A License to Practice ...

I pulled out of Carson City, NV headed for Berkeley to meet my wife for a few days of R&R. We had just finished a week of family reunion in Colorado and as much as I love and delight in my family a reunion with 50+ folks is not restful! So I traveled south to hook up with CA 4, which looked to be a lovely road and lots of fun.

Lots of work is more like it.

CA 4 IS a lovely road, with lots of hairpins, switchbacks, incredible scenery, and quaint little towns. Perfect for zipping around on a light and nimble sport bike. But if you are riding a 700 pound fully loaded cruiser you sure as heck don't "zip" and you better pay attention as you navigate tight turns with queerly canted inclines or you are going to find yourself sitting in the street wondering what just happened.

I was bemoaning the fact that I could not enjoy the scenery because I was concerned about not taking a header over an embankment when I suddenly thought: "But you love to practice, dummy." I do love to practice ... about once a month I head down to the church parking lot, set up a course with circles and weaves and practice all the techniques I have been taught over the years. And of course I have spent a large chunk of change learning those techniques from highly competant professionals.

So in an instant my mindset changed ... I was no longer dragging along the road but instead was practicing entry, apex, and exit on an incredibly beautiful track. And when I finally reached my destination several hours later I was in a state of exhilerated exhaustion, having engaged my mind and body in a delightful day of practice at absolutely no cost!

I am currently reading a complex but fascinating book by the German psychologist Bernt Spiegel entitled "The Upper Half of the Motorcylce." Spiegel has spent much of his career with Formula 1 racing, but in the past decade or so turned his attention to motorcycle riding. And when I say psychology I don't mean the fuzzy, feel-good nostrums one sees in pop-psychology, but the down-and-dirty, let's attach electrodes to the gonads, establish measurements for stupidity, or dissect the brain and see what's going on research kind of psychology. His focus is on what one might call the Mind-Body continuum, arguing that there are times when one should let the "gut" decide a course of action and other times when the brain should override our natural tendencies; this ability is only achieved through contstant practice, both physical and mental. By doing so we can in some mysterious way become one with the bike so that the "bike is riding us" rather than us driving the bike - we become the upper half of the motorcycle. The book is rather pedantic (what would you expect from a German researcher?) but if one can wade through the facts and figures there is incredible knowledge to be gleaned.

In one section he speaks about the novice rider and the development of technique and offers this quote: "A license is permission to continue to practice without supervision."

I love it! Ever time we ride we have the opportunity to improve our skills, to actively concentrate on what we have learned and make ourselves better and safer, riders. And when I say practice, I mean within appropriate limits. Entry, apex, and exit combined with speed are the most important elements in riding curves, and the failure to execute them properly leads to many, many accidents. So when I "practiced" along CA 4 I did not vary my entry-point, set up a deeper apex, change the exit and experiment with acceleration all at the same time but instead altered only one variable at a time, learning about my machine and my own abilities. After awhile I was able to connect all the elements within safe margins and discover that my riding had improved tremendously.

Permission to practice is not license to risk hurting someone else; it's fine to push limits on a track where there is someone to cart your dumb-ass to the hospital and broken machine off to the bone yard, but NOT on a public road where your mistake could not only kill you but injure someone else.

I think we should apply a variant of this concept to ourselves: "Life is permission to continue to practice without supervision."

None of us gets it right all the time ... we are human after all and sometimes we fail to let our brains override our "fight or flight" tendancies, often with unfortunate consequences. Like me on CA 4 now and then we find ourselves in a less than optimal situation. But if we view those situations as opportunitie to practice that which we claim to hold true, such as kindness, respect, graciousness - how much better human beings might we be?

Have a good day's practice!