#life

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I found myself at the top of the longest staircase I’d ever seen. My family and I were on a six-mile hike along the Great Wall of China, and we’d just traversed miles of the unrestored wall, clambering over stones that had fallen out of place and pushing through the trees that had grown in the centuries since the Wall’s construction. I’d expected the going to get easier once we reached the area that had been restored just 45 years ago, but this length of stairs pulled me up short. We’d encountered similarly steep sections of steps in 20-30 foot chunks along the wall but nothing like this. In the time of the wall’s construction, the terrain it traversed dictated its shape since the high explosives and heavy machinery we take for granted in modern construction weren’t available to lessen the mountain’s angles to suit those of humans on the wall.  

Not a week ago, I was barreling down a tight road in Baja comprised of deep sand at about 70 mph. I love riding in the sand. It doesn’t intimidate me, and I enjoy it. You see, I began riding off-road in southern California where the sand is deep and rocks are aplenty. To quote Bane in The Dark Knight Rises, “Oh, you think darkness sand is your ally. But you merely adopted the dark sand; I was born in it, molded by it.” I’m no pro desert racer, but I was living out fantasies of being one for the last seven days in Mexico. As I ripped through deep sandy trails, I thought back to an analogy someone once told me.

The asphalt and tar strips are baking. When they throw the red flag on the first lap, you can guess what happened. Somebody screwed up and made a bloody mess out of things and you have to trundle back to the hot pit. If it was a three-wave start, it’s chaos – you are baking in your leathers, and now you have to start thinking. A rational human being would be thinking about what poor soul just augured in somewhere and brought out this red flag in the first place. But you’re not remotely rational, you’re a racer.

Over the course of my riding career, I’ve had some of the most common motorcycling mishaps, like putting my foot down on something slippery at a stop and dropping my bike – in front of a group of people (journalists on one recent occasion). Or tipping over in Meridian, Miss., because I hadn’t yet mastered the art of using the throttle and clutch to keep the bike from falling to the inside of a low speed turn.