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Kicked the monkey off of my back
A while back, I had... an incident. I think I mentioned it here. My boss' house, way up in the Hollywood Hills, is on a twisty street that's very narrow and cut into the side of the mountain that leads up to the Hollywood sign. To make the road somewhat level, the houses on the uphill side are cut in with some bizarre steep driveways. The boss' driveway is more than a 45-degree angle for the approach, a narrow paved ramp up to a wide landing pad big enough for three cars and our fleet of six bikes. There's an equally narrow and steep down ramp to the street. It's steep enough that I wouldn't dare try to drive my low Fiesta ST up, as it's still pristine 11-year old facia would auger into the pavement. Our 2-wheel-drive CRV just churns it's Kumhos half-way up.
I had never really thought about riding up the inbound driveway. Just throttle, aim, and climb. Due to the tight turn before the driveway you can't really see where everything is parked until you're committed to the climb. I just did it. Till one day, half-way up, boss' girlfriend's Volvo was parked in a slightly different spot, and as I tried to course-correct, I pulled in the clutch and fell over. It was sudden and startling. I did a tuck and roll away as the bike went past the point of no return. My left leg was on the downhill side of the approach and had nowhere to go looking for ground to stabilize the bike. The boss heard the crunch (also my right hand zinging the throttle to the moon as I went over).
He came out with a laugh. A cop bike is a rolling roll bar, so no damage to speak of, the crash bars on all of the bikes have scars. The only other part that touches ground is the mirror, and it folds in on impact leaving a slight scratch that was already there from dozens of drops during service. My Helite airbag vest had gone off startling me even more though. He said "Oh good, you got to see how the airbag works. It's good experience for you!" Took us both to lift the 800 pound beast from falling on the downhill side, and we pushed it to the landing pad main driveway. He laughed it off, saying "We've all done it, don't worry." I was shaken though.
His garage is HQ for the company, and it's very common for me to go there after a drop-off, to pick up supplies and bike parts, work on a bike, or meet up with one of our other riders. Now I felt like the driveway was some impossible mountain. The ride home from his house puts me on a different trajectory than my usual route coming back from the blood research lab. I'm on the 101 in the thickest Hollywood traffic with no carpool lane to take advantage of. It funnels through the center of Downtown LA. Coming from the lab, I'm on the 405, riding the most crowded freeway corridor in the U.S., but I have a wide divider between carpool and regular lanes to take advantage of. My confidence was a bit shaken on that ride home through LA. But, I got home. Doing some work on the bike, I slipped in my own driveway and dropped it again. Twice in one day. I was struggling to lift it when an Amazon driver in my cul de sac came by and offered to help. She held the brake lever while I used all of my strength to lift the bike.
Now my mind was really sort of damaged. I could thread this bike through any traffic you could throw in front of me, but now fear of dropping the bikes had stuck to my back like the proverbial monkey. A week later, the boss asked me to swing by on a Sunday afternoon to meet some new riders he was thinking of hiring, and to give them "The Test". Putting them on the service bike and into Hollywood traffic to see how they do. As the "Chief Rider", it's my resposibility to sign off on new riders as far as confidence, competence and understanding of the job. I'm supposed to be the best rider we've got. I like to think that I am. Approaching the boss' house, fear started looming. I got to the bottom of the driveway and stopped. The new guys were already there, and were chatting with the boss inside the house. I craned my neck to see what my approach was going to be. I had never done that, I had just given the bike throttle and gone for it. My right foot was in a sandy spot in the street, I was leaning over to see my line up the driveway, and lost my footing. The bike fell over on the right side in the street.
Oh man, hope the new guys didn't see that... I struggled to lift the bike, as the boss came out, saying "Well you do like to make an entrance!" We both lifted the bike and I hobbled it up and met the new guys. I was more than embarrassed.
My confidence with that driveway was gone. Every time I went from then on, I parked on the street below. I made up reasons... well, the gardener is working up there, I don't want to get in his way...
Everywhere else, no problem. I trained the new guys, riding hundreds of miles with them through the thickest traffic imaginable. A few times, I had no choice but to ride up to the top. I needed to swap tires from one bike to another. I stopped at the bottom, stared at the top, and cautiously throttled up, nearly stalling half-way. But, I got there. I can do this... I don't want to, but I can.
Not too long after that, I was clearing old videos off of my GoPro's SD card. I dumped the contents on my computer and glanced at each before deleting them. The footage was on my CB1100 or NC750X, and was just threading through traffic. Except for two videos, showing me riding both of my bikes to the boss' house and charging up that driveway like it was the easiest thing in the world. I started thinking... if I dropped my CB, I'd be shattered, and here I had ridden it up that driveway plenty of times without a thought. I had ridden the NC up there more times than the CB. No problem.
I started thinking... what changed me? I wasn't thinking about it, I was just doing what made sense. Speed is stability. Come to the hill, look up the hill, give it throttle, stay off the clutch and brake till you get to the top. Look where you want to stop, not at the cars you want to avoid on the way up. There's nothing more too it than that. I shed the thought I had put in my brain that said "Dammit, you're supposed to be the best rider in the group, prove it" and thought "It's just another hill, and it never bothered you before you dropped. Just ride up it."
So, next time I went, I just throttled, aimed at the empty space at the top between the cars and other bikes, and I ended up there. No drama. I've done it several times since, and realized it's not hard, as long as I don't let it eat me up. If I can do it with my most prized bike, I can do it with a beat up old cop bike. Easy peasy.
You know what? I actually would like a pickle.
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Kicked the monkey off of my back
