Motorcycle Athlete
By: Jim Connors

All of us have heard that we need to do a track day or two on our bikes to improve our skills, for survival and also for the general joy felt when we start to approach motorcycling like it ought to be approached.

What I'm talking about here is realizing that it is a dead serious business...and when properly conducted...it is a very focused athletic event.....except the stakes are higher.

Life or death. Yup... I said it. Yup ... It needed to be said.

People who get into it for the gas mileage and overall convenience of having a small manueverable urban transportation tool flood emergency rooms and morgues and graveyards all over the World, and make it look dangerous to non biking types.....fostering misunderstandings and myths that will never end....but can possibly be minimized.

First of all......it takes an honest assessement of your athletic abilities, and has nothing to do with whether you are male or female. The aerobatic champion of the World was a woman,(may still be..I've lost touch) and if you have seen films taken from her nose camera, they will almost make you hurl your cookies....while you are sitting in your living room...and she calmy explains what she is doing......as she is doing it.

If you were up against her in a dogfight....you would be in flames within seconds, and airplanes are three dimensionally hairy.....unlike MOST of street driving....the safe stuff, anyway.

If you are a hopeless klutz...and always have been, or if your balance is poor, and can't be corrected with focused and deliberate and determined practicing of some athletic endeavor.......and a bicycle is difficult for you.....don't ride motorcycles. Ever. Never. Do yourself and the rest of us a favor. Just don't go there.

Life really isn't fair, and we all have different gifts...to various degrees. Some of us simply aren't athletically inclined, others of us are.

Try to be honest with yourself. Motorcycles can be seductive for any number of reasons, but if you are attracted to them to impress someone, or have been "sold" on them because they are "cool", or because all your friends have them, or because your significant other wants to ride with you, or be carried on one....you are probably going into it for the wrong reasons.....and just might get into trouble....and maybe dead...very quickly.

The place is getting more crowded......even in my forty years of riding, I have seen it change significantly. Cars are faster...people are more harried...the "modern" World is just generally more demanding and complicated here in the 21st century, and it shows up very quickly in people's driving habits.

People are meaner and more selfish and less courteous and are talking on cellphones and whacked out on a whole new generation of prescription and non prescription drugs....and all of it involves more danger.... Now.....if you're still reading this, and I didn't scare you away.....then you probably fall into the category of ... "MUST RIDE"... I do.

Life without riding bikes...to me...would simply not be a life. The hook was set deep and permanently into me when I was three years old, and got a ride on the back of a neighborhood kid's Cushman Eagle..... he tried to scare me...probably.....but maybe not. Maybe he was just having fun, and I never felt in danger for one second....quite the opposite....I had never felt more alive in my life, and that unique joy continues to this day.

This old fart will write more on this later.....since you have decided to go against the advice of the statisticians and the misunderstanding masses, and maybe your parents or your boyfriend or girlfriendor who ever or whatever voices you either listen or don't listen to......it's time to learn how to survive....because you may or may not have much fun after you're dead....you might want to have a little while you're above ground as a breathing entity.

Maybe I can help you do that in my next article If you've read this deep into this rant....you may be a candidate...with a "LIFE WISH".... not to be confused with a death wish....quite the opposite.

Bye for now.
Engine Jim