out of my parking space, I discovered that another noisy pirate parade was in progress. Since the cops had conveniently found donut shops at the other end of town for their day-long break, the bikers were trawling the street making it almost impossible for anyone with a life to get on with it. After waiting for several minutes for an open space, I found one and backed into my lane. About the time I was straightened up and in forward gear, a pair of nitwits on hippobikes came wobbling down the street in the opposite direction and one of the crossed the center line about 20’ from the front of my pickup. Realizing that a solid object was in his random path of travel, the biker managed to weave back into his lane and barely missed both my left fender and the other half-wit who was no more skilled or in control of his geegaw-disabled vehicle. I caught the raised finger of the first nitwit in my rear view mirror.

Driving toward downtown on Highway 61 (Yeah, that “Highway 61.”), a large full dress ubiquitous black cruiser of some unknown brand passed me on the left. At first, I was impressed that the bike wasn’t obnoxiously loud and that the rider wasn’t dressed in pirate underwear. He was even wearing something resembling a helmet, open face, but not a total toilet bowl. However, he sped past me and the Suburban in front of me, swung into the right lane, and immediately came to a near stop in front of the Suburban before waddling into a filling station; bringing all of the right hand lane traffic to a near stop in the process. It was pure luck, on his part, that he wasn’t rear-ended by the Suburban. Of course, if he had been the SUV driver would have been blamed and more biker crash statistics would be skewed incorrectly away from faulting motorcyclists.

Yesterday, on my way back from the Cities near the UofM, I saw an AGAT biker on some sort of adventure touring bike. It was one of the many “bikes with a beak” and I can’t tell one from the other: coulda been a Triumph Tiger, a newer V-Strom 650 or 1000, a BMW F800GS, or some other wanna be I have yet to meet. The guy was wearing motorcycle gear and I was initially impressed. However, when we came to a stop light, he passed me and the two cars in front of me in the bicycle lane, and jumped the light gambling that no one in the opposite direction would be turning into his path. Again, pure luck that any number of things he couldn’t see or react to didn’t arrive in that intersection when he did.

Because I see so much cruiser/biker incompetence around my hometown, I tend to stereotype “idiot bikers” as characters on cruisers and other hippobikes, but mostly too many of the idiots riding two wheels appear to be mentally deficient with the riding skills of a kid who just came off of the training wheels or a tricycle; brand and species of motorcycle be damned..

The industry is hurting, again, these days. Dealerships are closing, dealers, importers, and manufacturers are reducing their motorcycle inventories. Rider training programs are shrinking to small fractions of their peak years, only a decade ago, and you see even fewer motorcycles on the road outside of occasional pirate parades and stacked up in front of bars. If there were a time when reducing motorcycle access to public roads would be easy, this is fast approaching that moment.

Motorcycle manufacturers, on average, aren’t doing much to slow the regression, either. The average motorcycle is less efficient, fuel-wise, than the average mid-sized car; even SUVs! Toyota’s 2019 RAV4 gets 40mpg, which is as good as all of the liter adventure touring bikes and better than all of the sportbikes over 600cc and as good as most of the 600cc sportbikes. Some cruisers get not-awful economy, but their owners “fix” that with aftermarket exhaust systems and lame attempts at performance enhancements that kill fuel economy and pointlessly multiply the exhaust emissions. Outside of that lame “image” bikers imagine they are sporting, practical reasons for riding a motorcycle are disappearing.

I “retired” from the Minnesota motorcycle safety training program last year (2019), after I reviewed the new, grossly dumbed-down MSF program. It was pretty lame before, but it really became focused on putting butts on seats in the newest iteration. No more “adult education” tactics, now we’re just supposed to be hand-holding prospective motorcyclists through the test so there is practically no way they can fail to get an endorsement. In every class, for the past 18 years, there was always at least one “student” who slipped through the cracks, passed the overly-easy “test,” and got an undeserved and unexpected license. I’d caution them that driving on a closed-course at 15mph was nothing like riding in traffic and that they really needed to keep working on their skills if they were going to survive, but I know those words went in one ear and out the other.

In demonstrations like the ones I described in the first four paragraphs of this article, I see the results of our foolishly easy motorcycle licensing and the incredibly stupid fact that once you have a motorcycle endorsement you have it till you die. All it takes is a few bucks for the endorsement renewal fee every time you reup your license. You can even transfer a Minnesota motorcycle endorsement to a California endorsement for a little money. Crazy! If you think knowing how to wobble down a Minnesota or Wisconsin country road is in any way useful experience on the 405, you are delusional. So on we go, down the path of becoming a piece of motoring history; like horses and buggies and go-carts and street legal ATVs. Yeah, those were all things; long ago. And now they aren’t.

Hardly Riders and Laugh In

More Hardly riders doing the Laugh In tricycle bit. “I hit that [invisible] hole in the road,” sort of like “I had to put ‘er down.” It always means, “I screwed up and fell over totally out of incompetence.” These guys always remind me of the Laugh-In tricycle gag. How can you ride this badly and still take your badass biker posing seriously?

Visible When It Counts

A "feature" of teaching is regular, frustrating failure: failure to communicate, failure to connect, failure to even be able to verify your own existence when you see the "results" of your students' test answers. If you are one of the many Americans who believe that teaching is a lucrative, rewarding, interesting job, I recommend you try it. Too often, it is just frustrating and doesn't even come close to compensating enough for the hassle. Many people who are teachers have the credentials to do something more financially and psychically rewarding and many do so after a very short stint in education. Teaching, as a calling, requires something that is rare to non-existent in modern life, "A good teacher is like a candle. It consumes itself to light the way for others."  You can only do that or so long. If you are smart, not very long at all.

When I hear the usual whining bleat of people working menial jobs who don't think their tips are big enough, I think of all the jobs that don't get tipped at all that don't pay anywhere near enough to compensate for the crap they take from an ungrateful public. In fact, most jobs don't get tips, a decent or livable income, or respect or gratitude. Teachers are high on the list of people in that category. In fact, the well-educated and trained teacher this article featured, "Why a South Carolina teacher quit at 28 — and shared her resignation letter with the world," left teaching for a waiting job which pays better, requires fewer hours, and is way less unreasonably demanding. I'm not complaining about my stint, either as a college instructor or a motorcycle safety instructor. I was in pretty good financial shape when I started those jobs and, mostly, I did them to keep from dipping into my retirement savings before I actually retired and, for a long while, because they were fun jobs. Not having to take the administration of either of those establishments particularly seriously was a giant insulator between my sanity and their general purpose weirdness. If I had been a recently graduated instructor with no financial resources and the typical blob of college debt, my situation would have been drastically different.

The only "tips" I have received from my students have been calls and emails and the occasionally note thanking me for helping them find a career or ride a motorcycle safely. Those come few and far between, not much more than a dozen times in 20 years and thousands of students. Most people think they have paid for a teacher's time and they deserve whatever comes from that. The rare student knows that is not true.

So, with that whining background behind us, a few days ago my grandson, Wolf, called to thank me for all of my years of riding tips, safety harping, and encouragement after he had a near-miss traffic incident when a cager ran a stoplight and nearly clipped him from his eBike.  Of course, the driver was fumbling with a cell phone and "didn't see" either the light or the bicyclist. She also didn't slow down after mouthing "I'm sorry" and drove off without even checking to see if he or his bicycle were damaged. What else is new, right?

Wolf, has been commuting year-round in Minneapolis by eBike for two years, going on three, and we've had lots of conversations about counter-steering, swerving, braking, and relentless paranoia with the understanding that anyone needing 4-wheels to balance a vehicle is, by default, a moron. Unlike so many of the people who filtered through the so-called "motorcycle safety program," Wolf learned a lot of hard lessons on his bicycle on empty streets in the early-morning hours (he worked night shift for a year) where errors like braking in the corners, applying brakes suddenly, riding with fingers resting on the brakes, and slight lose of attention put him on the ground in the ice instantly, but without a lot of morbidity/mortality risk because he is an AGAT guy. (See the picture at right for a bit of his winter riding gear.) After two years of well-developed braking habits, that event we all hope will never happen did and his smooth, strong application of both brakes brought the bike to a complete stop just before hitting the cager-nitwit. She brushed against his front wheel with her back bumper and almost pulled the bars out of his hands, but the contact was so slight that he didn't go down.

I'm going to guess that I have made at least 750 people miserable in my MSF Basic Rider Courses (BRC) over the last 18 years. In all that time, I have probably had no more than a half-dozen people thank me for anything other than passing them at the end of the course. Many of the people who did pass shouldn't have because they didn't have the skills, attitude, or awareness to be safe on motorcycles in real traffic. The old BRC wasn't even close to a serious safety and skills program and the new one is simply a joke intended to put as many butts on seats as possible. My grandson suffered mightily under my nagging from when he first started to ride a 16" wheel bike almost 17 years ago until this past winter. In many ways, all of the good things I have learned about riding and teaching over the last 50 years all ended up in his lap. When he was 15, we took a Rocky Mountain tour and many bikers were convinced that he was being abused in having to wear full gear, all the time, regardless of the heat. We had a lot of conversations about motorcycle operation, maintenance (his job was the check the tires and do a visual examination at every fuel stop). He did a great job, including noticing a fork seal leak that became a serious problem a few miles outside of Laramie, WY. We lucked into a great Suzuki shop there with a mechanic who knew that there were a LOT of Suzuki seals that would fit in my V-Strom.

If there were anyone on the planet who I would like to have influenced, it would be Wolf. Getting that call was the best tip I could have ever hoped for.

Merge It or Park It

All Rights Reserved © 2017 Thomas W. Day

A big cruiser (a full bagger with a reasonably geared-up rider) and a semi loaded with turf approach a T-intersection from opposite directions. The cruiser is making an easy right into the T while the semi has a turn lane and will be crossing lanes after coming to a near stop. The cruiser should reach the turn at least one-hundred feet before the semi begins to make his turn. How do you think this plays out?

Other than me following the semi through the intersection, there is no other traffic in sight. The semi approaches the turn and comes to a complete stop. The cruiser slows to a walking pace before entering the exit lane and, eying the semi, comes to a complete stop at the end of his merge lane. If he got off his hippobike and walked into the road he'd have beaten the semi through the intersection. He waits for the semi driver to signal that it's safe for him to leave the merge lane. This, of course, forced the semi to come to a complete, totally unnecessary, stop partially sticking into the incoming lane while the cruiser doofus waddles away. What should have been a mindlessly simple traffic situation turned into something not only ridiculously complicated but was one more demonstration why Minnesota (and the rest of the country) needs tiered licensing and a dramatically more difficult motorcycle license test for any two-wheel vehicle over 50cc. The motorcyclist in this situation was obviously incapable of handling his oversized toy and should have been ticketed for blocking traffic. If there had been actual traffic in the scenario he would have constituted a road hazard.

From my backseat perspective, the whole incident reminded me of a constant irritant that I do not miss from years of commuting in the Cities. Minnesotans do not know how to merge. Personally, I think stopping in an intersection or, worse, on a freeway entrance/exit ramp should be grounds for loss of license. I wouldn't even object to the police firing a couple of rounds into the driver/rider's head to get their attention. As my father used to say, "There is obviously no vital organ located in that skull." The idea that drivers need to have the "zipper merge" explained to them in remedial terms amazes and depresses me. How is that not obvious?

It clearly isn't, though. There are a couple of exercises in the old, 2007 MSF program that require simple merging skills and about one out of one-hundred classes actually manage to get through these exercises without one or seven or eleven backed-up traffic jams caused by merge-inability. The so-called "seasoned rider" courses are no exception to that statistic. People who have called themselves "riders" for decades simply come to a dead stop when faced with 5mph oncoming traffic (even when that traffic is another motorcycle in a parking lot exercise) and the resulting confusion is comical in a parking lot and suicidal on public roads. As I have asked thousands of times, if you can't merge competently what makes you think you are capable of safely drafting/tailgating?

A few years ago, a rider and fellow MMSC/MSF coach remarked that he'd seen me "aggressively" getting into northbound downtown I35E traffic, as if merging at the end of the entrance lane at traffic speed was impolite. The implication was that I had somehow committed a faux pas in "jumping the line" of traffic some distance above his stuck-in-traffic position. Talk about Minnesota passive-aggressive. Guilty as charged. When I merge, I want to be moving at the prevailing speed and as near to the end of the merge lane as I can get. Commuting is not about standing in line politely waiting for some moron to hang up his damn cell phone. It's about getting to work or home as quickly as possible. If you can't figure that out, you have no hope of comprehending filtering and lane sharing. The day a semi beats me into a T-intersection from the cross-traffic side, even on my 250 dual purpose bike, will be the day I hang up my helmet and buy a convertible. If you are not going to use your motorcycle's superior acceleration, braking, and maneuverability in a simple merge, what would make you think you can use those qualities in an actual emergency? Trust me, you can't and you won't. I've seen that kind of incompetence demonstrated on a regular basis and it amazes me that anyone that impaired would want to risk their life and limbs on a motorcycle.

Back in the 1970's, I visited Chicago from my home in Omaha, for a trade show. My business partner and I were driving a rented panel van, loaded with audio equipment, and we were both small town guys blown away with the Big City. At the first stop light we encountered in the city, when the light changed I was pleasantly surprised to see all of the vehicles started moving together. A couple of lights later, a distracted driver didn't hit the gas when the light changed and the vehicle behind him simply pushed the semi-conscious vehicle into the intersection until the driver assumed marginal control and caught up with traffic. Like most of the US, Chicago is dumbed-down and distracted, today. Vehicles leave intersections connected by invisible 100' ropes, as one of my readers described driver awareness, in every city I've visited. Autonomous vehicles are going to solve this problem for cagers, but motorcyclists are forever going to be on their own. It is hard to imagine how this is going to play out in some way that provides public road access for motorcycles. At least until we are forced into recreational vehicle status, we ought to be merging competently. If nothing else, out of wanting to exit the scene gracefully.

I Ride Too Good

All Rights Reserved © 2017 Thomas W. Day

On the way back home through South Dakota on a smoking July afternoon a few years ago, I decided to count the number of times someone said, "It's awful hot to be wearing all that gear" or something equally clever and observant. By the time I made it home, it happened seven times.

My favorite incident was in Platte, South Dakota at a bar where I ate my last meal of the day, after finding a motel and shedding my bike luggage. As I'd come into town, I spotted a huge (tall and wide) woman on a big cruiser wobbling away from the curb into traffic, looking as uncomfortable and incompetent as anyone I've ever seen on a motorcycle. She had both feet on the ground, paddling along into moving traffic, hoping the universe was looking out for her. She was barely able to turn her head far enough to see her own hands on her ape-hangers, let alone the on-coming traffic. That same woman was sitting at one of the outside tables with six other women as I left the bar after dinner.

One of her friends remarked, "That's a lot of gear to be wearing on a hot day."

I repeated the response I have memorized for this silly statement, "It's not nearly enough when you're sliding down the road on your ass."

Another woman said, "He got you there."

The big cruiser rider said, "I ride too good for that to happen to me."

The Dunning-Kruger Effect explains how "persons of low ability suffer from illusory superiority when they mistakenly assess their cognitive ability as greater than it is." This lady was a classic example of that human delusion and she had no idea how ridiculous her statement would sound to anyone who had seen her ride. I have to feel a little sorry for her, though. The motorcycle she rode was way more machine than she could ever handle. She was so overweight that any sane society would classify her as "handicapped" and so unskilled that same culture would refuse to issue her a license for anything more powerful than a 25cc moped. The Harley marketing machine had convinced her that she was a badass biker, but bad was all she could manage. If all she does with her motorcycle is wobble from her house to the bar in that tiny village, she might survive to tell stories about her "biker phase" when she's in the old folks home. If she ever puts that thing on an open road, the chances are good that she'll make a contribution to the single-vehicle crash and fatality statistics.

In my last basic motorcycle course of the 2017 season, we had one exceptionally marginal student, who was taking the class for the second time in a last gasp attempt at a license. As usual, that student was the most confident of the group. In a discussion about evaluating traffic hazards and escape routes, I described how easy it is to overestimate your skills and capabilities and how quickly a traffic situation can catastrophically point out your errors and limitations.

Our marginal student said, "That will never be me. I know what I'm doing."

I replied, "In my experience, all of the really good riders I've ever known are more aware of their shortcomings than confident in their skills."

She said, "Now you're just making things up."

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." Yep, I made that up, too. 

The real benefit to taking additional and regular training is discovering how much distance there is between what you think you know and what you actually know. That goes for anything, not just motorcycle training. Humans are notoriously lousy self-evaluators, as individuals and as groups. One of the most hilarious anti-government delusions is the fantasy of "self-regulation." Literally, I can't think of a single area of human activity where any industry, organization, or community has done a decent job of self-regulation. Anytime humans are left to their own isolated devices they inbreed and become stupid and corrupt. It doesn't even take expert outside observers to provide useful advice; people mangle their intended purpose so completely and destructively that almost anyone with eyesight can provide useful corrective feedback. The South Dakota cruiser rider was a terrific example of that.

One of the things I will miss when I retire from teaching the state's motorcycle safety classes is the corrective feedback from the students and the coaches I worked with. In particular, the classes that used to be called "Experienced Rider" often exposed me to motorcyclists with far different experiences from my own. During the discussions I picked up all sorts of ideas about how other riders manage traffic, maintain their motorcycles, and plan cross country trips. Having to demonstrate the exercises for competent riders always added a little pressure to the otherwise simple activities and gave me a solid benchmark for knowing when it would be time for me to hang up my Aerostich for good.

At the other end of that spectrum, beginning and so-called "experienced" riders often discovered that their motorcycle talents were dramatically less impressive than they'd convinced themselves. Sadly, not everyone who miserably fails to cope with the course exercises is honest enough to realize how low a bar they failed to step over. Riders who drive straight through the offset weave exercises tell themselves their bike is the problem, ignoring the fact that other riders on similar or less maneuverable motorcycles are handling the course without difficulty. Riders who never learn to use and trust their front brake pretend that they'll avoid having to make an emergency stop by sticking to country roads and riding in a pack. One of the huge shortcomings of not having a tiered license system is that completely incompetent riders can end up on equally hard-to-ride motorcycles and won't discover why that is a problem until seconds before becoming a statistic.

One fairly reliable indicator of riding competence is the amount of gear a rider decides is enough. AGAT riders are consistently more competent than the shorts and flipflops or bandanna and pirate outfit crowd. It appears that the more you know about riding a motorcycle, the more aware you are of the risk. The opposite of the Dunning-Kruger Effect is something every good scientist, engineer, and technician knows, "The more you know, the more you know you don't know." So, if you are confident that your skills are good enough to allow you to ride helmetless and without decent gear, the odds are good that you are likely to be fatally wrong. 

I’m Not Him, But . . .

A few years back, Sev Pearman and I took a trip toward Duluth for a day of off-road riding at Nemadji State Forest trails. I was pretty off-road rusty, from years of living in the Twin Cities and daily commuting and I was about six months away from having my left hip replaced. So, I wasn’t on my game and my left leg didn’t do me much good when I stuck it out in a corner. The day was close to perfect and the trails were wet and a little slick from recent rains and a fairly wet early summer. We spent a lot of the day sideways. I spent a moment lying in a puddle of mud with my WR spinning way a few feet, while I laughed at the miscalculation that had put me in the mud. Sev was concerned that the old fart had hurt himself and was impressively concerned for my health. Or he thought I’d had a heart attack and died. Either way, Sev proved himself to be a good friend and a solid person to ride with.

While I was righting myself and the bike, Sev commented on how much time I spent sideways and how rarely I bothered to stand on the bike. Today, I was listening to Adventure Rider Radio and a conversation/commercial for some brand of footpegs and the jock made a big deal out of how off-road riding means “never using the seat.” I’m too old for that silly shit. The fastest rider of my generation, Roger DeCoster spent at least as much time in the seat as he did on the pegs and Roger won five world championships and competed at the highest level from 1966 to 1980. I first saw DeCoster ride at the Herman, Nebraska TransAM in the 1970’s. The track at Herman was seriously rough and most of the US riders were on the pegs everywhere but in the sharpest corners. DeCoster looked like he was out for a Sunday ride around the neighborhood. There were a couple of monster hillclimbs terminating in even bigger jumps and Roger was on the pegs when he landed from those jumps. Otherwise, he was seated and on the gas hard enough that he lapped 3/4 of the pack by the end of the motos.

I’m not any fraction of the rider Roger DeCoster was or is, but I learned a lot from watching him ride. It wouldn’t be the first or the last time watching a worldclass athlete changed my tactics, style, or attitude. DeCoster absolutely changed how I thought about a 20 minute moto, though (although his races were 40 minutes +1 lap). I worked a lot harder at going a lot slower before I saw Roger DeCoster in person. Afterwards, I worked harder at being smoother and using less energy and, as a result, I was a good bit faster. One of the things I learned was that standing isn’t always the best riding position, even on rough terrain (even with a 1970’s suspension).

After I gave up trying to be fast, I bought a trials bike and spent a few years plonking around rocks, creek beds, and logs. Standing is the status quo in trials and the seats on that style of motorcycle aren’t worth squat. Obviously, there aren’t a lot of places where sitting on a trials section makes sense and I spent a lot of hours on the pegs. It’s not like I don’t know how to ride standing up, I’m still considerably better at low speed maneuvers on the pegs than on the seat. I'm still inclined to think Mr. DeCoster’s off-road racing style makes more sense than the “always be on the pegs” philosophy.

Mixed Emotions

Enoch Langford was riding his recently purchased motorcycle at high speed in fairly congested neighborhood traffic. Apparently, his “plan” was to blast through an intersection hoping the rest of the world was watching out for him. He was clearly moving multiples faster than the traffic around him when a pair of vehicles turned in front of him at the intersection. One made it through without incident, the second vehicle turned just in time to cause Langford to panic and “lay ‘er down.” KARE II’s reporter said, “It left Langford no choice but to lay the bike down and skid right into the car. . .”

For years, I’ve argued that it is irrational to believe (as ABATE apparently does) that the majority of multiple vehicle crashes involving motorcycles are the fault of everyone but motorcyclists. What left Langford with “no choice” was his approach to the intersection. It’s obvious that his speed was totally inappropriate for the situation and his skills were far below what he needed for the result. He didn’t “lay ‘er down,” he fell over due to poor braking skills and a total lack of escape route planning.

The part of the story that flips the blame is where the driver of the car clearly slowed after the impact, then sped away from the scene. “One witness told KARE 11 News the driver got out of his car for a second, but then got back in and drove several more blocks before ditching his car and running.” That statement makes me wonder, if that happened, why has it been so hard to identify the driver? If they have the car, doesn’t that give them a lead on the driver? Or is that statement just something silly the media latched on to? So far, all of the media reports have been totally devoid of anything resembling rational analysis of the crash itself.

Hit and run is a crime, but it’s one that police seem to prosecute randomly. There have been a couple of hit and run incidents in my family, where my daughters were the victims, and the police didn’t even bother to include the evasion information in their reports. In both incidents, the police didn’t bother to assign blame or include the hit and run information until they were forced to finish their job. A friend is currently waiting for the Minneapolis police to file a crash report where his wife’s car was sideswiped while stopped in traffic. She recorded and reported the license number, but the police haven’t even bothered to finish their initial report, let alone hunt down the driver. I agree that the driver of this car needs to be found, but I doubt the end result will be as dramatic and conclusive as the news report imagines.

In the meantime, I’d like to hear about the details of the police report. I’d like to know if Mr. Langford was a licensed motorcyclist. I’d like to know if the police crash scene analysis estimated his speed before he fell over. It would be nice to see some consistency in how crashes and hit and run situations are handled, but I’ve given up on hoping for that in our decaying society.

Necessary Parts

Following up on my plan to regularly verify my semi-competence (see “Creating A Baseline”), I headed for the Red Wing MSF training range yesterday. I invited a friend, but he wasn’t interested in testing himself or his new V-Strom in the rain. I invited a kid I went to school with this year; he couldn’t get his bike to start. Absolving myself of any sense of obligation to combine my self-analysis with some sort of service to my fellow man, I wrapped up my honey-do projects and loaded up for the afternoon ride and practice.

Rain was definitely in the weather prediction, so I suited up AGAT Aerostich. First, I had a few errands to run on the bike, so I filled it up for the first time this season and put about a dozen miles running errands from one end of the gigantic Red Wing metropolis to the other. It’s a rough life, but someone has to be enough of a screw-off to manage it. About the time I wrapped up the errands and started up the hill to Southeast Community Tech where the MSF range lives, it started to rain. Rain isn’t a big show-stopper for me, but the Red Wing range is poorly marked and pretty much a mess on a good day. Still, if I were teaching a class we’d be riding, so I might as well get on with it. As expected, the range was soaked and I had to ride around it a few times, noting visible markers as clues where my targets would, roughly, be.

I started off surprisingly well, considering my lousy day on the bicycle last week (where my new cleated clip-in pedals put me on my ass twice in about 20 miles). I aced the figure-8 box twice, which wasn’t expected because I’m stiff as a board after this lethargic winter and turning my head to look for my target points was a little painful and not particularly impressive, flexibility-wise. However, it went downhill from there, fairly quickly. I moved to Exercise 6, the small oval cornering exercise, next. I was Ok there, but not as confident as I should be as a coach or even as a half-decent rider. I kept at it for a couple dozen laps in each direction. I got better, but a little colder, too. Cold equals stiff and so does old. Next, I worked on the 270^o timed corner. Ok, but not great again. No problem staying in the lines or going minimally quick enough, but I didn’t convince myself to push the bike hard enough to get a little slide out of the back tire (easy in the rain) or to approach touching a peg to the asphalt. Quick stops, emergency swerves, and the big offset cone exercises pretty much wrapped up the stuff I usually practice and after all that I’d blown about two hours on the range.

Then the sky opened up and dumped for a couple of hours. Between when I left and this morning, we got 5” of rain on Wednesday. 4” of that landed on me between the school and home that evening.

When I bought my WR250X, I busted my “no bikes from kids” rule. Some of the stupid things that had been done to that bike were trendy nitwit stuff: like removing the “tail” of the rear fender, hacking up the tail pipe and the intake air box. In a rain storm like this one, the last thing I need is a shade tree butchering of Yamaha’s well-thought-out air box. Water and high compression do not mix, ever. Likewise, without that “ugly” tail fin on the rear fender, the back tire tosses crap from the top of my head to my ass. I know, I rode it a couple of times before I found a cheap used replacement fender. Since I replaced all of that stuff fairly quickly, I made it home in the rain without any mechanical problems.

Unfortunately, that didn’t apply to my personal protection. I was properly geared up, so I should have been reasonably dry. However, there is a key move you have to make to stay dry in an Aerostich Darien: you have to zip up the jacket all the way and close the collar. I didn’t do either. Lucky it was a warm rain.

I’m still trying to decide if I passed this year’s riding benchmark. I absolutely decided that I’m not smart enough to take advantage of good riding gear and the protection it provides.

Gangbanger Holiday

This past weekend, Friday through Sunday, was River City Days in Red Wing. More than usual, we had packs of loud, incompetent, badged and tatted pirates parading through town creating smog, noise, irritation, and entertainment. We made it to the downtown affair a couple of times and had an opportunity to view how motorcycles are seen by the general public in a fairly diverse crowd. It’s pretty much all negative.

 

If you think South Park was exaggerating, you’re delusional, clueless, and or an asshole. There are no other alternatives.

The experience got me to thinking about where years of negative stereotypes are taking the future of motorcycling. Combined with a 3,000 mile trip to the Rockies and back earlier this summer where I saw so few motorcycles doing anything other than being asshole gangbangers or asshole squids, this summer really put a point on the spear I’ve been anticipating for years. Other than a few Midwestern manufacturing jobs, who would it inconvenience if motorcycles were banned from public roads? Since motorcyclists are already classified as “terrorists” and gangsters by the FBI (and I mean all of us with a class “M” license, not just the actual gangbangers), the majority of the public considers motorcycles to be a menace (and not just in the US), and insurance companies and most motorcyclists consider their motorcycle to be purely a “recreational vehicle,” it’s pretty obvious that we’re treading on unsound territory here.

In the past (the mid-80’s), the motorcycle manufacturers have at least considered ending motorcycle imports to the US and other 1st world countries due to liability costs. If insurance companies (especially health insurance) were able to properly price their products regarding insurer risk, most of us wouldn’t be able to ride because we couldn’t afford health or life insurance. If the public could do simple math, the estimated $2/mile cost of motorcycle crashes (mostly paid by the general public, since only half of motorcyclists involved in crashes have health insurance) would drive more than a little legislative action. Economically, the only rational move any society has is to start moving toward getting motorcycles off of the public’s roads.

Again, I ask “Who would that inconvenience?” Well under 1% of the public are being supported and tolerated by the 99%. If that sounds familiar, consider how much rage there is toward that other 1% group. Lucky for us and the other 1%, at least half of the country is so stupid that they will vote for a 1%’er to save themselves from sanity and they will pretend that motorcycles are some sort of “freedom” worth protecting. But they may not be stupid forever.

A Series of Dumb Decisions

The nitwits at Fox 9 managed to cobble together this information and interview with the rider, “Jankowski [the rider] was wearing a helmet and motorcycle jacket when the object fell of the back of the boat. He says he just bought the jacket within an hour of the crash, and was saving up for the pants and gloves.

“’I didn’t want to just swerve and possibly hit a car and get run over so I tried to get to the furthest part of the right of my lane . . .I just bought the jacket that day thinking I’d come back next week and get the gear and have the full set’ Brendan Jankowski said. ‘I happened to use the jacket I just bought to help save me quite a bit of pain.’” Apparently, he didn’t own a pair of jeans?

I really wish I could buy his evasive maneuver claims, but it looks to me like he was tailgating, panicked when he saw the pad fall out of the truck, and focused on hitting the damn thing until he did. Total rookie from the moment he appeared in the camera until he stopped rolling on the ground.

To Countersteer or Not to Countersteer

Years ago, I saw a picture of King Kenny coming out of a corner on his 500cc Yamaha MotoGP bike with the bars turned hard countersteering through the turn and his eyes solidly pointed in the opposite direction of the bike's travel. For once, the King wasn't sliding but he was clearly pushing the limits of his motorcycle way past anything Yamaha had designed for. In that same article, one of Kenny's mechanics talked about Kenny pushing on the bars so hard that he bent normal tube steel bars, so they resorted to solid aluminum bar stock so he could make it through a race with straight bars.

Of course, in the picture above countersteering appears to be a moot point, since the front wheel is off of the ground. Still, the fact that so many motorcyclists are still arguing about this point amazes me. Anyone capable of riding a bicycle faster than 5mph knows countersteering is exactly how you turn a two-wheeled vehicle. They may not know it intellectually, but if they are staying on the road they know it intuitively.

In the example to the left, Mr. Hayden is providing a terrific demonstration of setting up a hard left by steering substantially right. It's difficult to get a great picture of countersteering in race conditions and even harder on the street because the countersteering move happens early in the turn and lasts only long enough to get the bike to lean into the turn. From then on, in normal riding situations the rider has to provide very little steering to continue the lean and is usually "steering" the bike to prevent it from leaning over further. In fact, the quickest way to terminate a turn and right lean angle is to turn toward the curve.

In the shot at right, Barry Sheene and KR are at the apex of the curve and are beginning to setup their escape route toward the next straight or another turn. Still, if you look closely you'll see that both bikes are countersteering through the turn at this point.

Possibly my all-time favorite cornering photo, at left, the supermoto rider is not only countersteering but exhibits the greatest faith in traction I've ever seen. This kind of riding is why supermotard should have been the most popular motorsport in history and the fact that it isn't says everything I want to say about motorsports fans.

The rest of the pictures on this page are just more examples of the same. If you're still unconvinced that bikes, wheels, and tires work this way, try rolling a paper cup and see which way it turns. No matter how hard you push it or what kind of surface you make this test, the cup (wheel) is going to turn toward the smaller diameter end of the cup. No divine intervention or intelligent design necessary, it's simple, predictable physics and if you're not using physics you're counting on luck or something even less likely to provide protection in a curve/swerve/evasive maneuver.

Natures loves vacuums (99.999...% of the universe is a vacuum), but truly abhors fools. This is definitely one of those tactics that you either use or lose. When Dad taught most of us how to ride a bicycle, he said "Turn the bars left and the bike will go left." We tried it and, once we got moving slightly faster than walking, the bike went right instead and we crashed. After a few scraped elbows and knees we learned that good old
Dad is a moron and we started countersteering. We've been doing it ever since.

A Technological Dead End?

All Rights Reserved © 2008 (revised 2012) Thomas W. Day

I have a theory, born from personal experience and lightweight observation of history.  My theory is that as a technology approaches terminal, it gets really good.  Then it dies.  When a new technology is just finding its legs, the technology being replaced makes a wonderful collection of giant leaps; which will fail to stave off obsolescence, even for a moment.  But examining those last moments of declining technological health can be really enlightening.  

I'm not saying this as someone who has been on the leading edge of a technology shift.  In fact, as a mid-tech transient I've been trailing edge for most of my life.  In the mid-1980's, professional analog audio recording gear began to be displaced by digital recording systems.  The last generation of analog recorders were a huge improvement over anything previous technology.  But it was too late: the convenience, cost advantage, signal-to-noise improvement, and trendy-ness of digital wiped out those last moments of glory and hardly anyone even noticed that most of the problems usually associated with recording on analog tape had been minimized.  Today, professional analog recording systems are practically relics and even the simplest personal computer has more editing and playback horsepower than a multi-million-dollar studio from twenty years ago. In my lifetime, I've seen (or am seeing) electronic tubes, analog computers, magnetic data storage, photographic film, visual artist's tools, payphones, cathode ray tubes, analog television, vinyl records and turntables, carburetors, and dual-shock motorcycle suspensions quickly peak and begin the rapid transition from regular use to museums' shelves [2] . 

I was first turned on to this realization when I was a very young man.  When my kids were toddlers, one of our favorite weekend trips was to Minden, Nebraska to visit the Harold Warp Pioneer Village Museum.  The place is stuffed with all kinds of historic tools and toys, from Pony Express relics to railroad history to farm equipment to early internal combustion vehicles. The thing that tripped my trigger was getting a close look at horse-drawn carriages, especially the high-end, luxury models from the turn of the last century.  Just as the first internal combustion vehicles were making horse-drawn transportation obsolete, the last carriages were becoming efficient, comfortable, and sophisticated.  I studied suspension systems that we wouldn't see on cars until fifty years later.  Some of these vehicles had heating systems, evaporation interior cooling, clever convertible tops, interior and exterior lighting, safety equipment, and finish work that made the next half-century of car design look primitive.  Unfortunately, they also had horses providing the horsepower. 

The other sign of impending obsolescence is nostalgia.  This country is currently being decorated with monuments to the Golden Days of Oil.  To anyone with a sense of history, that ought to be a big, red, flashing sign that something is on the downhill slide.  Folks are paying idiotic prices for Gulf, Esso, Kerr-McGee, and Standard Oil memorabilia.  Oil Century Museums are popping up everywhere from California to Tex-ahoma to Florida to New Jersey.  Ohio is home to the "Society for Commercial Archaeology."  And, of course, we have wads of motorcycle museums littering the country side.  On my last long Midwestern bike trip, I counted ads for half-dozen Harley/Indian museums before they began to fade into the fast food, antique store, and hotel signs. The last couple of decades witnessed a giant blast of the past as Boomers tried to revive their youth with muscle cars and 1950s-styled big twins.  That fad won't last much longer, because Boomers are soon going to be looking for their next hipster thing in prosthetic hips (like mine) and electric wheelchairs. 

Watching what's going on in our culture makes me suspect that we're about to see our beloved internal combustion engine technology vanish.  I don't know if you've noticed, but internal combustion engines have become trailing-edge technology, almost overnight.  There are alternative transportation systems on our highways and all over the rest of the world.  At the same time the technology designed into internal combustion-powered cars and, especially, motorcycles has become absolutely incredible.  The performance, reliability, and even the sound of modern motorcycles has been tweaked to the nth degree.  The only thing that's been stubbornly ignored is energy efficiency and that's probably the only characteristic that really matters in the twenty-first century.

In end-or-year issue, the relatively conservative Motorcycle Consumer News published their "Performance Index" for the current generation of motorcycles. In a summary, they listed the following most important performance categories: ten best 1/4 mile times, ten best rear-wheel HP, ten best power-to-weight rations, ten best top speeds, ten best rear-wheel torque, and ten best 60-0 stops. All but one of those measurements are, essentially, the same sort of 1950's information; power.

Most likely, the only modern statistic included in the data provided would be "average fuel mileage." By this standard, the 2006 Kawasaki Ninja 650R was the winner at 65.3mpg (the 2007 version was 10mpg less fuel efficient), followed by the Ninja 500 (64mpg), and Honda's Rebel 250 (62.6mpg). The Victory 8-Ball at 29.8mpg was the fuel guzzling loser. My daughter's 1991 Geo got better mileage than more than half of the motorcycles MCN rated. From occasional long ride experiences with folks on liter sportbikes, my own calculations estimate that MCN was optimistic about the efficiency of most of the bikes they rated. I wouldn't be surprised at less than 20mpg performance from many of those street legal race bikes. (The new Honda NC700X has upped the game a bit, but I think it's too little, too late.)

While those performance-based qualities are being fine-tuned, the world's oil consumption has rapidly passed world oil production.  Sometime in the last five years, oil demand whipped around oil production capacity and the world's economies will either shift away from burning petroleum or suffer the consequences.  Some experts claim that 2005 was the whipping point; the last year of "cheap oil" and that we're on the downhill slide where production will get further from meeting demand every year.[1]  In 1999, the uber-conservative, alternative-technology-spurning oilman Dick Cheney was one of those "experts" warning that the age of oil is about done.  Cheney told other oil execs, back then, that the reason oil companies weren't building new refining plants was that investment would be putting good money after bad.  We have more than enough oil processing equipment, we don't have much oil left to process.  Some folks estimate that in as little as two or three years, it may cost $100 to fill a compact car's tank.  Filling a bike's tank will be pretty close to half that and it's going to be more expensive every year afterwards.

Let's get real.  A 250hp, liter bike that burns 15-20 mpg is going to be a pretty worthless piece of history when gas costs four to ten times what it costs today.  Everything we use, do, and consume, will be incredibly more expensive when oil bumps against the predicted 2025 $400 per barrel.  If we humans are lucky and put some planning and a lot of resources into the next few years, we might be converting to hydrogen cell vehicles or some other petroleum-less fuel about the time the old technology becomes impractical.  I like to imagine that motorcycles, with their inherent energy efficiency and other advantages will be part of that change.  I'm sure horse lovers hoped horses would find a place in the modern transportation scheme, back in 1906.  Who knows, maybe horses will make a comeback?

Personally, I'm feeling a little nostalgic today, while the majority of Americans appear to be clueless about the future of our energy-dependent systems.  As an example, the dim-bulbs in St. Paul are widening freeways, planning communities that are further than ever from necessary services and employment, and designing government buildings that depend on energy systems that will be disappearing about the time those facilities are put into service.  My sentiments, inspired by that irresponsible bureaucratic inattention to reality, is considerably less upbeat.  Their behavior is more evidence that we always get the government we deserve, just like every other country in the world. 

While there appears to be a fair amount of thought going into replacing the power plant under the hoods of our cars, for a while it looked like that wouldn't be happening for two-wheeled vehicles.  Zero Motorcycles and Brammo have changed all that.  Zero Motorcycle's new Z-Force^tm power pack is pushing electric motorcycle technology fast into the new Green Age. With a 100 mile range, an 88mph top speed, and 3,000 charge cycles (a 300,000 mile battery life), Zero's bikes are beginning to warrant their price premium. Hayes' diesel-powered bike is another cool thing.  A hydrogen-powered turbo sportbike would be beyond hip.

Knowing that this oil barrel is more than half-empty with a rust hole in the bottom has forced me to suspect that the world I lived in is vanishing.  I'm trying not to sound like a reformed whore, but it's hard for me to pretend to any other pose.  I am from a generation that burned gas for almost nothing but recreational uses.  I can "brag" that I sometimes rode my Kawasaki Bighorn, Rickman 125 ISDT, or even the Harley Sprint to the racetrack, took off the street hardware, raced the bike, and, after reinstalling lights and crap, rode back home.  I guess that's something.  But I also trailered, trucked, and station-wagoned bikes to races, took long mind-altering rides in the country, and practiced racing on all sorts of surfaces.  Today, those leisurely rides through the country side feel a bit like immature, excessive exercises in selfishness; and I'm missing them before I've given up doing them.  I know that every drop of oil that I waste is coming out of my children and grandchildren's heritage and I'm becoming more than a little ashamed of the oil I wasted before I knew better.  The days of getting together with a few dozen friends to explore backroads and hang out in the twisties are fading.  I think sports like motocross, road racing, and all of the fun we have had aimlessly and recreationally burning fuel are also coming to a sooner-than-you-think end.  Between declining resources and world-wide pollution and global heating catastrophes, it appears that we have hung on to these carbon-burning handlebars a little too long.

I'm not celebrating this.  I'm not gloating or saying "I told you so" while I write this.  I lived in a gloriously ignorant, greedy, selfish time and it was an incredibly fun period in human history.  I wish I could pass it on to my children and, especially, my grandson.  If we're truly a civilization worth saving, we'll find a way to make a world our kids can enjoy.  If we don't, we deserve any misery we receive. 

---

[1] A depressing, but complete site for all sorts of links to information about the coming energy crisis is http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/.
[2] Paul Young added this note to my list of vanishing technologies from my own lifetime: "One of the guys I work with had his 11 year old son come up to him and ask 'Have you ever heard of something called a landline?' Something else to add to your list of disappearing technology. "

A Perishable Skill

The focus of this video is unrelated to motorcycling, but the concept of continuous training and practice is directly related. At the end, one of the police trainers describes the ability to use a weapon in a high-hazard situation as "a perishable skill," one that dissipates quickly with disuse.

Lots of people imagine that driving or riding a bicycle or motorcycle is the kind of skill that sticks with you indefinitely, once you've "mastered" it. One of the side-benefits of being a motorcycle safety trainer is gaining the absolute knowledge that physical/mental skills are perishable.

March 13

December 14, I gave up on the idea that I'd be able to physical therapy my left hip back to functional. It took me all of the 3 months of the period between when I met my surgeon and my scheduled surgery date to decide I was going to risk getting cut. A couple of months ago, It was hard for me to see this decisions made a lick of sense. Today, it all came together. Today, Tuesday, March 13, an insignificant day in an insignificant year for most everyone but a day I expect to remember for years, for the rest of my life.

Today it was 52F just before I needed to leave for work. The weather man guess-timated the day's high would be 65F. My leg is stronger than it has been in a couple of years. So, I moved the cage to the driveway, to get it out of the bike's way, and I rode the WRX to work this morning.

If you weren't a motorcyclist, you'd be amazed at the difference 20 minutes on a motorcycle makes in a day. If you are, I'm probably wasting your time here. Today, I handed back about 75 midterm exams, a few of which were pretty damn miserable. I usually put int a fairly long, intense day on Tuesdays. In good times, it's not my favorite day of the week. I won't get to leave before 9PM. For the last 2 months, I've been getting more and more bored with life in the frozen north on four wheels. Overall, I have a pretty good life, a pretty good job, and any half-intelligent guy would be satisfied to plug along just being able to walk at 64. I'm ashamed to admit I'm not that guy. It turns out, a lot (I mean A LOT) of my declining attitude has to do with not being able to ride a motorcycle.

I get bored with the predictable nature of a predictable life. My wife says I was born to be a sailor. My cousin says most of our line, on my father's side, were drowned sea captains. The closest I've been to either was when I was on the road 100,000 miles a year back in the 70's when my kids were little and we were living from check-to-paycheck and for short segments of my engineering and musical career. But the closest I've been to being a sailor is on my motorcycles. Even the lousy commute to work is like a quick fishing trip. A summer road trip is my version of going to sea for a month. It's all I have and it's all of that I have had for almost 50 years. The only other thing I've done for that long is music and eating and sleeping. Not just that, though, I need it. I need the thing I get from being on two wheels. Imagining the rest of my life without a motorcycle is like asking a sailor to give up his boat.

I'm writing this in my basement surrounded by other bits of my life; the exercise equipment that helped me get my leg back, my Dobro (the instrument I most naturally reach for when I'm pissed off or bummed out), and a pretty decent AV system. Between mid-December and today, I've probably watched Faster and Dust to Glory a dozen times. I've grown tired of Faster's sound track, so I watch the movie playing along on my Dobro. I watch those guys ride half-expecting that could be the extend of my motorcycling from here out. Not today. Maybe next week, next month, next year, or most likely in the next decade, but right now I'm wallowing in the feeling of having two-wheeled myself around the city for the day and that's all it takes to get my sailor on. And I'm going to do it again tomorrow.

Speed and Power Kills (or not)?

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Thomas W. Day

A couple of years ago in his "Motorcyclist" column, Keith Code wrote an article titled, "Fast Bikes Save Lives." He argued, that the Hurt Report found that "the average speed of the 900 accidents studied was below 30 mph." He also listed statistics that found that the worst accidents on a California race track were on bikes under 550cc and pointed to another study that found 600cc bikes "were involved in far more major injury accidents" than 1000cc bikes. NHTSA statistics disagree, "Larger motorcycles are figuring more prominently in fatal crashes." The 2006-09 data found that 5% of fatal crashes were on 250cc and under bikes, 43% were on 500cc-1000cc bikes, and 39% were on 1,001-1,500cc motored bikes. (NOTE: The remaining 13% were listed as "unknown.") Since most liter bikes are actually sub-1000cc, I think Code is fudging the facts to fit his premise.

After praising 160mph bikes for their safety characteristics, Code takes a weird turn into a discussion on motorcycle training, claiming that "what statistics have also shown all along is that rider training works." NHTSA, the MSF, and a variety of training organizations actually caution us that statistics don't seem to show any particular advantage, after the initial six months post-training, for trained motorcyclists. Of course, Code wants to claim that track day participants are underrepresented in traffic fatalities, since he runs a track training program. Typically, there are no statistics to prove this statement, that doesn't stop him from stating "riders who have raced or been trained by professionals are even safer." It would be cool if it were true, but I have found no evidence that it is a fact.

I'm not a Code-basher. I actually like Keith's books and his column, but I'm not a Code Kool-Aid drinker, either. In this case, I think his reasoning contains more bias than facts.

First, the argument than "the average speed" of 30mph is proof that speed doesn't kill is a meaningless argument in defense of big motors. A police report of a 30mph crash doesn't tell us if the bike was slowing down, drastically, or winding up with the front wheel waving in the air when the crash occurred. More power means it's a lot easier to get into acceleration trouble and the power won't save you on the way back down the speed ladder. You could also argue that when a bike actually crashes into a more massive obstacle, it is at a dead stop at the moment of impact. How's that for useless data?

Anyone who's attended a regional road race could guess why the 550cc and under crowd get into more serious crashes. Most of the novice racers are on Ninja 500Rs, for starters. There are some absolute rocket racers on 250cc bikes, but most of that crowd are beginners on Ninja 250Rs. Talk about cherry picking your statistical evidence, claiming that novice bikes "cause" novice crashes is a fair stretch even for the math-disabled.

Code doesn't cite references, other than to call his source a "very complete study." I'll take the NHTSA stats over some unidentified study, complete or not.

None of Code's argument really addressed the issue of speed or fast bikes and motorcycle safety. I know that lots of RUBs and Squids think that an ability to rip by cagers at 60mph over the speed limit makes them safer, but I've never owned a bike that was particularly fast and I can get past a truck or cage as quickly as I need to. Most of the characters who make the power-equals-security claim have a nasty history of near-misses, crashes, and or mangled body parts. Squids tend to get into motorcycling with a flash of adrenaline and exit in a fog of morphine. Their long-term participation in motorcycling is mostly dependent on luck, rather than love of "the sport." Too many of the huge twin crowd are a lot more involved in posing and polishing than in actually riding. The number of for-sale 10 year old hippo bikes with less than 20,000 miles on the odometer is depressing. (Their current unsellable status is an encouraging sign, though.) Safety should be described in mile-per-crash terms, not in one-off near crash stories. Until you have at least a 100k miles under your belt, your experiences barely qualify you as a novice.

A dozen years ago, a friend who'd just become a road racer argued that his 650 SV was more bike than he could handle on the track, but that he needed at least a liter rocket for "safe" freeway traffic management. He was and is a faster, smarter, and a far better rider than I'll ever hope to be so I didn't argue the point. I just disagreed. A couple of years later, he told me he'd changed his opinion. He'd sold his big sport bike and replaced it with a much smaller bike because, after a few years on the track, he realized that he might never become skilled enough to over-ride the smaller bike. He learned that he had been substituting riding skill with vehicle power and, in an emergency situation, skill would be a more useful resource.

That has been my opinion all along. Some of my favorite motorcycles have had a lot more frame and suspension than motor and, because of that resource distribution, it is practically impossible to over-ride those bikes with the throttle. With reasonable skill, the motor will not overpower what you can do with the brakes, the handlebars, and a bit of weight redistribution. Add 40hp to the same bike and you have a bloody catastrophe waiting to happen to many excellent riders.

With that in mind, Keith Code and I will have to settle for a respectful disagreement (at least on my end of the argument). Keith is a wonderful rider. I am what I am. From where I sit, fast bikes are dangerous bikes and way beyond the skill level of practically any really good rider. If you are Kenny or Valentino, you can probably deal with insane amounts of power. If you are Joe Typical, anything more than 40hp and 70mph is probably beyond your capabilities on public roads.

What A License Means

Last night, I was in a non-motorcycle related meeting with three other middle aged guys and after the meeting broke up we all ended up congregated around my motorcycle, the WR250X. All three of the meeting participants had motorcycle licenses and used to be motorcyclists. Two of them still owned non-functional motorcycles. This would be an example of the "180,000 Minnesota motorcyclists" often cited in pro-motorcycling propaganda.

All three of those guys are competent, intelligent men who would probably be decent riders if they rode. However, they make a solid case for changing the idiotic state of national motorcycle licensing. Nothing about having passed a remedial riding test 5 to 50 years ago says anything about a rider's current capability. That's true for any driving license, but considering our outrageous mortality and morbidity rates it's particularly true for motorcyclists.

The subject of motorcycle technology was the reason for the little post-meeting parking lot gathering. All four of us had a stake in our opinions. The oldest guy was an English ex-pat retired physician with a nationalist penchant for all things Brit, especially mechanical things. When I described the WR's fuel injection, he eulogized the "great British carburetors" and their superiority over all things Japanese. Having experienced the wonders of SU (MGA & MGBs), AMAL and Villers (Triumph & BSA & other assorted marginally functional Brit bikes), I'm less than convinced that the Brits can build anything that can hold fluids of any viscosity. The other two guys weren't particularly ethnocentric, but they are of the "old bikes are best," anti-electronics crowd. I am, obviously, all for as much modern tech as I can get my hands on, afford-ably.

I also ride my motorcycles (except the Sherpa which is just not interesting after the WR). At the end of the shade-tree mechanics' meeting, I realized that possessing a motorcycle license is as much an indicator of motorcycle-capability as having health insurance protects me from bankruptcy if a life-threatening disease were to strike. None of these guys would try to pass himself off as an expert motorcyclist, but they would all feel confident in their ability to ride a motorcycle because they all possessed a license that gave them the legal right to ride. If motorcycling were in some what like driving a car, that might not be catastrophic. But motorcycling provides at least 100-times the opportunities for disaster as driving a car. Our licensing system is dumb and needs to be reworked.

Thinking about MC Training

Here are some important thoughts about the future of motorcycle training: "The State and Future of US Motorcycle Training 2011." (Thanks Paul). Some of the more important ideas are:

"Most of our panelists believe the ideal training and licensing system is one that is graduated. In this regard, the group established three tiers and focused on the training standards that should be ascribed to the tiers rather than restrictions that the graduations should entail. As trainers, we leave it to regulators to decide the regulatory aspects of each graduation. That said, we anticipate that limitations would include motorcycle size or weight, hours of operation, and limitations on carrying passengers. Only a sparse minority of panelists felt that engine size was a useful metric."

"Rider training, however, is primarily an educational activity. Institutions of higher education (and even the agencies that regulate them) know that over-regulation of the educational product leads to poorer overall outcomes. This is because the course is less able to meet the individual learning needs of its participants. It is also less able to benefit from 'field innovation' where front-line educators discover, try and perfect small and simple, yet highly beneficial curriculum improvements." [This is similar to my argument that education is not a science, but an art. You can teach or you can't and all the credentials in the world have no effect on that fact.]

One of the key instructional philosophies of mainstream curricula is that students don’t need to know the 'why' of something, only the 'how.' In fact, basic rider training discourages teaching why things work as they do, considering it a distraction. This is antithetical to all other kinds of operations and safety training and even to most higher education." [This is definately a carry-over from academic educators, where "how" is considered unnecessary.]

"Every jurisdiction should have a dirt-based training alternative available to students who want either beginner or dirt-specific rider training." [Personally, I think the asphalt portion of training is useless.]