I don't learn things very linearly; I pick up new things extremely quickly to a point, and then there's a huge flattening-out of progress. After that first plateau, I start making progress again, but it's slower, and includes many more plateaus along the way. My problem has historically been that I never really *needed* to do any better than that first plateau. There have been a few things (piano lessons and French, to name two examples) in my life that, for whatever reason, it was deemed necessary for me to suffer along that first flattening-out of progress and continue up along the slow learning curve that followed. Since these things were generally decided upon externally (i.e. teachers lamenting, "carolyn, you never live up to your potential! you have to work harder!"), I would generally settle (internally) for that first plateau and never really (a) get much better than that, and (b) learn what my "potential" really *was* or how to go about achieving it. This caused no end of intense frustration growing up, as I'd always see myself doing really well at something, and then start to falter off, which would cause me to lose interest, which in turn led to not practicing, and then of course I'd never really get any better.
that's very nice, but what's it have to do with motorcycling?
So anyways, like I mentioned before, I was
having some problems doing right-hand turns. Basically, my problem
was two-fold: I was starting the turn from the very right-hand side of
the lane (and therefore forcing myself to have to turn much more sharply
than if I'd started closer to the center line), and I'd wait to really
roll on the throttle until I was certain that I'd gotten started OK, and so
I was starting the turn really late. Earlier this week, I'd found a
great street in Peter's neighborhood and was kicking some serious ass on
those righthand turns. Then I got sick and didn't ride for a few days;
fast-forward to Saturday afternoon.
Peter and I had a little bit of time in the afternoon before going out in the evening (we went to see Stomp, btw, which kicks ass. Highly recommended.), so we rode around a little. I was doing pretty well (still a little rusty from not riding all week) until Peter -- who was in the lead -- turned onto a street that ended up being a deadend cul-de-sac. I wasn't prepared for it, so I couldn't do a U-turn tightly enough; I had to stop the bike and waddle it backwards and paddle it forwards until I was facing out again. After that, I was just mentally thrown off. I guess it was because that "failed" U-turn was my first "failure" in a while, and so my mind started its usual frustration at a perceived plateau and essentially shut itself off. The whole way back to Peter's, I was shifting poorly, and not using the throttle smoothly. Pulling into the driveway, I misjudged the turn and couldn't turn tightly enough to park the bike in its usual spot between Peter's bike and his roommate's car -- instead, I straightened out and essentially parked on the sidewalk in front of his house.
I was so frustrated and so pissed that I basically turned off the bike in a huff, threw my gloves down on the ground, and started crying. Luckily for me, Peter was right there and talked me through it, and helped me to see that the frustration was actually a *good* thing -- I was frustrated not because I had messed up something that I'd practiced a whole lot, but because I "messed up" a relatively new thing (really tight turning). And, as he pointed out, I hadn't even really "messed up" -- all through both the U-turn and parking, I was in total control of the bike. I didn't panic when I realized I wasn't going to make either of the turns; in the first case, I just shifted into neutral and manually moved the bike to a better place, and in the second case, I instinctively straightend out and parked safely and in control. So, the very things that I was angry about were actually really encouraging signs that I've been practicing correctly and am instinctively getting to understand how the bike will react in a situation and how to handle it.
that was very touching.
The happy postscript to this otherwise creepily psychoanalytical entry is
that I took the bike out alone this afternoon, on Real Streets(tm) and
everything! My friend Laura was moving out of the house she'd been living in and into her own
apartment, so most of the day was spent with 80 million of our closest
friends, putting boxes into a U-Haul and then taking boxes out of the U-Haul.
By the time myself and the aforementioned 80 million people descended onto
Peter's house after the move, I was pretty peopled-out, so I decided to
take the bike for a spin.
My plan was just to practice the turns again, and just puttputt around the neighborhood, but after doing that for a little bit, I wasn't ready to go back to Peter's yet. Instead, I took a left turn and headed over to one of the many strip malls in the area. It's worth mentioning that the parking lot of this particular strip mall is the worst parking lot on earth. We figured out once that it is an actual requirement that all drivers in said lot be blind, psychologically troubled, or both, in order to operate a moving vehicle therein. Since it has already been determined in the previous portion of this entry that I fall into the middle category, I pressed onwards into the parking lot.
I drove all the way around the strip mall to the Safeway on the other side, dodging cars, SUVs, pedestrians with death wishes, stray animals, and speed bumps (well, truthfully, I didn't *dodge* the speed bumps per se, but I did aim for the flat dip in the middle when I could). I parked in a parking space between a pickup truck and an SUV, said my prayers that the blind drivers would look to see the bike before speeding into a seemingly-empty spot (they did; the bike was fine), and headed inside.
On the way home, I skipped the Parking Lot Of Death, and headed straight for a Real Street(tm). The road between the Safeway and Peter's is a pretty major street, so I got to zoom pretty quickly down the road. Zoom! I even changed lanes while going Pretty Quickly, which was something that I'd been a little nervous about.
So that was my weekend. Aren't you all glad I shared?