Pick A Direction…

Over the course of the past day and a half I’ve been thinking a great deal about this skill we call ‘motorcycle riding’. While there are a great number of skills one can choose to learn during their lives, it seems to me that at the core there’s really two basic types of skills; the ones you can be instantly proficient at because you’re a natural or the ones that require a great deal of effort to learn because there is no easy or natural way to pick them up. Perhaps this is a gross oversimplification, but while catching some football Sunday afternoon I couldn’t help but think that a kid in a park can pick up a football and throw a perfect spiral their first time out. They simply have a natural inclination for playing the game. A knack for it. Maybe the kid is an all around gifted athlete or maybe they have a perfect motion or the ‘eye’ or a rifle for an arm, who knows… But their ability to utilize their skill comes without any training. They were simply were born with an ability to play the game at a highly proficient level.

This skill we call motorcycle riding is the complete opposite. You can’ t instantly be fast, safe and competent on a motorcycle. You have to spend time learning those components in order to actually be ‘good’.

When all is said and done, riding a cycle is not an easy skill to learn either. It requires a great deal of investment – on a mental, an emotional and a financial level just to name a few. Most importantly however it’s not a skill you just ‘get’ all by yourself. You have to work at it. You have to engage. You have to find the right people and learn to ask them the right questions. In many ways it’s a skill that seems built on the foundation of other skill sets.

As I think back to when I first set out to learn to ride, I remember being completely scared at just the concept of the canyons. Roads that curved around rocks and had cliffs for guard rails were just to much for me to handle. Heck my first thousand miles were just up and down the flat part of the PCH on 35 mile trips to get coffee. Now when I leave for the day it’s a four or five hour excursion that goes on for miles and miles and if the road is straight I’m bored. As I begin to see myself put all the different components of riding together – of the skill of riding - I find myself continuing to have this incredibly constant smile and an inert rush to get back on the bike and do it all again. And again. And again. Because riding is fun and it’s been so worth learning the skill and the sport. I can’t imagine my life without it.

I can’t wait for Friday, The CLASS course & Willow…

Here are some more picts from Sunday’s 120 mile ride through the canyons…

The First Weekend With Pucks

Three Corner Shots…

Low Angle

Mid Angle

The Big Picture….