Mid-Life Rider

“Watching you ride is like watching water fall.”

As a technique freak, it might be the nicest thing anybody has ever said to me.

I’ll have to ask my shrink why, but forever I’ve been interested in technique, probably past the point of rationality. Perhaps it’s due to being a first born or some genetic trait inherited from my high-achieving parents. Who can say for sure, but my self-selected path forward invariably goes though a little town called “master the skills.”

One of my parents’ favorite stories about little me turns on a precocious three year old finding a screwdriver and reattaching all the plug covers and light switch plates after a family-legendary wallpapering of my room. I think the opportunity presented itself after a “disagreement” between my parents on some aspect of the job left a vacated room available for exploration and experimentation. Modern safety-nuts surely cringe at the idea of anyone, yet alone a little guy like me, poking about hot plugs with a screwdriver, but the story is a telling one. I was and am interested in how and why things work.

Over the years that followed, I took lessons upon lessons: swimming, sailing, judo, recorder, and piano are a few that come to mind. Later it was basketball and I am adult enough to admit, folk dancing. Later still: photography, golf, and most recently, riding motorcycles. I’m sure I’m missing some. When I say lessons, that meant group instruction, individual instruction, reading books, reading more books, going to camps . . . pretty much whatever was available.

Some of it took better, some of it didn’t. Nothing from the first list survives today in the form of any noticeable facility or even interest. I do wish, in an idle sort of way, that I could play cocktail piano . . . you know, where you sit at the keyboard carrying on idle, witty conversation with a half dozen people while effortlessly playing down the Duke Ellington songbook . . . but I’m at no immediate risk of doing anything about it.

Basketball proved an interesting study in the confluence of technique, natural ability, and confidence. Strangely, I had a fair amount of the second, which added to the first should have made me a good if not great high school player or more. It was the complete lack of the third quality that put me squarely on the bench, there to watch the exploits of largely technique-free players who played and competed with the kind of carefree abandon I couldn’t imagine. If I missed a shot, it would ruin my month. They hoisted another one next time down the court. It wasn’t until I was in my early 30s that I really came into my own, long after I stopped caring and long after my body stopped cooperating. But I did have a well of fundamentals to draw on, and as I discovered, experience and treachery beats youth and vigor eight out of ten times.

During my late 30s I took up golf thinking it would help me develop business. Or something like that. I fell in with a woman pro who told me that if I wanted to consistently shoot in the low 90s or high 80s, I would have to spend the first year taking lessons and hitting practice balls. No actual golf until year two. I suppose any rational person would have said “thanks for nothing” and walked on, but not me. The technique-freak in my grabbed the wheel and I spent the next year taking a lesson a week and hitting 500 balls when I wasn’t. At the end of the year I had the most beautiful swing in twenty-seven counties. It was instruction-tape quality. I also couldn’t hit a ball further than 175 yards with any club. I did finally get on a course and played with indifferent results for the next five years and then gave it  up. I did shoot in the low 80s once and managed to cure some of the distance problem towards the end. Along the way, someone forgot to tell me the part about hitting down on the ball, a bit of technique that would have surely helped.

My first adventures in motorcycling were completely devoid of technique, knowledge, or any sort of thoughtful consideration beyond did I want a Suzuki or a Honda (I bought a 1980 CB750F). If the dealer hadn’t thrown in a helmet, I probably would have left the shop without one. I was living in Hawaii at the time and rode the bike for about nine months, often in sandals, shorts, a shirt, and sunglasses and without the first clue what I was doing. How I managed to get around corners much less stay upright the entire time is a nod to the gods who clearly were holding benign thoughts for me.

After two-plus decades on ice, my moto-itch flared up again and I scratched it with a Ducati Multistrada. The basic instruction program I took ticked a box that allowed me to get a proper endorsement on my license and a break on my insurance but didn’t otherwise make a huge impression on me. I sallied forth, thankfully far better geared than before, wandering down highways and byways while wandering across centerlines without any notion as to why.

The next year I took an advanced rider course. Two-points for me for thinking I needed help: That old technique gene was kicking in. Sadly, and I say this with no disrespect, nothing in the curriculum added to my woefully barren cupboard of understanding and skills needed to make a motorcycle perform properly. It’s just not what the courses are designed to do.

Total Control

During my sojourn in the land of ignorance I began to read voraciously. It wasn’t for lack of a theoretical understanding that I was still straying across centerlines, tiptoeing around corners I knew could be taken much faster, and generally acting like the 50th percentile rider I was. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s being average at something I really care about. And I was starting to really care about riding motorcycles well and safely because I really cared about riding. And staying alive.

Lee Parks, the author of Total Control has a healthy ego so I say this cautiously: taking the Total Control class from Puget Sound Safety was like an awakening for me. In a day, it changed everything I knew and thought about controlling a motorcycle. The effect was sufficiently galvanizing that I took the class again and then went the final mile and got certified to teach it. I also starting going to track days, there to take more classes and do more riding under controlled conditions. I read more books. I got certified to teach the absolutely superb SMART method by Bret Tkcas at Puget Sound Safety (Bret is one of the most elegant riders you’ll ever see). I am a man obsessed. I’m also a leagues more proficient rider. I still screw up more than I’d like, but now I know exactly why. I also haven’t taken an unplanned trip across the centerline in two years.

People with natural ability are often dismissive of the pursuit of perfect technique. For them, the moves come naturally and the results flow as if by magic from some hidden inner wellspring. Often these same people make perfectly miserable teachers and coaches. I remember learning how to shoot Olympic Trap, another one for the list. The man who taught me the basics had freakish hand-eye coordination. But once we got past the basics about holding the gun properly, getting set-up, and calling for the target, there was nothing he could offer that helped. All he knew was what I knew: I missed more than I hit.

With all that background I actually have a couple of bits to offer about motorcycle riding and technique.

1. Good technique is the foundation to good and safe riding. I can think of other disciplines where this is true, but only at the highest levels. For example, there are lots of people enjoying themselves out on the golf course while employing bad technique from set-up to follow through. Even on the pro tour knowledgeable eyes spot serious flaws in technique that are overcome by superb skills and natural ability. Those people don’t beat Tiger on Sunday, but they get around and make a good living doing it.

I don’t think the same thing is true about motorcycle riding. Bad technique is a crash waiting to happen. It’s just that simple. This is manifestly true as we get older and slower. It is by the grace of whatever we hold dear that riders of no skill and knowledge make it down the road and back safely.

Out past technique is the promised land where you can do the thing you’ve been practicing with artistry and grace and with no conscious thought. But unless you’re preternaturally blessed, there is no route there except through learning, practice, more practice, and someday mastery.

2. You can’t learn what you need to know from a book. I know, I tried. Despite my abiding interest in technique, I find myself equally suspicious of coaching and training. I can’t really say why as I make my living doing things that sound just like that. Maybe it’s psychological scaring from all those lessons as a youngster. Maybe it’s a deep seated loathing of being seen as less than superbly competent. Whatever. When it comes to something as inherently dangerous as riding a motorcycle on the street, self-taught is a luxury without recommendation. Almost everything about riding a motorcycle is counterintuitive and/or counter to our genetic programming.

We have millions of years of genetics wired to how fast we can walk or run. There’s nothing in there pre-programmed for processing life at 70 mph. In fact, most of our instincts work against what’s needed to anything at that speed.

Genetically we are predators. We have eyes on the front of our heads, just like the big cats. When we see something we want (to eat, to mate with, etc.) we lock onto it to the exclusion of everything else. Our brains do the zillion computations necessary to get us to that target, or to get whatever it is we’re throwing or shooting to the target. If you’ve spent more than an hour on a bike you know how useful that programming can be. You also may know the problems it causes when you become fixated not on where you want to go, but where you don’t want to go.

3. Seemingly little things matter. The more I ride, particularly under controlled conditions, the more I learn how big a difference very small changes make. For example, two days ago at the track, I experimented with relaxing my pectoral muscles while in a turn. I know that sounds weird.

To back up slightly, I was working on getting my body lower and further inside the bike’s centerline by getting my head more down and inside. To do that I had to also move my body back about two inches in the saddle. Once there I found that I could relax my outside arm even further so that it draped on the tank. Literally, just relaxing my outside pec relaxed my arm and the bike would instantly take a tighter line. Wow! What happens if I do the same thing with the inside pec? Same thing?

Vision is another example of this same point. Starting with any book you read or class you take, you’ve been hectored about keeping your eyes up and looking through the turn . . . without any real sense of what that might mean. It turns out there’s a huge difference between looking through the turn and picking out an entry point, apex, and exit point before you initiate your turn. Your brain processes the information in completely different ways. In the first instance, the signal is, “We’re going generally that way.” In the second, the signal is, “We’re going exactly from here, through there, to over there, now make it happen.” And it does.

After one session riding control the other day, a fellow rider came up to me and told me he had been following me the last couple of laps and it had really helped him a lot. I asked him how.

“Watching you, it was like you first got your body completely set to go through the turn and then you took all your awareness and threw it through the turn to where you wanted to go. And then you went there.”

Besides feeling massively complimented I thought it was an interesting way for him to describe what he saw or sensed . . . that idea of moving 100% of your awareness down the road, particularly in technically demanding turns, is the essence of good cornering. In practice, it looks only marginally different to an observer–your helmet is raised up a couple of degrees and turned more and sooner–but the effect on your confidence, stability, and control are like night and day.

Like Water Falling

That same day I was giving some riders some last minute coaching before we went out for the last session of the day. The fear of anyone teaching or riding a track-day is that tired riders will lose their minds, stop concentrating, and wad up their bikes minutes before they pack up for home. It happens like that on the last ski run of the day. So I was counseling people to relax, be smooth, and concentrate on using just one skill from the day.

“Stay focused. Just pick one thing.” Speaking now to someone particular, I said, “For you, just make it about keeping your arms loose and your elbows pointed out. If you do that, that means that your upper body is relaxed, your body will be low and inside the bike’s center line. Your head will have to be turned. It will all happen if you just focus on that one thing . . . soft arms.”

That’s when she said it.

“That’s easy for you to say. Watching you ride is like watching water fall. You’re just so smooth and effortless out there.”

In my mind, I’ve got buckets more learning and honing to do. But for the technique freak in me, there couldn’t be any higher praise. If she only knew.

Tags: motorycleriding, technique, Lee Parks, Total Control, Puget Sound Safety, midlife rider, Bret Tkcas