High anxiety on two-wheels

I have owned and operated motorcycles for nearly 56 years. I started off with a Honda 50…at the time not the tiny machine it now appears to be, but to my early teenaged eyes a formidable upgrade from the bicycles I was accustomed to riding up through the eighth grade. It was a rather wonderful machine, of course, being the brilliant invention of Sochiro Honda, who later developed this innovation in the transportation world into the now massive, worldwide Honda Motor Company. My iteration of Honda’s brilliant invention was the C-110 SuperCub, which unlike the ‘step-through’ model (sometimes known as a ‘sissy-bike’ in those days) most people are familiar with, had a semi-conventional pressed-steel motorcycle frame and looked far more formidable than its 49cc engine actually was (and performed at a LOT lower level than its MC appearance promised).

This inevitably led to bigger and more powerful Hondas…among them the Honda 90, a 125 cc Benley, a 150 and a whole series of CB-350s (which I used off and on into early adulthood). Much later (after returning from many years work overseas), I developed a taste for Yamahas, including the brilliant (shaft-drive) XJ550 Seca and its larger kin (also shaft-driven), the XJ750 Seca and XJ900 Seca bikes.

More recently, I acquired a one-off race bike (‘sportsbike’) designated the Yamaha FZR1000, which with its conventional chain-drive and racetrack performance was a real handful (1000 ccs, 145 HP and capable of going from 0-60 in less than 2.8 seconds!). Instant suicide in a heartbeat!

I’ve had the latter for almost 5 years now, having bought it used with about 44K miles on the clock. Given its size and the super-reliable engineering design of its proven engine, that’s really not all that many miles for what we call a ‘Yamie Fizzer’. At any rate, now that I’ve gotten into the higher echelons of the aging, casually hopping on this powerful bike is something to consider very carefully before so doing. Especially since as a retired medical wonk, I am well acquainted with the fact that as one ages, one’s reactive response times slow down considerably…reaction times being the number one ‘ace-in-the-hole’ of younger riders who routinely disregard the implicit hazards and dangers awaiting anyone who ventures forth on today’s roadways with all that horsepower between their legs. There is, after all, a reason why these powerful bikes are known as ‘crotch rockets’.

At any rate, riding something like that on today’s mean streets always gives me pause for thought. Back about 30 or so years, things were hazardous enough for motorcyclists (and bicyclists) but in only the past 10 years or so the threat-level has risen exponentially.

Why is that, one might well ask? Simply put, it is principally due to 2 things: 1) there are far more drivers on the roads today (including all the illegal immigrants and undocumented aliens whom the Californica (sic) DMV decided…in its infinite head-up-butt manner) needed driving licenses to be able to get to any from jobs, and 2) so-called ’distracted driving’, which is now the primary joker in the pack that can (and does) kill more unwary motorcyclists than any other single factor (according to the National Institute of Safety).

Despite the fact that use of cellphones while driving (actually holding them in one’s hands) is now illegal in this state, when did simply declaring something ‘not legal’ eliminate or otherwise solve this problem? It didn’t work for alcohol. It doesn’t work for addictive drugs. And it damn sure won’t work to keep all the three-brain-cell morons from checking the voicemail and texting contacts every 5 minutes. This is in fact what we call an unenforceable law. That is, it is nearly impossible to enforce it preventively, so it has become simply another ‘after-the-fact’ violation they can slam you with, should the LEOs decide to rain on your roadway day. It amounts to a financial slap on the hand at best and that certainly is small enough consolation to the dead biker you just hit and killed when you checked out your FACEBOOK page, just now.

Our wonderful ‘democracy’ is just chock-a-block full of delightful little anal-retentive laws that fall into this category, since the legislative operative response to just about any serious social transgression these days is ‘let’s pass a law agin’ it’.

Well that’s just swell, but it’s about as effective, allegorically speaking, as making underwear out of tissue paper.

Toss in a few more complicating factors, such as the tendency for substance-abusing drivers to fall asleep at the wheel and younger drivers to feel like they’re on a closed-circuit race track, and you’ve got the raw makings of several bikers’ funerals.

Some years ago, several safety institutes performed research studies investigating the efficacy of high-visibility colors worn by motorcyclists (or not). The results clearly indicated that the wear and use of high-viz clothing and helmets by motorcyclists had only a slight (almost negligible) impact (no pun intended) on motorists’ awareness of two-wheels traffic on the lanes with and/or near them on the road. In other words, wearing a Screaming Orange Zonker jacket and an international Safety Green helmet were only marginally useful in terms of helping prevent accidents (between automobiles and motorcyclists/bicyclists).

What these studies also demonstrated was the (perhaps unsurprising) fact that what worked better than any other color scheme was a classic black & white police motorcycle scheme, since motorists typically pay attention only to things that can put the ‘bite’ on them. All drivers keep a semi-conscious wariness of police officers/cars in the back of their minds at all times. Show up next to them wearing a standard B&W half-shell, black/white helmet and black jacket on a black & white motorcycle and guaranteed they will be acutely aware of it. Wear the typical high-viz outfit and most MAY register this fact (marginally), but I wouldn’t put money on it!

All that said, it still makes no survival sense at all for motorcyclists to hew to the decades-old ‘outlaw motorcyclist’ uniform (i.e. black helmet, black leather jacket, black bike, etc.), which is still the number one favorite look of almost all motorcyclists these days. As further proof that God wants to cull the human species out and clean up the messy Homo sapiens gene pool, I have actually seen some naive motorcyclists wearing camouflaged helmets and jackets! Nothing like ‘urban camo gray’ to mark one out as an eager organ donor, eh (major internal organs only, of course, since such users clearly have no brain in their heads worth transplanting…even should it survive a fatal crash)?

Another consideration to reflect upon is the fact that motorcyclists don’t always take pains to increase their own survival margins, while operating their bikes. You see this every day on our freeways, where some young idiot lane-splits (i.e. drives between two moving cars on the lane dividing line at speed) and then roars off at a high rate of speed in the far-left lane of the freeway.

Once upon a time, the average motorcycle could ‘out-perform’ (i.e. accelerate faster than) the average car, but not always today. In fact, it has been shown to my satisfaction over the past several decades that cars will inevitably be produced by their manufacturers with more and more horsepower options, most of it unnecessary.There's simply more profit in this, which is their top concern (safety is somewhat further down the list).

Thus, whereas back in the day motorcyclists could discourage tail-gaters by simply blasting ahead faster and faster, until the offending car was left well behind, now behavior of that sort typically results in the idiot four-wheeler simply maintaining the same suicidal tail-gating at a higher & higher rate of speed until both are traveling at truly insane speeds.

The reason for this has to be with a complex nuance of roadway psychodynamics. Specifically, no one in our faster and faster culture ever wants to admit he’s slower than someone else on the road. That’s why everyone hogs the so-called ‘fast-lane’. Since the far-right lane is identified universally as ‘the slow lane’, no one wants to drive in it by choice, since that in itself is a tacit admission that one is a ‘slower driver’. Big loss of roadway face (literally, as well sometimes physically), there.

The UNCONSCIOUS thought is that by driving in the middle or far-left lane, one is somehow regarded by others as a faster driver (big macho gain of face). Or so the devious unconscious human mind works. The result of this is that motorcyclists are now just as apt to be hotly pursued by some immature, weak-self-esteem driver who can’t stand it that someone is trying to leave him in the dust! It’s a vicious cycle and one that can quickly lead to death (the motorcyclist’s), if not checked.

And yet we see this taking place every day.

Another definite and identifiable risk factor implicit in today’s roadway follies is the fact that younger drivers are all too often under the influence of auto manufacturers’ irresponsible advertisements (that always show their cars speeding madly across the landscape, traveling way faster than prudence or common sense would demand). This is what I call the ‘fast and furious’ syndrome, an adolescent dynamic mindset we can thank Hollywood for perpetuating in action movies that show vehicles doing truly stupid-crazy things on streets and roads. Once again, the bare minimum legal liability requirements state in teeny, tiny print at the bottom of the TV screen “Don’t try this at home: Closed-circuit roadway, professional driver.”

Oh yeah, like THAT’S going to register on your average puerile kid's ‘just got my license’ mind!

In fact, this approach taken by automobile advertising & marketing agencies, as well as by slimy Hollywood producers out to get your entertainment bucks, is socially reprehensible to an extreme degree. This point is merely one more reason why American style capitalism is such a destructive and harmful socio-economic system (a fact not reflected in the awarenesses of many individuals with the ‘God bless America’ mindset that chooses to never examine itself or anything else critically).

‘Enlightened capitalism’, on the other side of the spectrum, would recognise the responsibility it has to not harm people with sold products and would censure commercial activity that does not advance the highest benevolent standards of society, and not advocate things that are hazardous to life and safety.

The argument is typically "All we do is sell things; how they use them is not our responsibility!" I believe the same philosophy is frequently used by gun makers today...

Then, as if that weren’t enough to worry about on the road, we also have good old-fashioned, time-honored human stupidity. That is, the dumb-dumb, sh*t-for-brains mentality that typifies so many of our fellow citizens (and many who are not), thanks to accidents of birth, poor judgement in selection of mates, and the vagarities of genetic processes. It helps to recall that, thanks to the human Gaussian IQ curve (and with an IQ of 100 being ‘average’), half of any group you choose to be referent is at average or below levels of reflective awareness.

Finally, with Californica’s (sic) demographic stats soaring by leaps and bounds, with a greater proportionate number of motor vehicles on the road (hence more crowded streets, roads and thoroughfares), the aggregate result is an escalating set of risk factors that makes riding ANY motorcycle on today’s road an absolutely mind-f*cking act of willful insanity.

The defense rests, yer honner. Cross-examine?

OK. I hope I’ve painted a sufficiently extreme view of exactly how risky it is to drive a motorcycle anywhere these days. I’m sure I’ve overlooked more than a few key additional risks that deserve to be mentioned, but you get the picture, I've little doubt.

Which leaves us back at the starting point of this small diatribe: High anxiety on two wheels. I am about to get on my ole mechanical hoss (the Yamie Fizzer) and go for a putt along the Sacramento River levee.

Donning my crash-resistant armor and putting all these intensely pessimistic thoughts momentarily back on the shelf, I warm up my waiting suicycle and patiently let it reach operating temp. Then, out onto the street I roll.

The back of my fluorescent green protective jacket has no message on it, no motorcycle gang rockers, no clever “If you can read this, the bitch fell off” legend in contrasting black script, no “Parental Advisory: I tend to use f*ck a lot” patch and nothing in fact at all that would identify me either as a ‘safe-‘n-sane’ 99%er or an outlaw 1%er. In fact, there’s nothing at all about my appearance (other than the shockingly bright, high-vis colors) that would suggest that deep down inside me, underneath the crash-resistant Kevlar and within the Snell-approved, full-face helmet, I am seething with barely suppressed anxieties over the possibility that some bovine-stupid, distracted 20-something glancing down at her cellphone will take me out at the next stoplight.

This state of hyper-sensitive arousal (over a possible unexpected date with destiny at any moment) stays with me for more than a mile or two, until I reach the beautifully peaceful, languidly flowing Sacramento River Delta levee road that runs along this waterway. Of course that’s the very point where I should switch off the urban/city paranoia and warm up the rural ‘some hick pulling out from a blind crossroad without looking’ radar, but for some reason I have strangely capitulated and begin to fall into that almost indescribable state of perfect harmony and serenity that is produced when your senses are fully and completely fused to a wickedly fast, two-wheeled machine that exists to do nothing but fulfill your fantasies.

  Fortunately, I catch myself well before opening up the throttle too much in excess of the 55 mph speed limit, reminded that I am one of those privileged people who (back in military days) have flown some of the fastest delta-winged jet interceptors ever developed (the Convair F-106A ‘Delta Dart’, known intimately to us aviation guys simply as ‘the Six’) to Mach 2 and viewed the earth from 60,000 (11.4 miles) feet.

Been there, done that. Now, it’s more fun to feel the gentle evening breezes on one’s face at a reasonable speed, visor open, savor the farm fragrances as I drive by the grape-laden vineyards, and admire the warm radiance of the late-afternoon sun filtering across the fields.

“Whack!” a particularly big bug, formerly possessed of a substantially soft, liquid body and now merely a smear on my faceplate, brains himself on my helmet. Buddha would not approve, but I continue my ride until…somewhat later…it is time to wheel around and head home, both the Mad Max in me and the bike-from-hell now satiated with an appreciation for nature that properly should have no place in it for mankind’s rapacious and noisy mechanical playthings.

Re-entering the city, my sensory system once again goes on full, bright yellow DEFCON 2 alert as I re-negotiate the remaining streets till I arrive at home again, safe and for the present...at least... sound.

My final thought before I dismount and begin to start removing all my protective gear is: “Well, I managed to dodge the bullet once again!” But back in the aft-most recesses of my cranial vault, I am disturbingly aware of the fact that…it could just as well happen next time!

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[Note to Mothers! Don’t let yer kids grow up to be cowboys…or motorcyclists! Professional bikkhu, closed life-cycle.] ,