[superbikeplanet.com] - It Must Be USGP Time: Edwards' Gear Going on eBay

[Ninjette Newsbot]

Sliding over the saddle, I duck to the inside. Bask in the sunshine and feel the harmony of the bike, the road and the reason come together. The tires grab the chunky asphalt and tilt to the match the moment. It’s fast and swift and marvelous.

All the ingredients of perfection.

Twisting my neck, I stare down the edge of a peripheral vision. Try to connect with what’s remotely perceptible. Watch the yellow lines comfortably contort around the side of the mountain before they disappear behind the next jutting collection of rocks and weeds. An L-Twin revolution later and I’m aiming for the apex as the bike begins to hit its marks… When I feel violence descend…

A ferociously evil, nasty gust of wind rushes down the face of the mountain. With an instant and unrelenting velocity that’s impossible to ignore or avoid.



The bike stands straight up. With deathly immediacy. The tires get tossed. Wickedly. The moment turns awkward and uncontrollable. A sense of helplessness drowns out the whirl of the engine and any remnants of joy. I feel my heart rate skyrocket while it jackhammers away at my chest. Then there’s an instant sensation of dread. A moment of panic. And a half a second later, a day which seemed destined for the divine suddenly becomes nothing but chaos as the bike simply floats three-feet towards the edge of the outside of the corner… All by itself.

Straight away I feather the brakes. Try to remain calm. Try to regain a sense of composure. And then I look up… At oblivion… And watch the last vestiges of my confidence swirl away into a rising spiral of ether in a completely unbeknownst manor. I’m alleviated of any illusions that I’m the one that’s in charge.

The sand kicks up. The rocks on the side of the road jingle. Debris soars as I continue to veer off course. The brightly shinning guardrail radiating with a sense of destiny – and beyond that lies mortal disaster. Hundreds and hundreds of feet of falling.

Quickly I force myself to snap out of it - or at least try to - and ignore the target-fixation that’s crimping my mind. Squinting at the apex while trying to look through the dust, I find myself thinking, “You’ve got to do something – Now!”

It’s an immediate and omnipresent thought. Instinctually I start pushing on the inside handlebars — and praying. To whom I have no idea, but as the bike begins to battle the atmospheric pressure it seems like a damn good idea. At a moment like this, what’s there to lose anyway?

Of course this theological indecision is nothing new, even the Greeks couldn’t quite figure out who ruled the wind. At various points in their mythological history they believed that one of seven different deities controlled the flow of air. And the confusion didn’t stop there - Most scholars believe that Aeolus was the most famous of the wind gods and there were merely three different variants of him throughout the ages. Apparently humanity has always held a certain kind of indecisiveness when it comes to convection currents.

Of course that debate, along with any other, is rather meaningless when you’re staring down your own destruction while thinking it’s a somewhat trivial foregone conclusion to the task at hand… But then, just as quickly as it cropped up, the wind hushes backs down. Or perhaps the change of angle redistributes its piloting contribution. Who knows? Either way the tires begin to bite again. The bike follows their lead. And you thank your lucky stars that today was not your day to find out what a catastrophic moment of concern actually physically feels like…

A half-dozen more moments of concern later – and that’s just on the way up - and I’m standing at the top of Palomar Mountain, listening to the bellows of the mountain as they shake the trees and bristle over the asphalt. Wondering if today is the day I finally get my comeuppance and pay for my past public roadracing sins? Is this the moment when the egregious acts of my past on this very route come back to haunt me?

Just an hour and a half ago this sort of thought process would have never crossed my mind. From all outer appearances today was a day full of potential. Full of perfection. With rich temperatures and completely clear skies, mentally I felt free from the work week and ready to exploit a solitary form of relaxation. But Aeolus, and the Mountain itself, clearly had other plans. Their collective breath seems hell-bent on destruction…

On the way back down the South side of the Mountain, the wind only gets worse as the moments of concern grow. From minor annoyance to outright damnation.

And of course that’s when our next great American roadracing superstar in training comes roaring up on my six and decides that right here and right now, in the middle of a blind corner on a completely uncontrollable day, is the perfect moment to emulate a RossiHaydenStoner maneuver and duck underneath me. I catch a glimpse of his (or her) brilliance start as they flash in the mirrors before crossing the double yellow and screaming their inline-four for all to hear. The sound lashing out at the mountain face like a whining middle child whose in desperate need of attention.

Rolling off the throttle, I brush off to the side and let our future GP promise take the corner – not that he or she really needs the lane since they’re so far off to the inside that all it would take is a mere bicycle coming around the bend and we’ll be needing the medics.

Eventually I get ‘chumpped’ twice more on the way home, once while patiently waiting behind a row of cars on CA-76 (a sweeping road that always has traffic) and the second time while slowing down for a 25 mph zone – All of which makes me wonder when humanity will wake up and stop taking their personal freedoms for granted?

The tapestry of California is littered with a bountiful supply of rich, majestic, sweeping asphalt routes that are tempered by normally brilliant weather – Yet after watching some firsthand ineptness this morning, and to be fair this has been a growing thought process the more I’ve ridden Palomar on the weekends, I can’t help but feel as if there’s a siege being waged on our marvelous public playground.

Let’s face it; The motorcycling public is at war with the preconceived notions of the vast majority of the road going public. When it comes to two-wheeled vehicles the more chances we collectively take, the more idiocy that’s put out on display, the more inherent danger we propagate right before the very eyes of the majority opinion, the more likely it is that we will lose our right to gloriously enjoy the open road.

Statistically speaking the US is comprised of just over three-hundred million individuals – the ones that ride or fantasize about riding comprise a numerically impressive yet statistically small percentage of that number. The last study I read suggested there were somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty million Americans that ride a motorcycle and/or want to ride one – so realistically it’s a niche market. The majority of the population wants nothing to do with two-wheeled products and a good portion of that group already holds sportbikes and cruisers in a certain disdain.

I’m not suggesting that I’ve never made a boneheaded maneuver before – we all do, particularly when we’re starting out – but these days I take a certain amount of pride in walking that fine line between enjoying a ride and upholding a relatively high level of public awareness and safety. Particularly on a day where there are already so many cards stacked against you.

If I’m going to open it up on a public road, I damn sure going to find a place that’s traffic free. God forbid I lay the bike down or bin it up and hurt myself that’s one thing and I can accept it. The second I put another human in danger because I can’t control my throttle habits that’s entirely different beast.

I only truly ride ragged on the track – and even that’s not all that ragged. With the growing number of trackdays, track schools, etc. there’s absolutely no reason for speed jockeys not to take their ‘need for speed’ somewhere it’s controllable and safe.

Yet going to the track only solves a part of the problem – while it puts you in an environment created for pushing limits, it’s also quite costly and doesn’t answer that basic human desire to taste, smell and see new scenery while you’re riding or passionately driving. For that you need fun public roads. The kind of roads we’re going to lose if people keep making blatantly stupid maneuvers in places they shouldn’t.

As a society, perhaps, we need to duplicate part of the German motor-going philosophy – not only did the Germans invent the first motorcycle but their culture seems to greatly understand and appreciate the need for public spaces built specifically for speed. The Nurburgring is their most famous public sport route, but they have other roadways created specifically for folks who want to push their machines. These are not exactly tracks and they’re definitely not canyon roads – rather they’re places that offer changing scenery and curvy asphalt with no cross traffic and no non-road going members of society. Roads where you pay a fee to run as fast as you want and everyone who enters acknowledges the same set of basic rules. If you want to put your knee down – that’s fine. You want to pop wheelies – that’s fine. You want to duck to the inside and cut folks off – that’s fine… But if you wreck, it costs you. If you stop traffic, it costs you. If you close the ‘route’ or track, it costs you. So there are rewards and benefits but also a system of regulations to keep folks in check.

It seems to me there is a certain moral obligation to respect the very community you become part of when you purchase a motorcycle – regardless of its horsepower or genre or marque. In a place like Palomar – where the non-motor public already is greatly opposed to the sights and sounds of motorcycling and the general roaring thunder that endlessly tolls on any given weekend - that obligation becomes paramount to the very survival of the sport of riding. It needs to be revered and respected and put on display so as to assuage the fears of those who champion a much more draconian outlook at our sport and our community.* All of us who ride hold the power to preserve the ‘natural resource’ that is riding and if we don’t, it simply will not matter how technological advanced modern motorcycles become nor whether they ship with two-hundred horsepower or just two; There won’t be anywhere fun to ride in public and the motorcycle community will lose the its free will, its inalienable rights to public spaces and the joy of a weekend ride, no matter how windy it is…




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