The past three weeks have been very trying, and I feel I've learned some serious lessons, chief among which is 'calm yo shit down, motherfucker!'
Yesterday I installed a new brake caliper on the Noble Savage. The brake pads were worn down to the metal backing plates, and fortunately, I caught the problem before it could do serious damage to my front brake rotor. Because if there's a procedure I'd rather perform on a motorcycle, it's replacing brake pads over replacing a brake rotor. For one, I don't have to take the front wheel off, and for another, I only have to remove four bolts, and not those four bolts plus those for the axle (at least one huge bolt) and rotor (about five of those suckers). And if there's any truth I can impart about motorcycles kept outdoors, is that you're gonna have frozen bolts.
Lesson #1: (more like a reminder) a little foresight saves a lot of time and frustration. If I caught the brake pads before they started to blacken my brake rotor and make weird skiffing noises when I tried to stop, I could have avoided damaging my old caliper in an attempt to change the pads, and I could have enjoyed some seriously awesome riding over the weekend, instead of being cooped up at home waiting for my parts to arrive via USPS.
Now to overreaction. My brakes work well. Very very well. I not only put fresh pads in, cleaned the rotor, but also bled the brake fluid and put all new fluid in the master cylinder. So now my front brake responds to input with considerable alacrity; it's way easier to stop a motorcycle with brake pads than without them.
Riding to Kaleisia today, I was caught in the usual five-o-clock weekday traffic snarl on Bruce B. Downs. The thing about traffic snarls is that they tend to deposit oil on the roads: thousands of cars an hour leaking a few drops here and there tends to leave wild purple-and-blue splashes of motor oil on wet roads, and the intersection of Bruce B. Downs and 131st was something out of Timothy Leary's wildest hallucinations.
No good, I thought, frowning underneath my helmet as I coasted towards the intersection. I cautiously applied my newly-functioning brakes on the rain-and-oil slick roads, and felt the bike lose control. The front wheel locked up, and I started skidding. Fortunately, I was only going about 10mph, and I could arrest the motion with my boots. If it happened at 70mph, I would be typing this from the emergency room. Because if there's one thing that gives motorcyclists nightmares, it's losing traction, particularly with the front wheel.
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| Source: hellforleathermagazine.com |
Front wheel traction loss, on the other hand, is really bad. The solution to this is to release the front brake, and hope to the gods that the bike sorts its shit out, because failure to do so results in a 'high-side' crash, in which the rider is thrown from the bike and goes skidding on the road. And if there's one place I don't want to end up, it's skidding on a rain-and-oil slick road in the middle of rush hour traffic, 350-pound bike skidding right behind me.
Lesson learned: with enough training, you can be remarkably calm in life-threatening situations. The worst damage I could have sustained from that crash is some seriously bruised legs and maybe a broken bone or two. The part of my brain prone to overreaction didn't have a chance to put its vote in before the polls closed: my training took over and its only goal was to regain traction. Ten feet later, the front wheel stopped castering wildly and I was back in full control of the motorcycle. My pulse didn't go above 85 until I rounded the corner and realized: I could have been seriously hurt back there.
This brings me to training: in emergencies, you almost never rise to superhuman levels of competence. Instead, you fall back on your training. Training interrupts the processes inherent in us to overreact. It instills in you a reflexive sort of reaction that builds off of the experiences and reflections of those who trained you. We practiced locking up our brakes in motorcycle training, and I've almost never had to fall back on that training, but I'm glad I can access that training when it's necessary.
So, consider this: think about a time recently when you overreacted, and think about how you can train yourself (or be trained by someone) to not overreact next time. For me, it's largely in social situations when I overreact, particularly in dating, where my usual response is to hang on tight, even well past the red-flag-bestrewn path to misery and mutual resentment. Or to not react at all, because I emotionally get off on aloofly disregarding signals. Both arise from the same egotistical defensiveness I'm trying to train out of myself, one day at a time. Because it's just like riding a motorcycle: sometimes it's wise to hit the brakes, and other times, you're better off trusting to ballistics and friction.
