The most honest place I know...
THE MOST HONEST PLACE I KNOW...
- Jeff Hughes.
You see it every Sunday. Everywhere we sportbike types gather together. Along with the coffee and scrambled eggs and laughter, you'll hear more exaggeration and embellishment and excuses than you can shake a stick at. Everything from how we saved that front-end tuck to why we ended up going wide in that one turn to how come we're not running up front today. We work hard to fashion that golden image of ourselves.
And then there's the track.
The track is many things. Obviously it's fun, like the very best stretch of curvy road imaginable, but without the trees and the traffic and the gravel and the cops, and run over and over again, as if by some miracle. So euphoric that it defies description. A magic place. A legal drug.
But the track is other, more subtle things, as well. It is a teacher and a guide, not just on how to ride better but also serving up lessons in some of the more far-reaching qualities that affect our lives. Things like patience and persistence, humility and fortitude. The joy of riding above one's limits. The satisfaction of doing something better than we ever though we could. Mostly, though, I love the track because of the truth I find there.
Riding a modern sportbike on the street is kind of like leaving that supermodel at her door with naught but a goodnight kiss-satisfying certainly, but leaving much to be desired. Yet to hear many street riders talk about it, you'd think they hit the ball out of the park. Some of them actually try.
Sportbikes today are so remarkably good, their performance levels so astonishingly high, that one is able to extract only a small fraction of that performance on any public road. Fact is, riding really fast on the street is a whole lot less about skill and talent, and a whole lot more about simply how big a bet one is willing to place on the table. The bet, the stakes, being you, of course.
Which leaves only the track.
Only there can anything approaching the real truth about how good we really are be found. Only there does all the bluster and bravado and exaggeration fall away to a blunt reality, the certain truth of the numbers on the stopwatch.
It's the most honest place I know.
This article originally appeared in the June 2003 issue of Sport Rider.
- Jeff Hughes.
You see it every Sunday. Everywhere we sportbike types gather together. Along with the coffee and scrambled eggs and laughter, you'll hear more exaggeration and embellishment and excuses than you can shake a stick at. Everything from how we saved that front-end tuck to why we ended up going wide in that one turn to how come we're not running up front today. We work hard to fashion that golden image of ourselves.
And then there's the track.
The track is many things. Obviously it's fun, like the very best stretch of curvy road imaginable, but without the trees and the traffic and the gravel and the cops, and run over and over again, as if by some miracle. So euphoric that it defies description. A magic place. A legal drug.
But the track is other, more subtle things, as well. It is a teacher and a guide, not just on how to ride better but also serving up lessons in some of the more far-reaching qualities that affect our lives. Things like patience and persistence, humility and fortitude. The joy of riding above one's limits. The satisfaction of doing something better than we ever though we could. Mostly, though, I love the track because of the truth I find there.
Riding a modern sportbike on the street is kind of like leaving that supermodel at her door with naught but a goodnight kiss-satisfying certainly, but leaving much to be desired. Yet to hear many street riders talk about it, you'd think they hit the ball out of the park. Some of them actually try.
Sportbikes today are so remarkably good, their performance levels so astonishingly high, that one is able to extract only a small fraction of that performance on any public road. Fact is, riding really fast on the street is a whole lot less about skill and talent, and a whole lot more about simply how big a bet one is willing to place on the table. The bet, the stakes, being you, of course.
Which leaves only the track.
Only there can anything approaching the real truth about how good we really are be found. Only there does all the bluster and bravado and exaggeration fall away to a blunt reality, the certain truth of the numbers on the stopwatch.
It's the most honest place I know.
This article originally appeared in the June 2003 issue of Sport Rider.
posted by Sopan at 12:19 AM
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