Most motorcyclists know that riding when you're angry is a bad idea. When people are mad they tend to focus on one thing at the expense of all else. Riding mad almost always leads to a crash. It's just a bad idea and we as riders know it. But what's really going on?
Well, think about the last time someone cut you off and nearly killed you. You probably yelled several choice expletives in the driver's general direction, gave them the bird in 42 different languages, pulled up beside him and made sure he saw you, or some other fun thing to let the other driver know your displeasure. But what's all that trying to accomplish?
You're telling the driver he's a moron, stupid, blind, dangerous, inattentive, and just plain rude. If, by some miracle, he actually understood what you said and realized what he did; what would he do in a future situation? He wouldn't cut you off. And, if he really understood, he wouldn't cut other people off either. In other words he'd stop.
Your anger is directed towards getting that driver to stop. Going a little more general, a person who's angry is trying to stop someone or something.
Now, this whole anger/stop thing goes a little further too. You get on the bike and you're angry, for whatever reason. You head out for a ride and you're thinking about this thing that's making you angry the whole time.
The problem here is that unless you start purposefully paying attention to the environment you're most likely just going to sit and stew about whatever's making you angry. Your sole intention is to stop that thing. And that's a problem.
You want to stop something that you most likely can't stop while riding. So it persists and your anger grows. Eventually you get angry enough that something stops. You get pulled over, or the bike breaks, or you crash. Either way a stop has happened.
Yes, these things happen because you’re not paying attention but the underlying intention is to make something stop. And sometimes it stops in a big way.
So, does that mean you won’t be angry after a stop happens? Nah. Most likely you’ll be angrier because the wrong thing stopped.
So, you’re on the bike and you’re angry. What do you do? Well, if you’re aware that you’re angry, you’re already one step ahead of the game. Well, the first thing to do is to put your attention on the environment around you.
Find specific objects like road signs, houses, other cars. Actually direct yourself to look at them. Tell yourself, “Look at that ____,” and then say, “Yeah. I see that ____.”
You may soon feel tired but keep doing it. If you feel bored, do it just a little longer and see what happens.
Yeah, it’s simple. You might even say stupidly simple. But what you’re doing is taking control of yourself. Where before your focus was stuck on one thing, you’ve now taken control and moved it out to other things. Where you were introverted, you’re now extroverted.
You’re back in control and that’s exactly what you want as a motorcycle rider.
I was raised on motorcycles. My parents showed me off to the neighbors on a Honda 350 as soon as they could after I was born.
My dad tells stories of me steering and controlling the throttle down a mountain road while on the gas tank of his 750 when I was 3.
My mom counters that with her story of using a motorcycle as a pacifier while she cleaned. She’d leave me on the bikes parked in the kitchen for hours. When she took me off, I’d start to cry.
Really though, I started riding at five and a half when my dad gave me my birthday present a little early, a Yamaha TY-75 trials bike.
That’s just a long way of saying that by the time November 10th, 1997 came around, at 27 years old, I’d been riding for about 21 years.
I was good. I was respected. I led many of the rides for the riding club I was in. I rode a lot. My 1996 ZX-9, which I had purchased in January of the previous year, had over 37,000 miles on it.
But November 10th taught me I had to learn or stop riding.
At about 9:40 AM on that clear, cool 45 degree morning I was just 5 minutes from work. I was riding in the HOV lane behind two cars on I-75 southbound approaching the I-85/75 intersection in Atlanta known as the Brookwood intersection.
I had been following the cars at a safe distance for the previous 20 minutes at an indicated 85MPH. Taking into account the horribly optimistic speedometers on motorcycles, that would be about 75-80MPH. Yes, the speed limit there is 55MPH.
At the Brookwood interchange, the HOV lane has a nice right/left S-turn. However the cars were slowing down too much for it to be any fun so I passed them.
I downshifted to 3rd gear and accelerated full throttle past the cars reaching in indicated 120MPH in the process. I quickly pulled back into the HOV lane, rolled off the gas and turned in the S-turn.
Almost immediately I was scraping the footpeg. Knowing that there were now sparks jumping out from the side of the motorcycle I thought, “Those cars behind me are getting a good show now!”
Then I felt the front tire start to slide. It was very subtle – the bike just didn’t seem to be tracking properly around the curve. It wasn’t going straight but it wasn’t arcing like it should.
“Relax. Just hold your line,” I told myself. Then my right knee touched the ground.
“Oh ***! This isn’t good.” Then I was on the ground.
I remember sliding, rolling and tumbling but there wasn’t any pain really. I remember swearing and yelling out in pain yet oddly not feeling it. I remember seeing the divider wall that separates the southbound traffic from the northbound traffic and thinking rather dejectedly, “Damn, I don’t want to hit that.”
I hit the wall with enough force to crumple my prone body like a rag doll. I still had enough speed when I hit it to slide, tumble and roll along the wall. It wasn’t any better then being on the asphalt. Then, as if hitting the ground and then wall wasn’t enough, I finally slowed down and hit the ground again.
Eventually, I came to a stop. I quickly stood up and felt like I was on fire. After a quick inspection I discovered that I wasn’t on fire I was just missing some skin here and there.
My fingertips were ground flat with thick, ragged pieces of loose skin hanging from the sides. The skin had been removed down to the first joint on all fingers of both hands.
The base of my hands fared no better. Skin was missing from about inch below the pinkies around to the second joint of my thumbs, making a bloody U of my hands. There was no sign of the gloves I had been wearing. As I had other things to worry about I didn’t bother looking for them.
Watching the blood drip from my hands I looked at my legs, shivering in the cold yet still burning hot. The business slacks I was wearing were no more. They had been replaced by a weird sort of thong that had two thin strips of material running from my crotch, down the insides of my legs to my ankles where the cuffs were whole. Other than those two small strips, the entire outside of the slacks were gone leaving a bloody mess for my legs. The cloth was missing from the belt, down around my butt, over my hips and down the outsides of my thighs and calves.
A car stopped. It was a small two door hatchback. “Do you want to go to the hospital,” the driver asked?
I looked down the road to my motorcycle which was about 300 feet away. For the first time in my life, instead of thinking “Oh ***! The BIKE!” I thought, “*** the bike.”
I looked at the driver and said, “Yeah, could you take me?”
His girlfriend got out of the passenger seat and folded it forward so that I could get in the back seat. Knowing head room limitations of small cars like that one, I had to take off my helmet. I didn’t even think to ask if I could sit in front.
I reached up to my helmet strap with my exposed finger tips and started to undo it. Due to the pain I had to stop several times. The girl tried to help me but she didn’t know how and the sight of me was freaking her out.
Finally I got the helmet off, got in the car and started to bleed all over their back seat. I apologized several times. I thanked them for their kindness. I told them I’d pay for the damages to their car and I made sure they got my contact information at the hospital but I never heard from them again.
In that ride to the hospital, I was a hair’s breadth from being in two more accidents the way that guy was driving. I think he was very scared I was going to die in his car.
When I got to the hospital the admittance nurse looked me over and started her normal procedure.
She asked for ID which I didn’t have because I carried my wallet in the front pock of my slacks and there was no more front pocket.
She asked me to sit down so she could take my blood pressure. I couldn’t sit down – my ass was missing three quarters of its skin.
After I very painfully took my jacket off, she tried to take my blood pressure while I was standing. I had to stop her three times because I almost passed out each time.
After about thirty minutes of admittance procedure she finally gave up and some other nurses came and escorted me to an emergency room.
They laid me on my back on a stainless steel table, took off my boots and socks, and used scissors to remove what little remained of my slacks and underwear – yes, it was clean. Due to friction burns on my stomach, elbows and shoulders, my shirt was cut off too.
So there I was at 10AM in the morning lying naked on a stainless steel table with four good looking nurses standing around me – I got lucky I guess or maybe I was in shock. Then they explained to me the modern day torture I was about to face.
Because they thought I was so close to shock, they couldn’t give me any painkillers yet they had to clean the dirt and debris out of my wounds to prevent infection. Then they showed me the steel wire brushes that they were going to use.
The brushes, other than being very shiny and clean, looked like something you get from Home Depot to remove paint or rust from metal. They definitely did not look like something you’d want to be used on your skin, especially if your skin wasn’t there.
For two hours the nurses diligently worked on cleaning my body. I’d let them work for about 15-20 seconds at a time and then tell them to stop. Then I’d tell them to start again.
Finally a doctor came by and checked on progress. He noted my condition and OK’d 2mg of morphine to help with the pain. It didn’t do a damn thing. Thirty minutes later, he authorized another 2mg and thirty minutes after that, 5mg.
During that time of being on the table, the police had found me. The officers came in and asked me what happened and I told them the story. They told me that there had been a search for me because all they found was a trail of blood and a motorcycle. They thought I was wandering along the highway somewhere in a daze.
They found my wallet by following the trail of blood over the divider wall on the northbound side. They also found my gloves which looked mostly untouched. We surmised that they had come off almost instantly.
I apologized to them for causing the trouble and they said thanks and issued me a ticket for failure to maintain control of my vehicle and made me sign it. Due to the condition of my finger tips, I basically signed that ticket in blood!
Finally after about four hours the doctors and nurses figured that if I was going to go into shock and die, I would have so they figured I was OK to go into surgery and get the rest of my wounds cleaned up. The torture was finally over.
I was in the hospital for the rest of the week. The next two weeks I was at home with out-patient nurses stopping by to assist with my bandages.
I had a lot of time to think about riding and what I was going to do about it. I didn’t know why I had crashed. I thought with all the time I had to think about the sliding front that if I couldn’t handle it I shouldn’t be riding.
I thought about riding gear. I was really pissed off at the glove manufacturer for making gloves that would come off. I was thankful I had just purchased proper motorcycle boots a month earlier to replace the cowboy boots I normally wore. The textile all-weather jacket I wore had performed well enough but it had briefly come up and exposed my stomach to some light rash. The full face helmet showed definite signs that it saved me from some major reconstructive facial surgery.
From the crash to mid-December, I was of the mindset to not ride anymore. In the end, I decided to ride again but I decided I had to get trained. I looked up the California Superbike School and booked two days in May at Road Atlanta and told them I’d be bringing my own bike – a bike I didn’t have yet.
With step one done, I purchased a new 1998 ZX-9R in January of ‘98 and a one-piece Aerostich Roadcrafter. I got the one-piece so I wouldn't be tempted to ride without leg protection. If I was going to ride, I was going to ride as protected as I could.
I was supposed to get a red 9, but I got an green one. Since my ‘stich was red I there after looked like Christmas year round. I also made sure that every glove I've worn since has wrist straps that prevent the glove from being pulled off even if my hand is completely relaxed.
On May 28th while listening to Keith Code’s first lecture, I finally put together the data of what when wrong seven months earlier. Thanks to Keith’s insight into riding I have never crashed from sliding the front since that day and I’ve slid it plenty of times since then. If I had know this one thing, I really don't think I would have crashed.
I did Levels 1 and 2 of the Superbike School on May 28th and 29th. Then I took the month of June off for a14,310 mile Four Corners rider around the US and parts of Canada with a friend, also on a ZX-9. In August I attended the very first Dave Sadowski school at Road Atlanta.
In January of 1999, I started racing in CCS on my 36,000 mile ZX-9 and won the amateur Unlimited Supersport Championship for the Southeast region. I also attended levels 3 and 4 of the Superbike School. And, in September of 1999 I became an instructor of the California Superbike School.
I’ve done a lot more since then but that little comeback story is over. I have one last thing to say though. There’s a lot to learn still, both as a rider and as an instructor. It’s always time to learn. I hope to see you out there.
Greg Gorman
Well, I just got back from three days of coaching for the California Superbike School at VIR. What a trip that was.
The first day was almost a rain-out. To check the condition of the track, Lonnie - the Deputy Chief Instructor, Trevor - Course Control, and I went out in a mini-van with Lonnie driving. The first thing Lonnie does is floor it out of the pit lane and gets the van up to about 80mph before braking hard for the right hand turn 1.
As soon as Lonnie turned in, the van started understeering. Lonnie was frantically making steering corrections - turning the wheels straight and then back into the turn - while reducing brake pressure and calmly stating, "Yeah, it's a definately sketchy there."
After making it through turn 1 by the skin of our teeth, Lonnie apparently had temporary memory loss and charged into left hand turn 2 without a care in the world. Turn 2 required no braking and Lonnie aimed directly for the obviously deep puddle at the apex of 2. In a blinding splash, the van hydoplaned on impact. A few short feet from the edge of the track, the van regained traction and we were off to the sharper left hand turn 3.
After each turn Lonnie had the same odd memory loss problem and continued to understeer the car to the edge of the track in each successive turn. The van hydroplaned on streams of water running down turns 7, 10 and 13a. There were huge puddles at 7, 9 and 15 that caused temporary blindness as we splashed through them.
On hearing Lonnie describe the trip to Keith and others back in the pits there were numerous statements of, "I thought oh ***, we're in the grass," and, "I was blinded and couldn't see a thing," and, "I'll take you for a lap and show you..."
There were no further laps in the van.
The rain stopped at about 10:00 and we were on track at about 11 and I had the pleasure riding a ZX-10 for the first time. What a monster motor. The tires, Dunlop 208 GP-As, though had been used and abused well past their intended lifetime and gave no feeling from the front. It wasn't until the third day after new tires had been put on and some preload taken out of the front that I started to feel comfortable.
What a rocket though. There were several times when it would power wheelie in 2nd and then carry it through 3rd to 4th while accelerating down the front straight.
I did find that you cannot hold onto the bars when accelerating though. You have to be relaxed and light on the bars or this bike will punish you hard. I was accelerating hard down the front straight and as I shifted from 2nd to 3rd, the bike went into a violent tank slapper - the worst I've ever been in.
For the briefest of moments, I thought I was going down. My feet had been knocked off the pegs but I was still able to clamp the tank with my knees and relax my arms. As soon as I relaxed my arms and let the bars move, the bike stabilized itself and I was back on my way having only slowed to 100mph.
As I came across the start/finish line at 120mph, I thought I should check and see if the brake pads had been pushed back in their calipers. I squeezed on the front brakes and sure enough there was nothing there. So I pumped the brakes a few times until I could feel the start to bite and then slowed for the fast approaching turn 1. Then it was back to work - catch the student which I did at turn 3.
Later on in 6th student session(12th for me) of day three, the second day of a 2-day camp, I had gotten with my students early in the session and kicked it up a notch for a few laps. I'm guessing I turned laps no faster than a 1:38 due to the care required in passing students but it did give me a chance to really check out the performance of the ZX-10.
First let me just say that an indicated 165mph on the front straight is damn fast. Second the bike is very stable when cranked over to knee, boot, and peg dragging lean angles. The bike likes to be flicked into a corner and just have the throttle cracked open to a neutral throttle then when it gets pointed in the right direction, you open her up and hold on with your knees, not your arms!
This is definately not a forgiving bike like the ZX-6. This is a bike that demands that you know how to ride and the moment you get cocky with it, it will slap you down and say, "Now, do it RIGHT!"
Before riding the ZX-10R for 800 track miles in three days I didn't want one. Now I do. What an awesome bike for the track. For the street, I want something less demanding. The new 2007 Z1000 is catching my eye currently.
On Friday, August 25, 2006, The St. Petersburg Times ran an article of the title, "Two-Wheel Trouble." In this article the leading statement is, "The motorcycle industry and government have stepped up efforts to increase safety, but sales are soaring, as are fatalities." This is your typical article of there are more deaths each year, motorcycles are dangerous, people lose their legs, even world class athletes like Ben Roethlisberger can't ride them - the printed article has a picture of Ben with caption, etc... I noticed something the article didn't say though and that is, overall RIDERS ARE GETTING BETTER!
In the printed article there are two graphs, one for motorcycles sold per year since 1992 and one for motorcycle deaths per year since 1992. It looks like in 1992, there were approximately 190,000 motorcycles sold and 2,400 deaths. In 2004, there were 725,000 motorcycles sold and 4000 deaths.
So in the past 12 years motorcycle sales have increased 3.8 times and deaths have only increased 1.6 times. Put another way, for every 181 motorcycles sold there was one death in 2004 versus 79 motorcycles sold per rider death in 1992.
Now I realize that motorcycles sold isn't really the best measurement of improving riders but it's what I got. The real numbers to look at would be miles ridden. I'm sure there's a substantial increase there too.
So, to those of you in the rider education industry, WELL DONE! It's working! Keep it up and expand your operations even faster.
To all you riders out there WELL DONE! Get trained or keep getting trained!
Ride Smart, Have Fun!