Lessons learned

Racing motorcycles is a good way to learn things about yourself – including things that are hard to learn in otherwise-civilized society. EG: “Can I keep my cool in a situation where there’s a very real risk of being maimed or killed?”

But the lesson I look back upon most isn’t about who I am inside. It’s about the stuff that happens outside our control.

You see, you can be in a very good situation in a motorcycle race. Say, running in third watching the fight between first and second, while preventing the guy in fourth from taking your position.

Are you with me so far? Imagine you’re watching your six but also biding your time; with a few laps to go, there’s no sense trying a risky pass when, if you’re just patient, those guys ahead of you might take each other out. To the extent there’s ever really a plan, things are going according to it. You’re riding your race, on your line, at your pace and rhythm.

Then some minor thing happens. Not a major thing; not a guy right in front of you losing his engine and spewing oil all over a gnarly braking zone. A minor thing; something expectable.

Say, the two guys in front of you touch, and one runs wide without crashing, but spreads gravel from the trap on the racing line. You were paying attention, even anticipating such a thing, but your line’s been compromised. You make a perfectly reasonable decision to avoid the gravel.

By definition, you’re now on a sub-optimal, slower line. The guy behind you doesn’t change lines. He’s on the faster line so he catches up to you, but hits the gravel and low sides. The moment he entered your peripheral vision you shifted to an even wider line. Another perfectly reasonable decision that allows you to avoid being taken out.

Grip out there seems surprisingly good and with second place now within striking distance, you make the perfectly reasonable decision to roll on the throttle.

But that wider line, out in terra incognita, there’s a big bump. Why would you know? It’s a part of the track you’d never normally ride on. A vicious headshake ensues, but rolling off might just make it worse and you’re so close to second place now that you can literally smell it, so you make the perfectly reasonable decision to stay on the gas and ride it out, which works.

Meanwhile the guy in second, still rattled by his off-track excursion slows very early for the next turn. You make the perfectly reasonable decision to dive under him. (As Max Biaggi* once said, “This is racing, not classical dancing.”) You naturally leave braking to the last split second and… the lever comes all the way back to the knuckles of ring and little fingers. There’s nothing there, because the pads were shaken off the rotors by that tankslapper.

In an attempt to recover from what’s become a real fucking moment, you make the perfectly reasonable decision to follow the longest straight line you can while simultaneously applying as much rear brake as you dare while pumping the front brake up, which might have worked, but…

As you run across his bow, you collect the guy you just passed and suddenly you’re both doing the old sky-ground-sky-ground-sky-ground thing as your bikes endo through the gravel shedding bodywork.

The life lesson

You can be in a perfectly good situation until some very minor perturbation forces you to make a series of decisions. At that point, even if every decision you make is perfectly reasonable, the result of those decisions may be that your once-perfect situation becomes a Worst. Case. Scenario.