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Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater Sun, 03 Apr 2011I find myself, gentle reader, facing a bit of a conundrum. A dilemma, if you will. It is as regards racing. I am sitting at the race track even as I type this, sitting out a race. It's raining, and honestly the last thing I want to do is get out on a wet track. That only adds to the conundrum. The problem is that when I'm out riding around the track, I find myself unhappily repeating, over and over again, "Why am I doing this? This isn't any fun!" in my head. Then I get away from the track, and think to myself, "Oh, it wasn't that bad, and they're fun people, and all the rest of it is quite enjoyable." The root of the problem is one of those fundamentals of being Ian which may not be clear to people who are not me. That fundamental is "risk avoidance." This may sound odd to people who are not me: obviously, I engage in risky pursuits. I fly small planes. I race motorcycles. Even more dangerously, I ride motorcycles and bicycles on the street. I wouldn't have a problem with skydiving, although I also feel no particular desire to do it. And yet, I do all these things in what I will call, for your benefit, a "controlled risk" way. Controlled risk means that I ride a motorcycle particularly with an eye toward doing it safely and well. I always wear all reasonable riding gear. If someone came out with airbags I could retrofit on my little motorcycles, I would probably do it. I control the risk of the situation to levels which are tolerable for me. There's still inherent risk, of course, which can't be avoided. In that regard, racing is far safer than riding on the street -- there are no minivans driven by inattentive people to slam into me on the track. Even so, when I'm racing, there are boundaries over which I don't want to cross. They're not absolute safety boundaries, because I see my fellow racers cross them all the time. But they're my boundaries. I started this whole racing thing because I wanted to get more track time, and push my skills. Although I have certainly improved (my times started around 2:45, and are now around 2:13 when I'm at the top of my form), there are still certain boundaries that I can't seem to cross. And that's the vital point: I don't want to cross them. I see no value in it, no return. This raises the obvious point: if I've reached the limit of what I want to do, why am I still doing it? Why spend hundreds of dollars for a weekend of riding around a track questioning my own sanity the entire time? As I came out of practice this morning, I had virtually resolved to quit. I actually offered to sell someone one of my bikes (which they either didn't hear, or chose not to respond to). I just sat out a race (it's still roaring around behind me) on what, in Seattle, is the flimsiest of excuses. So why am I still doing it? I also seriously considered packing up and leaving. A trait I seem to have inherited from my Scottish ancestors is a certain value-for-money sense, and I'm pretty sure dropping nearly $250 then skipping out on the main event is not good value for money. But that, honestly, is the only thing keeping me here at this point. But then, there's the counter-argument. It goes like this: Ian, you're so damned straightlaced in the rest of your life, why not take a chance every once in a while? You've already demonstrated that crashing isn't the end of the world (having done it three times so far). Why not push yourself? Why not make it a challenge to yourself, to go out and ensure you haven't died entirely inside? And I don't really have an answer for that. I would prefer to think that I'm not the world's biggest pansy, and that I can push myself every once in a while to get out and do something that I'm not good at, do something that actually has some risk. (The whole "not being good at it" thing is also an important, if much more vain, factor.) There's where it all falls. I honestly have no idea if I will attend another race, or if I'll even get out on the track again today. Why push your self to keep doing something, when you've been internally declaring your own dislike for that thing for well over a year? Posted at 12:28 permanent link category: /motorcycle Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net. |