Back In The Saddle

Back in the Saddle

The suit feels stiff. The zipper determined not to budge. The protective pads feel awkward. The plastic part of a junior prom gone bad. Yet as I snap the last buckle on the boot and listen to the loud pop which suggests that the strap running across the top of my foot is now locked into place, I can’t help but wish that the rocket scientists who developed thermoplastic had something for a bruised ego. But they don’t, so instead I’m left to my own devices. Left to battle my own demons.

Walking into the garage, it’s hard to imagine that its been just six days since I laid the 999 down for the very first time.

One-hundred and forty-four hours of wildly juxtaposed emotions. On one hand, I continue to feel surprisingly ‘ok’ about the event and relatively at peace about the outcome (I’m ok, it wasn’t a bad crash, life goes on, etc.). Yet on the other hand, as badly as I want to ride this morning and ‘get back on the horse’ so-to-speak, there’s a side of me that feels surprisingly timid. As if last Saturday’s get off is the harbinger of something worse sitting just off the horizon. Something darker. Something scarier. Something more uncontrollable.

Mentally, I keep hearing the insurance broker’s last line on phone replaying over and over, “The first accident isn’t a big deal, but the second will be” and for the first time in my riding-life, I’m conscious of the next time this happens. Wondering when inevitability will strike again. It’s not quite paralyzing but it certainly has my attention. Because now it no longer feels like a potential possibility but rather a certainty. I just don’t know when or where.

Particularly because as I’ve replayed the event in my mind over the past six days, I keep finding myself overcome by the sheer instantaneous of it. It just happened. There was no wiggle, no warning, no moment of concern whether this was a possibility or not. One second I was perpendicular to the road and the next I was sliding parallel to it. In the flash of a heart beat. And try as I might, I can’t shake that idea that when it’s your time, it’s your time. Needless to say as I fire up the F4 and watch the old man pull up to the stop sign on the Beemer, I know that the accident is squarely stuck in my head and I’m struggling to temper it’s effects. Even though it wasn’t a bad ‘get off’, it happened and that has me a bit unnerved to say the least…

Thirty minutes later, we’re rolling down the Pacific Coast Highway as shards of light sparkle atop of the ocean waves and I find myself thankful that my first bit of time spent back on a bike is happening on a ride with the old man. There’s something comforting about his presence, even if in reality it doesn’t mean much in a practical sense. Certainly the fact that he’s rolling down the road just behind me won’t stop the inevitable from happening again, but it’s still nice to know that he’s there. No matter how much I grow up, there’s always a unique sense of security when he’s around. The remnants of childhood parental protection I suppose.

Yet as we pull up to the stoplight before Topanga Canyon and approach the sportier parts of the Malibu Mountains, I can feel a twinge of negative energy traveling down my spine. The fear of falling a second time seems so much more real right now. And I feel forced to wonder if this sentiment will ever, truly, go away.

But then the remarkable happens… The light turns green.

Quickly the F4 revs, the engine howls with a uniquely Italian four-cylinder sound and the traffic disapears. Seconds later I’m pushing the right side of the handlebar and admittedly feeling timid as I counter-steer towards a relatively spartan Topanga Canyon. But then the bike bends. Grips ground and never lets go, as if to say ‘I won’t hurt you on my watch’. The chassis plants itself with such conviction that it seems foolish not to trust it. Not to allow it to roam. The road surface tilts to the right and the bike follows its instincts. Then the asphalt rolls left and without even thinking about it, I’m leaning off to the inside of the corner as the machine maneuvers itself towards the apex. Not a knee down racetrack kind of lean angle mind you, but enough to realize that what was timid is now adventurous. The bike seeming so secure that I feel compelled to forget the fear…

A half dozen corners later life seems so much sweeter, the glory of riding the right bike on the right road pushing everything else to the back burner. Once again I find myself feeling what it is to be alive. To be free of thought and fear. To be focused on one thing and one thing only, the road.

In the end, while the hesitation to get back on the bike post-accident makes perfect sense to me, even though it wasn’t a ‘bad accident’, perhaps the greatest lesson from the last six days is that every so often humanity need a reality check — We need to feel things that are negative in order to remember what actually is positive about a given experience.