Photos are funny these days, in the digital age. My first knee on the ground experiences while riding a sportbike fast around a track were partially motivated by getting an awesome photo of me looking all cool, dragging my knee around the track. Now that I’ve gotten into cycling I’m starting to meet people who pedal and they have a similar notion to post the “cool” photos on their blogs and Facebook. So I don’t have any cool photos yet, like of me leading a crit race, or crashing, or coming out of the gate with a crazy ass time trial helmet on, but I do have these:
Climbing Kings Mountain Road, 2011 Canary Century
Smiling my way to a QOM on the Kings Mountain Road descent
Pretty fun stuff. One more gratuitous photo, with a little explanation. I haven’t seen my abs since 1991, so I’m a little excited, okay? I’m 36 years old and cycling has given me my four pack back. Thank you, bicycle. I’ve ridden 4,075 miles since October 2010, all while eating donuts, pizza, pasta, foie gras, Sausage Egg McMuffins, bread and butter, margaritas, and any other damn thing I want. If I ate better, I know I could easily turn it into the sickest six pack anyone’s ever seen on an old lady like me. Pedaling is the most fun I’ve had away from a racetrack pretty much my whole life, it’s helped make me faster on a motorcycle, and I feel like a savage, cold, unyielding honey badger as I run all over the place working, doing errands or hanging out with friends. I could go on, but it’s time to go track down something nasty to eat, I’m hungry!
Being an umbrella girl with Katelyn for the totally rad Melissa Paris
This…is the honey badger. Watch it run in slow motion.
It’s pretty bad ass.
I was thinking fondly of the honey badger Saturday afternoon, as I was pushing my mangled motorcycle back to my garage. Like the honey badger is focused on eating, I was focused on winning.
Randall’s flaming narrative was in my head as I was walking. Like when the honey badger braved bee stings to get at the larva inside the house of bees, he narrated, “it’s hungry, it doesn’t care about getting stung by bees. Nothing can stop the honey badger when it’s hungry.†I was pushing my broken bike, no tail, no helmet, laughing about the honey badger, and I passed a group of guys eating lunch in their race car garage who must have thought I was nuts.
So not only did I highside just an hour and a half before my all important Formula AFemme women’s race, I had also broken my motor in practice the day before, replaced it with another one, and then still set down personal best laptimes in Saturday morning practice.
It was a good day. I was already feeling like a honey badger for having rallied my team and sourcing a spare motor from the angelic and lovely Lisa Wallace, all without it slowing me down. It was such a good day, and I was feeling so fast and filled with racing brilliance, that I even felt it appropriate to share riding tips with other racers. Exactly the kind of behavior that tends to precede a highside crash.
Earlier on Saturday, I was running around with a group of guys and kind of wondering what the holdup was. A pass here, a pass there, and I was in front. Coming up over turn 2, I saw a 1:47 click through on my laptimer and I screamed, in my helmet, all the way to turn 4. I’d seen 48s already and was excited about those, because those are typically only achieved by me during races, with 1:50s happening during practice. But a 47? Damn. I was pretty sure I’d be racing MotoGP by next spring.
Coming off the track I saw that I had a good tear along the right side of my tire; typical, as most of the turns at Infineon are right handers. I had Chris and the awesome boys over at CT Racing and Pirelli flip the tire for me, then I was back in business.
Second to last practice session, again, fighting my way through some slow pokes in practice group 4. With the tear now on the left hand side of my tire, I should have reminded myself to take it easy on the throttle coming out of left hand turns, but I didn’t. Coming out of Turn 9, I turned the throttle, the rear slid out to the right, regained traction awkwardly as is typical of a highside crash, and my twisted up bike bucked me off of it like an irritated bull.
I landed hard on my bottom, bounced and then landed on my head, and then rolled off the track with my bike almost chasing me, sliding and crunching along the asphalt. I was concerned about getting run over by Sam, or some other guy I’d just passed, so I scurried off the track once the tumbling stopped.
There was a turnworker who righted my bike, asked if I was okay, and then motioned for me to take my bike so he could get back to work. He pointed at the door to exit the track. Yeah. Thanks for making a mess of my turn, now take your bike and your broken tail section and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!
Thus began the walk of shame.
About half way through the walk I tried to start the bike again and it fired up. I sat where the seat would have been, right on top of the battery, and rode it back to the garage. Honey badger don’t care. When I got to my garage, it was all business as we assessed the damage. It was fortunate that I had not only Jason Hauns there assisting, but also Lisa Wallace, in addition to my usual rocket scientist mechanic, Ross Embertson. Nikki offered me her bike for the race, and I told her thank you, but that’s stupid and you’re racing.
We needed a new windscreen, new clip ons, new number stickers, new brake lever, a new vortex footpeg, and we were also dealing with a bent rearset plate, a broken but usable upper fairing, a broken but usable fairing stay, a broken but usable tail section, and an exhaust canister with a big ass hole in it. We frantically sourced parts and fixed and replaced things. The bike had to pass tech inspection again before I could race it, and once it was all done, we had warmers on and ready to go thirty minutes before the race.
Although I was kind of riding a wave of adrenaline and courage, I was also incredibly embarrassed about my crash. I knew exactly why it happened. Not the mechanics of it, although I pretty much know how that goes too. But the psychology of it. The cockiness of it. Like Icarus flying too close to the sun, because, well, he just felt that awesome. I was appropriately humbled, but knew I had to focus on the race ahead.
Joy was absent from the track this weekend, and this made me sad. She’s my carrot. I adore and admire her, but I want to beat her. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. But it’s always fun to try. AMA National SuperSport racer Shelina Moreda was here, practicing for next weekend’s pro race, but she must have still been getting used to her new bike because her lap times were pretty off pace. Still, she’s courageous and aggressive enough to sometimes make six second gains from practice to racing. Sometimes that concerns me a little, so I prefer to stay as far ahead of her as possible.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to try to jump out to an early lead and lead the whole race, but with a probably twisted up bike and shaky confidence, I also considered hanging back and waiting for a good time to pass her.
As we gridded up, I don’t think anyone but Jenn knew that I had just crashed just a short while before. Even crazier, Nikki had crashed in turn 9 during her Clubman Middleweight (a co-ed race for novices on middleweight bikes like GSXR-600s, R6s and the like) race just before Formula AFemme, so she was gone.
The green flag dropped, and I was gone. Occasional sideways glances coming out of turns 7 and 11 informed me that Shelina was dropping further and further back. My ass ached with every turn, and I counted down the laps until the race was over. I’ve never done that before…but god that was the longest race ever. I got the checkers with a 20 second lead and immediately knew I’d sit out Sunday’s races. I was in a lot of pain, and I think my bike was too because it complained in a weird way every time hit bumps or let off the brakes. Maybe I was out of adrenaline, or just, the urgency of getting my bike fixed required more adrenaline than it actually did to race. But I really wanted some champagne and a vicodin.
Sunday, while everyone else raced, Ross and I had Gerry Piazza measure my bike for straightness. Have you ever heard the term called “dogtrot?†Like, kind of running sideways? Cars do it when their wheels are out of alignment. Me and my bike dogtrotted to the win Saturday, basically, eking out 1:50 laptimes to get the job done.
Whatever the opposite of a honey badger is, maybe a sheep, or the aptly named chicken, that’s what I felt like Sunday as I watched the races. The honey badger in me felt like a chicken for not getting out there and dogtrotting around with all the other crazy racers, but I kept reminding myself that my whole garage, most especially me and my motorcycle, had had extremely bad luck the entire weekend (even the rocket scientist mechanic crashed on Friday) and that I shouldn’t push it. Many motorcyclists like to remind others to listen to these gut feelings, but then I look at truly bad ass racers and I’m not even sure those feelings ever occur to them. Why do they happen to me?
So many people helped me make lemonade out of the weekend’s lemons. Thanks go out to Lisa Wallace for loaning me her motor, to her boyfriend Greg Olson for agreeing to it even though I wanted to beat him on the racetrack with it, to Joel of CT Racing for helping us with the motor swap, to Chris Maguire of CT Racing for agreeing to let Joel off for the afternoon so he could assist us, to my sponsor, friend and brilliant mechanic Alex Torres of Fastline Cycles for supervising the motor swap and helping at critical points, Jason Hauns for also helping with the motor swap and crash repairs, and of course to my team, Ross Embertson and Nikki Nienow. A special mention as well to Leo Vince Exhaust Systems for subsequently sponsoring me and setting me up with a new Corsa full exhaust system.
I know we’re not curing cancer or doing anything truly miraculous over here, but it was a pretty good weekend. Sometimes simply surviving is a miracle; even the honey badger can get bitten by a cobra and still come back to be a bad ass for another day.
One of the things that attracted me to Nikki Nienow, in only the way a straight girl can be attracted to another, was her independence. This pleasant looking blonde girl had pulled up to Infineon in a little white truck last spring, with her R6 tucked neatly into the bed. There was no drama and no commotion; she snuck in practically unnoticed and went about unloading her things, and her bike, by herself.
I noticed.
I invited her to come pit in my garage; it was a Friday before a race weekend and I was in the garage, also by myself, so I thought I would be nice and share my space with this quiet, pretty mystery girl.
A few months later, as James and I were going through some tough times and I was also starting to pit separately from him, I shyly asked her if she might be interested in helping me out at the track. Although we had always shared a garage or canopy, and I was fortunate enough to benefit from the fast guy’s high level race program guidance, I had been handling my trackside support on my own for a couple years. So I felt pretty independent, and had done a couple WERA race weekends by myself, but I wanted the moral support more than anything.
I didn’t feel entitled to have someone helping me at the track. Racing was hard, it was supposed to be hard, and only it’s only when you’re really fast, or really rich, that you get to have the helpers. But she said yes. I was thrilled, but I also wondered if it’d be the kind of thing where she’d come out, sort of pretend to help, but mostly use it as a springboard to go flirt with boys, talk to her friends, etc. Nope. She showed up with a very serious toolbox, taught me the benefits of torquing and axle grease, and had a smart, single-minded focus rare in any track person – guy or girl.
It wasn’t possible for her to be any radder, and yet she was.
She got her race license last fall, had a very successful first race weekend at AFM Round 2, and then I convinced her to race, not just help, for the first round of the California State Championship at Buttonwillow. Surprisingly, she was concerned about our both racing without a pit helper assisting us. For rizzle? If any two girls can do it, we can. There was no question in my mind. So like the rad chicks we are, we loaded up the Sprinter van and jammed down I-5 to the beautiful ‘burb of Buttonwillow.
Saturday morning we unloaded our things and got down to business. I was planning to only practice in the morning, as the afternoon was booked with the WERA Solo 20 lap endurance races and although I should do it for the fitness and practice, I wanted to be frugal with my fuel and tire money. Nikki used it as extra practice to spend more time getting to know an unfamiliar track.
My bike seemed reasonably alright. I think we changed the gearing on it. I had heard from a friend of one of Nikki’s friends, who’d been there Friday for a track day that AMA fast girl Melissa Paris was also riding in, that Melissa was doing “sub two minute laptimes all day long,†and this was what I was aspiring to. It wasn’t happening. I think the best I saw all day might have been a 2:02, which, if I went the generally expected two seconds faster in the race, would put me nowhere near my personal best of a 1:58.
I just want some 59s in practice. Just some. I didn’t feel this was a lot to ask for. And yet, try as I tried, I couldn’t make the bike go where I wanted it to go. Turning it was difficult. We made some minor suspension adjustments but believe me when I say they were “minor.†I’m no pro when it comes to adjusting my suspension, and I’m usually afraid to try anything drastic. Which, if you only have a few practice sessions, I guess means you don’t get anywhere fast enough.
I was just so frustrated by my laptimes and feeling a bit defeated. My bike was mechanically sound, thanks to the expert help of my friend and sponsor, Alex Torres of Fastline Cycles. My Pirelli tires were awesome as always. My lovely lilac and white ACT Racing suit unfortunately still was too tight on my still healing bruised hip (from a bicycle crash that happened, oh, two months ago), but my old Helimot suit still felt great. The problem was the rider. Or, maybe the suspension. I really felt like I was doing something wrong with it and needed some major help.
So in the races Saturday, first up was Women’s Superstock. Krystyna Kubran and her R1 got another amazing start and I followed her around the track on the first lap, noticing how cute she looks with her Spidi Lizard suit and blonde curls flying out the bottom of her helmet, but then it was time to get down to business. I passed her into the Star Mazda turn and then worked to build up a lead. I passed some twins racers, the Heavyweight Twins Superbike race being gridded in front of the girls, but for the most part it was a pretty lonely race. I finished first of six women, and sixth of 15 total racers on the grid. 1:59.3 was my best, and I was disappointed.
Why keep doing something if you’re not getting better at it somehow? I know, I know…because it’s fun. But for me, it’s fun when you’re improving, if not overall, than at improving on least something. It’s a curse, sort of. Sometimes I feel like I wish I could just enjoy something because it’s fun, even if I’m terrible at it, but really, where is the fun in that? I suck at wakeboarding, but at least I can drink mass quantities of cheap beer while I’m doing it. Bowling too for that matter. Sports you can play relatively safely while consuming alcohol (yep, been injured at the lake and the bowling alley), those I don’t mind sucking at. But karting, racing, cycling…I want to win. Even if I’m only beating my past performances.
The second race was B Superstock. I tried so hard to latch on to the faster group in front of me, but watched them pull away, each turn the gap growing larger and my heart sinking faster than a motor chucked into one of the local farming waterways. I was three seconds a lap slower than the slowest guy in that group, and then a few seconds faster than the guys behind me. Again, a lonely, slow race; I finished 8th of 13, with a fastest laptime of 1:58.966. Practically not even a 58. Definitely a number that would be quickly rounded up in a third grade math assignment.
Finally, last race of the day, I got to have some battles. B Superbike. I jostled for position through Cotton Corners with Robert Chavez and some guys I don’t know, and I was pleased with the aggression I was displaying. At some point Robert passed me back. I like Robert. Compared to the average racer, he seems to have more money than god, and brings the most pimpin’ Sprinter van and a hot girl mechanic to the track. He’s always smiling and having fun. I used to beat him regularly, but then he got faster. I had nothing for him at Fontana, and maybe even not at Vegas, but I felt like I could get him today.
I followed him for a bit plotting my domination, and set up with a good drive out of Lost Hills to slide up on his outside for Star Mazda. Too fixated on the back of him, when I looked up it was way too late to start braking, and I blew the turn, flying straight off the track and around the access road, back onto the track approaching the esses…but having lost about six seconds. I slowly reeled him back in, but then the race was over. I finished 12th of 17, with a best laptime of 1:57.665. Just barely below the acceptability threshold. Phew! I could keep racing. I was worried I’d have to quit, like I often do when I plateau. It’s really not rational, or mature, and honestly I would probably encourage myself to push through it, but that spoiled little brat in me would seriously have wanted to just throw in the towel. I did 58s here a year ago, not just one, but several. I really didn’t know why I was struggling so much.
We drove home, stopping at Harris Ranch for some fresh cow and a big glass of red wine. Nikki felt somewhat “eh†I think about her racing results, and so did I, but we were having fun anyway, on our own, two girls in the world. Makes me think of that song “Tonight, Tonight,†by Hot Chelle Rae.
La, la la – whatever!
La, la la. It doesn’t matter.
La, la, la – oh well!
La, la la.
It doesn’t make any sense at all that I race. It doesn’t make sense to me, it doesn’t make sense to my family and it doesn’t make sense to my co-workers. I didn’t grow up in a motorsports family, or a particularly competitive one. I had never even piloted a motorcycle myself until the ripe old age of 30. So why does it feel so good, not just to go fast on a bike, but to go faster than that guy? And that guy? And that girl? I don’t dislike these people, in fact, I usually like them very much. It’s just fun to beat them, and although I wouldn’t say I love it, I’m supportive of my friends when they beat me; racing is just fun. And it sure as hell beats sleeping off a hangover or going to garage sales on Sunday mornings.
No judging here, but humans sure do entertain themselves in pretty interesting (and uninteresting) ways. There was a “millionairess†on the Millionaire Matchmaker last season who considered lavishing her purse dog with pampering a hobby, and when asked about other interests over cocktails at Patti’s mixer, she answered “pink†and “Hello Kitty.†A grown woman! She also ended up choosing to go out with the hot plumber, and he made the mistake of trying to take her on a bicycle ride around Central Park. It didn’t last long and she quickly took control of the date (a big Patti Stanger no-no) and paid for an expensive, romantic dinner on a yacht. She told him he was hot and that she’d buy him a Maserati. I don’t think it ended well.
Millionairesses and plumbers aside, racing is physical, it’s dangerous, and it’s fun. It’s like flying, with a little adrenaline button that goes off every time I pass someone. I’m sure that sometimes my mom wishes that I’d trade the bikes for a magnificent purse dog and spend my fuel and tire money on pink dog sweaters and rhinestone studded collars. My mom’s not particularly girly, just, she’s so concerned about her baby risking life and limb for a nonsensical hobby that almost anything else would be better.
Friday, April 15, 2011. I’m at the track with Rick, a longtime friend and colleague, and Ross, our rocket scientist mechanic. Rick and Ross were both on ZX10Rs and, like most casual track day riders, having more fun than coke whores at a Pablo Escobar party. Serious racer girl on the other hand, well, I rode around, got my bearings, contemplated my gearing, and chatted weekend strategy with Ross between sessions. I idly wondered who would be pitted in the garage to my right, and looking to my left wondered why any man who likes women would ever name his business after “the shocker.†Even better, and little did I know at that point, this would finally be the weekend when I’d come to understand what the Team Cycleheads battle cry of “beat guts†really meant.
Lucky me. I can’t even imagine my boss, a classy dame and brilliant lawyer from Woodside, being here right now. She’s so cool, and would handle it graciously, but thinking about our occasional get-togethers at The Rosewood Sand Hill, and juxtaposing that against my tattoos and cheap beer racing scene, well, it makes me giggle a little bit. I love both worlds the same…but different.
So I was slow on Friday, but working on some suggestions that Ken Hill had given me a few weeks before. Like when everything’s sucking on the tennis court and you decide to just focus on executing great footwork, I decided to just think about leaving the brakes on 15 more feet in every corner. It at least gave me something to think about besides my laptimes.
Saturday I started to adjust my suspension a little bit. We’d taken all the preload out for Bumpywillow, and I was continuing to ride it this way at Infineon. I asked Randolph about it, asking him if maybe I should have more preload here since this track was smoother, and he looked at me like I was asking, “so, should I put on my pants first, and then my shoes?†“Um, yeah.†So I toddled back to my garage and added preload.
I actually used that phrase on Facebook during the weekend to describe a little epiphany that Mike Canfield and Ken Hill helped me have on Friday afternoon. I’ve always had a hard time turning for turn 8, and never realized that people use the brakes there to help the bike turn in. On the gas hard out of 7, some brakes, turn. Of course braking can help you turn the bike better. Why had I never tried that? I felt so silly.
Formula AFemme makes me really nervous. For one, I actually care a lot about the race. Call me an anti-feminist, I don’t care, I love the girls’ race and I want to do my best in it. Joy is an extremely worthy opponent, who beats me more often than not, and I never know how hot she’s going to be that day. And I don’t know if Jenn will suddenly turn off that smart, sexy brain of hers and dip into the sub 1:50s. On top of all that, I have massive anxiety over murdering lappers. I know I need to get by them quickly in order to outwit my opponents at this tight track, but I also worry about their erratic moves and the possibility of an error in my passing.
Starting around 11:30 on Saturday I started to feel like I had Satan’s venemous offspring inside me, trying to get out. I was beside myself with anxiety.
Turns out it was all for naught. I had a good wheelie on the start and helplessly watched Joy zoom out to take the holeshot, and I told myself to stay calm and wait for a good moment to pass. I didn’t have to freak out and pass her back right away, I could take my time. If her laptimes from practice were any indication, I would be able to remain in control of the situation. I think I passed her on the brakes going into turn 7, something I wasn’t stoked to do because she’s usually so much faster than I am through the esses. But the pass stuck and I rode like my panties were on fire the rest of the race, imagining her to be right on my butt. She wasn’t…but I don’t trust the talented Miss Higa. I’ll never let up even if she’s a mile behind me. I was relieved when I whizzed by the checkered flag in first place.
Sunday was great. I’m starting to feel like this race report’s getting super long, so I’ll give you the nutshell version: I beat most of my rivals, a few of whom are some of my friends’ boyfriends, and I especially love that. It makes me think of this:
I did 48s all day long like it was no big deal, I was pleased. I wasn’t trying to go fast, I was just trying to faster than the guy in front of me, and it worked. Wish I could do 48s in practice, but with having experienced so many of them during the race, maybe now I can remember the feeling and carry it over to my practice sessions, then step it up a little more in my races. My goal starting the season was top tens in the boy classes, and my 48s might have gotten me that last year, but everyone was going really well this past round. I’m going to have to work my ass off to see a single digit finish this year, but as long as I keep improving, if only by tenths of a second, chances are good I’ll be happy. Shoot. I’m pretty much always happy as long as I’ve got some wheels.
Motorcyclists and bicyclists don’t seem to have a lot in common. Years ago, as a motorcyclist enamored with my new, completely bad ass hobby, I used to look down my nose at the uptight, spandex-clad bicyclists huffing their ways up Highway 9, Page Mill Road, and 84, some of my favorite sport riding roads. And I’m sure a cyclist or two has shared a rude (but well deserved) comment about that guy speeding down Skyline on his “Ninja” in flip flops and shorts. But time passed, I started racing my motorcycle, and began to realize that my physical fitness was limiting me on the racetrack. So, like all the cool kids, I took up cycling.
One of the biggest surprises, other than how much more bicycle crashes hurt than motorcycle crashes, is how careless many cyclists seem to be when it comes to their safety on the road. I’ve seen it as a cyclist riding with other cyclists, and, most recently, as a motorist who got yelled at…by a cyclist.
Friday afternoon, after visiting a colleague at her home in Woodside, I got in my car and headed home. As I was turning left from Prospect onto Albion, I crept towards the narrow intersection, looking right, looking left and then pulling out into the road.
Indistinguishable yelling ensued, though I clearly heard the word “asshole.â€
I slowed, looked in my mirrors, and saw a cyclist speeding towards me on my right. I slowed to a stop, rolled my window down as he swerved onto my left, and I yelled back, “hey, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you.†More indistinguishable yelling and arm waving.
Asshole? Did he just call me an asshole? But, I’m a cyclist too! And a nice person! I’m not one of those motorists who refuses to pull over a few feet, when safe, to give a bicyclist more room. I look for bicycles. I brake for bicycles. I cheer for bicycles when it looks like their riders could use it.
I felt horrible. But then I started thinking about it, and I started to get pissed. First, he wasn’t wearing a helmet. Second, he was speeding, down a hill, a hill that I’ve sped down myself thinking, “gee, if a car pulls out in front of me from Michele’s street, I’m pretty much screwed. And it wouldn’t be their fault, it’d be mine.” The top of the hill is shady, and the bottom is sunny, making it even harder for cars to see little bikes.
Bicyclists should think and ride defensively, like good motorcyclists. Without the wheelies (actually I think wheelies are pretty rad, especially on road bicycles).
Yes, there are a lot of bad motorcycle riders out there – motorcycles who do the equivalent of “half wheeling†on cars and then get pissed off when the car changes into their lane. Motorcyclists who speed, act stupid, ride drunk, and give the rest of us a bad name. But, in general, as an experienced motorcyclist, racer, and former Motorcycle Safety Foundation instructor, and a relatively new cyclist, I’m finding more and more ways in which cyclists can be safer by employing the defensive riding techniques good motorcyclists use.
Motorcyclist Tip #1: Dress for the Crash, Not the Ride. I’ve told my family and friends that bicycling is more dangerous than motorcycling, because it is. You’re practically naked and sometimes speeding above pavement at over 30 miles an hour amidst cars and other hazards. And speaking of cars, it’s like you’re bringing a nail file to a gun fight; you don’t even have the horsepower in your wrist to throttle away from danger. The helmet is the only thing you’ve got…wear it. Most cyclists do, and I really don’t understand those who don’t.
Motorcyclist Tip #2: Be Visible. If you’re not, expect drivers to act like you’re not there. And even if you think you are visible, still expect drivers to act like you’re not there. Anyway, that neon yellow jacket might not look as cool as your shop’s team kit, but it definitely is easier to spot while driving. Do you want to be cool, or do you want to arrive home uninjured? I’ll admit it, sometimes I just want to be cool, but I know that I’m adding to my risk by not being as visible as I could be. Headlights and tail lights also increase your visibility to drivers, even during daylight. Motorcycles have headlights on all the time, and you can’t turn them off unless you unplug them. Lights help you be seen, even in the daylight.
Motorcyclist Tip #3: Plan an Escape. So, what will you do when, not if, that car pulls out in front of you from that driveway? Is there approaching traffic from behind or in front? Is there room to stop safely? Is there a path or way out behind the car? Be prepared. Expect that cars will always do the wrong thing, and you won’t be angered when they do, you’ll just be executing your escape plan.
Motorcyclist Tip #4: Don’t Antagonize Drivers. Let’s see. If I were talking with someone who had a gun, and I was unarmed, would I start insulting him? Talking crap about his mom? Probably not. I’d probably just calmly try to leave the scene. This past October, at the Levi Leipheimer’s Gran Fondo in Sonoma County, a cyclist was profoundly injured when he was hit by a car that ran. Earlier that day, the criminal was seen arguing back and forth on the road with cyclists, threatening them, with cyclists yelling and threatening right back. Way to add fuel to the fire. You’re not going to change anyone’s perspective on motorist-cyclist relations by yelling a few choice words at the car that just passed you too closely. Motorcyclists have more ability to escape danger than bicyclists do, but getting angry or engaging in a fight with a car really takes focus away from your number one goal: arriving home safely. And, it’s just not as fun.
Motorcyclist Tip #5: Trust No One. A girlfriend of mine got her first motorcycle shortly after I did. A few months into her riding, she crashed by applying the brakes too hard when a bunch of cars in front of her were stopping for no reason. She hit the ground wrong and shattered her shoulder into a dozen pieces. “I expected that the second traffic light was green, like it always is, I didn’t think the cars would be slowing.†Always expect cars to behave in irrational, backwards, stupid ways. It’s a fun game, trying to anticipate what wrong move each car (or cyclist in front of you, for that matter) is going to make.
I could probably add some things here like obey traffic laws, look ahead, and use caution at intersections, but I think the above pretty much covers everything. Yes, of course, stop at the stop signs, stop at the stop lights, and so on. But cycling safety goes way above and beyond simply following the rules. Sure, it probably wouldn’t be “your fault†in a collision between you and a car, but you’re the one who’s going to be hurting, and I’d rather be alive than right.
