Practice makes Petrified ‑or- Freaking out the Parents

Free­ways are scary.

I’ve been mak­ing it a point to prac­tice a lot on the bike. I fig­ure there’s no time like the present to devel­op my skills. So I’ve been pick­ing less-pop­u­lat­ed times and places to ride where I’ll have to cor­ner or change lanes or stop on a hill or what­ev­er. I ride through the Pre­sidio on the way to work each day, which forces me to trust that the bike can lean that far over and that yes, real­ly, if I’m wor­ried about tak­ing the cor­ner too fast, I should roll on the throt­tle, not off.

Start­ing from a stop on a hill on a motor­cy­cle is actu­al­ly a lot eas­i­er than it is in a car. Foot on the rear brake to keep from rolling back, roll on the throt­tle and release the clutch gen­tly through the fric­tion zone. No problem.

Tonight I took the bike around Stow Lake to cor­ner, and then end­ed up going south on 19^th Avenue. It was pret­ty late, so I just kept going and rode I‑280 south a ways.

Here’s the thing about speed. Accel­er­at­ing up to 40mph is fun, OK? Espe­cial­ly when I mist­ime my shift­ing from first to sec­ond and end up jump­ing for­ward hard. That’s a thrill because, well, speed and accel­er­a­tion == Big Fun. Bonus points for sur­pris­ing myself by get­ting a lit­tle bit more kick by acci­dent (e.g. mist­im­ing my shifting).

But there’s a thresh­old after 45mph or so after which my mind no longer process­es the speed by the visu­al. I’ve dri­ven those speeds before, so it’s noth­ing new or excit­ing, and a 250cc engine (lit­er­al­ly a half pint!) isn’t exact­ly gonna give me a kick of accel­er­a­tion at high­way speeds either. There’s not a huge thrill asso­ci­at­ed with trav­el­ing at 65 or 70mph. I might have even got­ten it up to 75 tonight.

No, what’s intense about those kinds of speeds is the wind. Every time I’ve dri­ven 75mph before I’ve had a wind­shield in front of me. On the bike, I have the face shield of the hel­met, but the air hits my body at what­ev­er speed I’m trav­el­ing. Rid­ing 75mph is, no joke, like hold­ing on to sta­tion­ary han­dle­bars in a class 1 hur­ri­cane. That’s enough air veloc­i­ty to break branch­es and tear small boats away from their docks.

No, I’m not kidding

What’s real­ly scary about high­way speeds is how much turn­ing my head affects my aero­dy­nam­ics. It’s enough to push me to the side. With­out turn­ing my head, I have a poten­tial­ly fatal blind spot on either side, even with con­vex mir­rors. In the short time I’ve been rid­ing, I’ve already been sur­prised to find an auto­mo­bile next to me and slight­ly behind, just out of sight of my mir­rors, more than a cou­ple times. If I did­n’t turn my head to look before chang­ing lanes, I’d have already been creamed.

So I rode South as far as I could stand it, which was the West­bor­ough Ave exit in San Bruno. I took Hill­side across to South San Fran­cis­co and then rode 101 North, which was its own fla­vor of terrifying.

I can see why peo­ple pick big­ger bikes, and not just to go faster, but to have that iner­tia on one’s side in the face of air. I can also see why peo­ple choose bikes with fair­ings, and crouched-over sport­bike posi­tions. Or ahem even a wind­shield. My bike looks cool (in my own opin­ion, of course) but it cuts through the wind like a falling oak leaf.

(Sor­ry, Dad. I know you wor­ry. Hope­ful­ly you’ll read this and hear how care­ful I’m being, and how con­scious I am of the dan­ger, not that I’m jump­ing into har­m’s way.)

The Day That Lassie Went To the Moon — Camper Van Beethoven