Conservation of motion

This past winter was not friendly to motorcyclists. Normally, there's that week in January where it gets darn right near hot. As I am a bee keeper too, I keep my eyes on the weather. When you get that sixty degree day in January you rush out and slap pollen patties on the hive and feed the bees some. If you're lucky you get stung. All the motorcyclists rush into town and the girls from the women's college wear wife beaters. Everyone is happy.

It never came this year. It's the end of March and I'm still riding every time with an eclectic vest. Anyhow, this winter I tried hypermiling in my car. Basically, hypermiling is driving without braking. There's a lot more to it than that but, really, that's it. It's also accelerating slowly. Anyhow, it was very interesting. What struck me about it is that it's a lot like riding motorcycles really fast.

Let me explain. To drive without breaking you have to look really far ahead. You have to think about what will happen as well as what is happening. For example, my route to work has a lot of lights. I watch the light on approach from as far away as I can and decide how to adjust my speed so I can coast through it. But there is the looking, looking far away feels like nothing else. Looking far away while moving.

It sounds a little funny but I feel like I'm coming of this winter with my motorcycle skills better intact. When hypermiling in I try and predict gaps that I can slot my car into, sometimes I go into turns in the car kind of hot, because traffic speed dictates it and because I don't want to burn off that precious energy by braking. The only recourse is to look through the turn and smoooooth on through. Sometimes the tires squeal a little.

So, its been pretty amazing. Hypermiling avoids wasted energy. Fast motorcycling also avoids wasted energy. There is a slight difference in that in fast motorcycling your trying to minimize uncontrolled energy reaching the frame, suspension or, mostly, the tires' contact patch. In both cases it's all about smoothness.

But that I didn't expect was the same kind of curtain. Good riders look ahead, make predictions and they think about where they will wind up. The faster you go the further the "event horizon" the distance that you think to, how far you reach out with your mind and your eyes. The world gets bigger.

I took a bit of a pleasure ride after work today. It was cold, hard tires, frozen road. I went into the hills to visit friends a take a loop around a local "racer road". It was interesting how far I pushed out my event horizon once away from dangerous cars, with a good line of sight. I think it was the memory of this road at speed. Like tying your shoes, it's automatic.

It was a little like the Frank Lloyd Wright effect. The noted architect employed a technique whereby he used tiny entrances to make the interior spaces seem big. I have to say that my commuter motorcycling entrance to this year with it's short lines of sight and 90 degree corners and stop and go made the world seem little, like winter that closes us into interiors. It's not a bad thing. I've said that here in the north we learn to love each other in those hardest months. We learn to conserve our motion and be careful. It's like riding in the cold. You don't want to upset the frame, or suspension or tires. They have to work together. You could slip, you need to slow down and think in the close quarters of cold months.

When spring comes it is all the more glorious for it. My loop on the racer road, by the spring melt river, I looked deep into corners, a distance suited for a speed far greater than my cold hard tires could cope with. In looking that far into corners I had a taste of summer weather that not travel brochure could ever offer. For a moment the world opened up again to a place that I could employ the techniques of a winter's study, to where the wind rushing by me would be pleasant and warm.