I have no idea the "fastest" I've gone. But I did go 161 on a Duc 749 once. Here were my exact thoughts: 1. What if the front wheel falls off. 2. What if a squirrel run in front of me. 3. What if my front tire explodes. 4. What if my engine ceases.
I .... u not, those were my thoughts. So I dialed it back.
DISCLAIMER: Doing illegal speeds on the Queens highway or any public roads is very silly and irresponsible behaviour which I neither condone or endorse. That said, pick your moment and choose your time wisely then tuck in, pin it and enjoy the ride.
You can't be thinking that compa. You could get run over by a 'ten ton truck' or die in a 'bizarre gardening accident' tomorrow.
Saying that there are three things I now regularly dread when I'm riding on the road:
1/ Diesel spills - scares the living crap out of me.
2/ The unpredictability of car drivers who are increasingly distracted by modern technology.
3/ Policemen - because some of the speeds I've 'entertained' during my two wheeled odyssey would invite a short holiday and convert my bike into a small compact cube shape at the behest of Her Majesty's judicial system.
The key to survivability was not learned on the dirt, although every serious rider should learn their craft off road; it wasn't imparted by track sessions either. I learnt to ride defensively despatching in London. The ....... is, it screws your road position and can upset your lines. Where you should be focussing on vanishing points you find yourself scanning the surface in front for spills, gravel and detritus. Instead of clipping a left hand apex, (or right hander in the States), you enter wide to see what's obscured by the bend. Urban riding is largely spent fixating on any hint of a revolving alloy or wheel trim as Volvo's and large SUVs are poised to pull out of junctions or anticipating the meandering Nissan Micra's driven by octogenarians and incompetent dizzy hairdressers.
Following my ride home tonight buffeted by ill winds and tormented by greasy autumnal asphalt those warm summers evening's astride my bike are a distant reverie – cathartic, purging, a symbol of liberation…and there was so much we long to be liberated from. Right now, I picture a glistening shell grip country A road beneath me in six months time when the winter has surrendered its stranglehold on the hemisphere. A day at Doni - the ribbon of pristine tarmac unfurling ahead - winding down Craners, and unaware of your fluid subconscious inputs, at one with the machine and exploring the limit together pushing ever further, the chassis writhing and squirming in protest beneath, the tyres searching for purchase...then streaking homeward through the verdant meadows and trees.
There's something about motorcycle riding that is so.... meditative, so trance-like. Driving a car - a cage - is precisely that, an incarceration - and like watching the world pass by outside in slow motion on television. Consider the restraints acting on the average driver. Cocooned in a warm plastic womb designed to resemble a picnic hamper with a corporate ‘entertainment’ system they trundle along in procession at the same speed like a funicular. Thus equipped, you can supposedly get from A to B with the minimum in consternation and ultimately concentration. Now take such a person and give him/her a decade on a fast motorcycles. Suddenly they are a hare amongst tortoises transported to another dimension where like a housefly everything around them is seemingly frozen – living for every precisely defined second. You nurture a sixth sense – essential to your survival – the roads are battlezone, a minefield but you intuitively thread through and feel every kind of road surface and chasing down vanishing points and evaluating the radii of every upcoming turn gaze half a mile ahead. Essentially riding a motorcycle is one of the few remaining obtainable liberating experiences - and driving a car is ....... not.
Friends who practice martial arts remind me of a proverb: "You must make a friend of fear." In mountaineering – which like biking has afforded me similar zen like 'highs', the saying goes – “put your feet before your fear” - the confrontation of an individuals fears over and over again, until they become so familiar that they no longer exert a hold. By becoming accustomed to facing them, you develop an intimate relationship with your fears, helping to liberate you from their debilitating grasp.
Facing your fears does not mean ignoring them entirely as many supposed. Fear is often a good barometer - a mechanism for many people to determine how far they can safely push their limits. Mountain leaders teach novices to differentiate and discern - discern between rational fears (those that are determined by analysis) vs. irrational fears (those that are determined by imagination). Rational fear in the realisation you are approaching a corner a bit too fast for your riding skill level; a warning that you need to focus and reconsider your entry speed. Irrational fears are the ones lingering over you for no apparent reason-such as the fear of crashing, the fear of getting hurt or repetitive flashbacks harassing your thoughts when you get back in the saddle after a crash. Or perhaps a niggling fear of your front wheel falling off...you're not alone...I've felt it too compa.
Riding guru's and racers maintain that only when you have managed to detach yourself from the emotional turmoil of your irrational fears will you be able to make the right riding decisions instinctively, and follow through to your maximum potential. "if you look down, you will go down" You hear it in skiing, horse riding and motorcycle riding. If the fear of crashing becomes too important, it could lead to that undesirable result, almost like a type of negative target fixation.
Rainey spoke of this zen like epiphanic experience of riding, of the importance of visualisation as an unconscious mantra which coursed through his being whenever he rode…I understand that implicitly – why then am I unable to harness it and extend it into a maxim for living? Perhaps that was why I crave my bike as a refuge – because life itself can be ....... terrifying.
Bollocks to it. I know an empty stretch of 4 mile long undulating highway culminating in a two mile downhill straight generally untroubled by traffic.
186 clicks tomorrow!
