REMC Manager's Column for the
September 1997 Electric Consumer Magazine

How I spent my summer vacation, part II

I said I wouldn’t do that again, but I did. I said if I did do it again, at least I would not write about it again, but I am. And if I did do it, and if I did write about it, at least I wouldn’t try to apply any lessons learned to work related issues. Well, that remains to be seen, but there does seem to be a pattern developing here.

What we’re talking about is my second annual Motorcycle Trip.

Last summer I was pretty impressed with myself after completing over 3,000 miles through eleven states in eleven days. This year the tally was just under 3,000 miles through twelve states and two countries in eight days.

Did I learn anything on this trip? Actually, yes.

There is not much profound here, but maybe you can find a nugget or two which might help you along life’s road; whether you are on two wheels or four.

For example:

• An eight day vacation is not much of a vacation
  when there is a four day financial seminar stuck in the middle of it.
• I’m not young enough for that kind of a trip anymore, and probably never was.
• Twenty-four hours is not sufficient time to plan and prepare for a trip like this.
• It only takes about three hours to walk a motorcycle across Brooklyn in Fourth of July rush hour traffic.
• Don’t be in Brooklyn during Fourth of July rush hour traffic,
  unless you’re planning on staying until at least the Fifth.
• When traveling through Canada after midnight, take advantage of every
  open gas station you see because there aren’t that many.
• Ditto on Canadian hotel rooms after midnight.
• Canadians really do say "eh" a lot.
• The first recorded baseball game was played in a little town in Canada in 1838, or so they say.
• Canadian cops don’t much care if you keep forgetting that
  80 kilometers per hour is not the same as 80 miles per hour.
• New Yorkers are nicer than their reputation.
• Boston is a good ride, as long as you don’t need lane lines to feel safe.
• Always make sure your reserve gas tank valve is working before trying to stretch your gas mileage.
• Don’t try to stretch your gas mileage in the Virginia mountains.
• Pushing a Honda 750 Custom a half mile to the next exit is both embarrassing and exhausting.
  Doing it twice in one day is downright humiliating.
• Don’t expect Harley riders to wave just because you’ve got American flags
  flapping from the windshield on Independence Day.
• Don’t expect Harley riders to help push your Honda to the next exit.

There are lots more of those kinds of lessons, but the one that had me most fascinated had to do with the dynamics of motorcycle riding, and I’m not talking about the sitting-on-soreness part. Somewhere north of the border in the dead of the night I noticed something that I’ve since had confirmed as true, but I spent hours trying to analyze my "discovery" and almost wiped out several times in the process.

Here’s the lesson: turn right to go left, and left to go right, unless you’re just piddling along. It’s fascinating.

Apparently it has something to do with the wheels of the motorcycle acting like a gyroscope, but if you’re going any speed at all, you have to pull back on the right handlebar—turn right—in order to make the cycle turn left, and the other way around. Leaning helps, but that’s not what makes you turn. Since half the bikers I’ve asked didn’t realize it, and considering the thousands of miles I’ve ridden without thinking about it, I have to conclude it’s somehow natural to do the unnatural thing when your life is at stake at significant speed.

Is there some kind of life lesson in that? Got me. Sometimes I do feel like I’m beating my head against a wall trying to get somewhere doing it the "normal" way. Maybe I just need to let my instincts take over and do the unnatural thing to survive. Maybe I already have.

Maybe that’s stretching things too far.

Maybe.

7/30/97