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A steep turn
GUIDO goes for a fang and rediscovers the joy of keeping your nerve…
Just a few days ago, Yours etc was dancing along a snarly little park road with the humble Suzuki DR-Z400M for the benefit of the divine Ms Ellen’s camera, when I tipped in just a touch too hard.
Too early. The front let go momentarily and – you get far too much time to think about this stuff when it happens, but the first concern was I just might dump the bike, overcome by the very real worry I’d lose it and wipe out Ms E, good god how do we deal with that, will she be okay…oh look, it’s coming back, that’s alright, let’s pretend nothing happened, look cool – nothing happened. Really.
Good as the little DR-Z is, it can’t begin to imagine what a real bike can do. Like Hannibal the Hayabusa, or that lovely snarling Ducati 1098 we had a few weeks back. But it made an honest and convincing attempt to frighten the hell out of all on board.
Which got me wondering, what does it take to survive a decent thrill?
Now that I think about it, sometimes the best moments have come from the most modest of machinery. For example, years ago, I was chasing a couple of bigger bikes on a CBX250 single, of all things, and was making a little ground. There was a nasty moment when I misread the road and the little bastard grounded and went skittering across the tarmac, way into the wrong lane, then recovered, shook itself, and on we went. It would be nice to say it came down to riding skill, but that would be rotten bare-faced lie – it was good luck. And we caught the bigger bikes, eventually, when they stopped.
If I did anything right (which is questionable), it was nothing – just hang in there.
The two incidents I’ve just described happened about 20 years apart, which proves two things: 1. The basics of having a good time never change (any bike will do, if the road is right); 2. If I’m any example, the human condition involves learning bugger-all from even traumatic experience.
Well, maybe you learn a little if you survive. But even a radical change of machinery and circumstances has little effect on the desire to challenge yourself – somewhere in the genome, there is simply a drive to play at the edges.
The other day, I went for a fly with an instructor in a Cessna 172R. It was a check flight, an opportunity for the school to ensure that muggins was okay to let loose in the air with their very expensive machinery. And the instructor said we should try a couple of steep turns over the bay. This is the air equivalent of getting your knee down while riding a DR-Z at Phillip Island. Contradictory, definitely possible, and great fun.
Your whole world goes seriously sideways. Check altimeter, horizon, vertical speed indicator, horizon, turn coordinator, horizon, artificial horizon gauge, horizon, direction indicator, horizon, revs, engine ‘greens’, horizon, and the challenge is to maintain consistent height and keep calm while you have the toy flipped on its ear. (This should sound familiar to any motorcyclist…)
With myriad opportunities to stuff up, and just as you have the thing balanced nicely, you’re then asked how to recover from a spiral dive – which is the deadly result of getting just a touch too enthusiastic.
The correct answer is to throttle off, then straighten it up. Then point the nose at the horizon.
Which is pretty much also the correct answer for a feral single-cylinder motorcycle. The unspoken part is keep your nerve and it will probably be okay.
(Pic: Cessna)
You’re always welcome to get in touch (and send counsellors) via the palatial MT offices at locked bag 12, Oakleigh 3166; Or on the wire at guy.allen@traderclassifieds.com.au.
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