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NOT UPSTANDING
AUGUST 2021
By Duncan Bennett, Member #4171
T
he only thing we have to fear is crashing our motorcycle…”. If Franklin D. Roosevelt had said that rather than about fearing fear itself in his 1933 presidential inaugural address, he would certainly have carried the motorcyclist lobby along with him. Everyone else would perhaps have thought it a bit specific, but nonetheless understood what he was getting at. Cindy’s and my history of crashing is fairly middle-of-the-road, and in fact has often occurred in the middle of the road. Like a Texan BBQ restaurant, ribs and lower joints have been the popular breakage specials, but the strain and bruise “sides” have extended over a much larger menu selection. The physical damage has been reasonably visible and the recovery has been annoying albeit quite short, but what about the mental? Back to the opening sentence from FDR. Having hurt myself, once the physical damage is behind me the greatest challenge becomes riding in similar circumstances and conditions to the painful previous experience. So some examples:
that ever. I’d actually made it off the beach, and mentally relaxed on the hard surface with a fine patina of sand over the top. Car heading toward me forced me to change my line, and next thing I knew I’d high sided and landed flat on my back. Three big learnings from this; No.1 is work out what it was you did wrong so you don’t ever do it again (I think I touched the front brake while moving to the other side of the track), No.2 is have the right gear on. I didn’t figure out No.2 until after Crash 2. No. 3 learning was that adrenalin can get you from Double Island Point to Rainbow Beach town riding through very deep sand with extremely painful broken bones. This crash certainly didn’t improve confidence riding in sand, even though I didn’t really crash in the sand, and it took until Tasmania Off-Road Skills training in 2015 near Strahan to overcome the fear of the fine dry granular stuff. Crash 2
Crash 1
Crash Site 2: Lower Tenthill
Crash Site 1: Rainbow Beach Beach Four completely fractured ribs from my first crash coming off a hired DR400 on the land side of Rainbow Beach at Double Island Point in 2013 (top birthday present from Cindy). Hadn’t been on a bike in years, and not in sand like
This was July 2015 out near Gatton, Lower Tenthill to be precise. On the bitumen, turning right up another bitumen road. New tyres, not going very fast, things were a bit damp though. What could possibly go wrong? Farm vehicles could have tracked a thin layer of mud into the intersection, and someone could cut the corner a bit, that’s what. The front just disappeared, and unfortunately my reflexes were cat-aftertriple-shot-expresso-like so as I headed into the low side I managed to get my right foot down. On the outside though, so approximately 350kg
