A big ask

After wandering around the NAIMs the one motorcycle wish I had was RACER5.  I had a nice chat with the people running the stand and after seeing that, a weekend in the summer getting my race license would be the most awesome May/June or early July weekend birthday present I could think of.

They run the three day course at Grand Bend Motorplex on little Hondas.  You get lots of track time and classroom support.  By the end of the course you get your racing license.  Watching how they set up the bikes would also be handy as I'd eventually like to build my own track bike.

They also offer kit rentals, so I could get a good idea of what size I'd need as well as how racing gear fits.

The race focus would allow me to explore riding dynamics at an advanced level on a closed track.  I'd be able to bring that knowledge back to my riding on the road.  As a form of insurance, it might well save me a lot of grief.

It's a big ask, but it would make one hell of a birthday present.  I wonder if any other bikers I know would be interested.

Track Days & Dirt Days

Two goals over the summer as far as biking goes:  go to a track day and get in some off road experience.  Fortunately I've got choices for both nearby:

That's not too far!

1... Track Days:  Grand Bend Motorplex does beginner track days at various times throughout the summer.  I'm going to make a day where I can go down there and give the Ninja a workout in a track environment.  It'll be an early start, but if I can time the weather right it'll be a great opportunity to develop more fluid riding and gently get a feel for how the bike handles in more extreme conditions.  A hundred bucks doesn't seem bad for a full day of track time.

If not Grand Bend then there are other options.  Cayuga is $125 for a day and an hour and forty five minutes south through Hamilton.  Mosport and Shannonville are both venues for Riderschoice.ca, who offer track days there.  I haven't been to Shannonville since I did the Nissan advanced driving school in the 1990s, it'd be nice to go back.  Shannonville does their own track days, for $145 a day.  Calabogie is way out Ottawa way, but it ain't cheap, though the track is supposed to be fantastic.

2... Off Road Training:  Yamaha Adventures is a lovely hour and a bit ride north of where I am.  The full day package on their bike isn't cheap ($329), but it would give me a chance to get a feel for off-road riding without the equipment overhead.  

Trailtour also offers trials and dual-sport courses, both of which are cheaper alternatives, and they happen to be under an hour south of the family cottage.  Trials riding is very technique intensive and would do a lot to improve my balance on any bike.

As many different experiences in as many different circumstances as I can manage, that's the goal this year.

Child, Parent or Zen Master?

This one went into my edu-blog too, but it's as much about motorbiking as it is about learning...

An editorial piece I read in Bike Magazine a while back has stayed with me.  In it the author (a veteran motorcycle trainer) was describing how a rider's emotional response to high stress situations limits their ability to learn from them.  It struck me because I still catch myself falling into both of the archetypal mind traps he describes.  I now struggle to get beyond them and adopt the clinical approach of a master learner that he suggests.
In a high-stakes, emotional environment like riding you can't be trowing tantrums or assigning blame (though many do), you need to be calm and aware in order to both assess a situation as its happening and accurately recall and learn from it later.  Emotion is a natural response to high stress situations but it often gets in the way of attaining mastery.

The author of the piece (I'm still looking for it but I think I lent the magazine out) suggests that people fall into archetypal behaviors when they are stressed and emotional. These behaviours prevent you from making coherent decisions in the moment as well as preventing progress by hiding memory details behind ego and emotion.  The two archetypes we fall back into are child and parent.  Since we're all familiar with these roles it only makes sense that we'd revert to them when we are under pressure.

The child throws tantrums and reacts selfishly, aggressively and emotionally.  People falling into this mind-set shout and cry at the circumstances and focus on blaming others.   The child is emotional and blind to just about everything around them except the perceived slight.  This approach tends to be dangerously over-reactive.  Have you ever seen a student blow up in an asymmetrical way over a minor issue?  They have fallen into the child archetype emotional trap.

The parent mind-set seems like an improvement but it is just as effective at blocking learning.  The parent shakes their head disapprovingly and focuses on passing judgement.  You'll see someone in this mind-set tutting and rolling their eyes at people.  The parent is focused on passing judgement loudly and publicly.  You can probably see how easy it is for teachers to fall into this one.

The child is selfish, emotional and immediate.  The parent wraps themselves in a false sense of superiority that makes the user feel empowered when they might otherwise feel helpless.  Both archetypes attempt to mitigate frustration and ineffectiveness behind emotion and ego.

I've seen students stressed out by exams or other high-stakes learning situations fall into these traps but it took that motorbike instructor to clarify how students can lose their ability to internalize learning by falling into these archetypes.  He describes riders who shout and yell at someone cutting them off.  They are responding to their own poor judgement and lack of attention with the emotional outburst.  Suddenly finding themselves in danger, they lash out emotionally in order to cover up their own inadequacies.  

The parent adopts that judgmental stance.  Last summer I had a senior student who rides a motorcycle get involved in an accident.  He had bad road rash and was bruised all over.  He went with the parent approach.  The woman who hit him was panicked and frightened because she hadn't seen him.  Her own mother had been hurt in a similar motorcycle accident and she felt a lot of guilt over being the cause of this one.  The student said 'she came out of no-where'.  I said, 'that's odd, cars weight thousands of pounds.  I've never seen one appear out of nowhere before.'  Rather than review his own actions and perhaps learn to develop better 360° awareness, the student was happy to piggy-back on the driver's emotional response and pass judgement.  He never felt any responsibility for that accident and still believes that cars can come out of nowhere.

I enjoy riding because it is a difficult, dangerous craft that it is very important to do well.  In pressurized learning situations you need an alert, open mind.  I've never once seen this the focus of consideration in school (except perhaps in extracurricular sports).  What we do instead is try and remove any pressure and cater to emotionality rather than teaching students to master it.



Other Links:
Comparing Teacher PD to Motorcycle Training
Training Fear and Ignorance out of Bikecraft
Archetypal Pedagogy

training ignorance & fear out of your bikecraft

I've been trying to find a comparison about the relative dangers of motorcycling that didn't devolve into anecdote and hyperbole, I couldn't find one on the internet (the home of anecdote and hyperbole).  After reading all sorts of people who knew someone who died on a motorbike, or were hit by a car 'that came out of nowhere' (cars don't come out of nowhere, they're very big and weigh thousands of pounds), I'm left shaking my head.

I know a guy who died on a motorcycle.  He was late for work and ran a red light at over 100km/hr and ended up going over the hood of a nice, old couple's car who were turning left into the lane in front of him.  Along with a pile of other people I ran across our work parking lot and got there just in time to see him die.  Not to speak ill of the dead but this guy was a yahoo, and his accident was all about his idiocy and had virtually nothing to do with his motorcycling.  Had he run the same light in a Mustang he would have ended up killing three people, two of them completely innocent, as it was he traumatized them. 

Online you'll find many anecdotes about how dangerous it is 'out there'.  There was the guy who went on at length about how a muffler fell off the car in front of him and he couldn't avoid it; he hasn't been back on a bike since.  I suppose that muffler came out of nowhere too.  I wonder how close behind the car buddy was when that muffler took him off his bike.

In many cases those ex-bikers say that training doesn't help, the only thing that does help is a cage of your own.  A life lived in fear is a life half lived, and there are a lot of people hiding in cages living half lives on the interwebs.  The emotionality and ignorance on display is distressing.  How can you do a thing well when your stories clearly demonstrate ignorance around how to operate a motorbike effectively?  I wonder if any of the people who knew that yahoo I worked with are the ones now saying how dangerous motorcycling is.

Extreme defensive driving, if you're not thinking about
all of this approaching an intersection,
you're not doing it right

Having taken some training I plan on taking much more because it really does help.  If you're serious about your bikecraft you will continue to seek out ways to improve, otherwise you aren't taking the task seriously.  Training isn't just about how to make a bike go, it's also some of the most intensive defensive driver training you'll ever experience, and I've done a lot of advanced driver training.  

Anyone who wants to pin the dangers of motorbiking on everyone else on the road feels helpless, training goes some way to mitigate that, though afterward you're never able to say, "it came out of nowhere!" or, "it wasn't my fault!"  When you finally get to the bottom of the extreme defensive mindset you need on a bike everything is your responsibility, including responding to the poor driving of other people.  If you're not willing or able to shoulder that responsibility you shouldn't be on a bike.

In addition to the dismissive attitude toward training, the other theme that develops as you read the anecdotal former rider or friend of a dead friend online is the anger.  People who have have a hate on for riding and are now evangelizing against it were angry when they rode, frequently telling stories of how they were shouting at four wheeled offenders, incredibly upset by being run off the road, angry at how poorly everyone else uses the road.  They've never shaken this anger, it's a part of who they are and they still spout it online.  You have to wonder how blind that anger made them when they rode.

Another benefit of training and then advanced training is that rather than approach a situation with an emotive response, you tend to be clinical.  Anyone who has taken martial arts understands how this works.  The untrained fight in ignorance, throwing haymakers and making a wondrous mess of it all.  They typically attempt to overcome their ignorance and inexperience by fighting emotionally.  A true student of anything is clinical because they approach their craft with an eye to constant improvement.  They don't thrash around in anger, they analyze and improve.  An emotional mindset seldom leads to skills improvement.

The angry biker is a dilettante, someone posing, looking for social status with no interest in improving their bikecraft.  You can't learn if you're angry.

When riding a motorcycle in an angry, blaming way you are attempting to cover your ignorance with loud emotionality.  Don't be ignorant and upset, become skilled and clinical, and always have an eye toward improving your craft.  Riding a motorcycle well is a deeply immersive experience, you're doing a difficult, dangerous thing, and doing it well should be a great source of pride.  When you're lost in your bikecraft you are attentive, meditative, alert and alive in the truest sense of the word.  I don't imagine any of the naysayers on the internet care, but this is an important place to find yourself.

 All rights reserved by JamesAddis

Interweb hyperbole... 

http://www.straight.com/life/motorcycle-safety-study-has-some-eye-openers

http://ridingsafely.com/ridingsafely1.html

http://ask.metafilter.com/44065/Exactly-how-dangerous-are-motorcycles

http://motorcycleaccidentlawyerpa.com/motorcycle-vs-car-accident-statistics/

http://www.nerdgraph.com/motorcycles-vs-cars-road-safety/

http://rideapart.com/2013/12/things-more-dangerous-than-riding-a-motorcycle/

High School Motorcycle Club

I'm thinking about starting a motorcycle club at the high school I work at.  This should be an interesting as it will highlight the general fear around motorbiking.  Our school runs downhill ski racing, mountain biking, rugby, and ice hockey teams, but I suspect that motorcycling may be an uphill struggle to establish as a club.

A number of our teachers and students ride.  We even have a student who is a competitive motorcross rider.  I bumped into a graduate last year when I was writing my motorcycling learner's test, she was taking the motorcycling technician course at Conestoga College in Guelph.  There is expertise, interest and activity around motorcycling in our school and our community, I only hope that the panicky liability-thinking that dictates a lot of decision making in schools calms down and takes a rational look at this.  Offering students access to the experience and opportunity a club provides would lead to a safer and more well rounded introduction to motorcycling.  From that point of view, every high school should have a club!

We could pull off field trips to motorcycle shows (along with the auto-tech department) and offer training opportunities both off road and on road.  We have several local motorcycle retailers nearby who we could work with doing seminars or information sessions on various bikes and gear.  The club would let the more experienced staff and students express their skill while offering the bike-curious a more thorough introduction to motorcycling.

I'm going to pitch this when I get back and see what the response is, I'm hoping reason trumps fear.