Motorcycle Riding - The Elephant In The Room

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It prompts a sense of urgency. I had planned on getting out today anyway, ever since hearing the forecast a few days ago. But the liquid air sparks a sudden need to get moving. I hurriedly air up the tires and pack my gear.

It doesn't take long, and in just a few minutes I'm rolling. A little hitch north, and then westward, into the ridgelines I've hardly seen since last fall.

Alas. My pleasure in getting out is quickly tempered by conditions-the roads are heavily coated in salt and sand. I expected that, of course, but the grimy reality sets in like a quick rebuke. The compromised pavement will hold many surprises today, none of them good. It will not be a day to rail.

That's okay. After a winter of unusually sparse riding opportunities I'm just grateful to be out. Even at a somewhat reduced speed and with an extra dollop of attention directed towards what the tires are doing, the BMW feels wonderful.

At the stop sign I turn onto Blantyre. Up past the pond the road is busted up in places from winter frost heaves. In some sections they come so frequently and my line changes are so abrupt that it feels like I'm riding an old time trials course.

But Midway Road is in pretty decent shape. It has the salt and sand, but none of the broken pavement, thankfully. Easing out past the church, I glance to my left, my eyes sweeping quickly across the field to the edge of the woods beyond. A mild overcast shadows the sky, but I see no deer. I sharpen the throttle a hair, even as my mind drifts back.

This was the road that brought me back after my last street crash, fifteen years ago. Its patchwork of sharp edges and swiftly-breaking blind curves both raised the demons in my head, and allowed me to slay them. It had been a stern teacher, forcing me to look at the question.

The nice weather reminds me that a lot of riders will be out across the region today. And last night's Daytona 200-long my own personal demarcation between winter and spring, and the herald of a new riding season-means that weekends will soon once again be full of motorcyclists riding these roads. The glorious awakening we see every spring.

But I also know that even as the springtime extends its annual offer of renewal and hope, it also has a darker underside. A lot of those riders will crash. Some because of being rusty. Some because they're trying to match their buddies, trying to do things their experience is not yet ready to support. Some, just because.

I think back to July 2000. I was at Mid-Ohio with Reg Pridmore, attending one of his CLASS schools. When he came into the dining room at the hotel his face held a sorrowed countenance. He had just received a telephone call that his friend Joey Dunlop had been killed at a roadrace in Estonia. It was shocking news. That an icon of the sport like Dunlop could come to such a fate just seemed so... wrong.

But of course it happens. It had happened to Wayne Rainey seven years before that, in the Italian Grand Prix. His freak, paralyzing crash had likewise shocked the roadracing world.

Those are the times you think about it.

Stuck behind a car for the last mile doing exactly the 45 mph speed limit, I grow impatient. After exiting the little hamlet from which the road derives its name, I pull around in a quick double-yellow pass. The first of the season.

It's dark for the next half-mile, the straight section up the hill, running through the canopied forest which grows right to the very edge of the blacktop. With the distraction of the car fading behind me, I settle into the seat, listening with satisfaction to the slightly coarse boxer twin. Thinking about the section just moments ahead, over the crest, one rich with technicalities, I add a little more throttle.

It's always worse when it hits close to home, of course. Andrew's crash last November had been a sobering reminder that even the best of the best are not held apart, immune from the vicissitudes of chance.