Motorcycle Riding, Grappling

Step 5: The next step will be to take this big ‘ole messy list of terrors and start to find a way to corral it, grapple with it and knock it down to size, make it manageable, workable!  I resort the items into like items, into categories of horrors.  It doesn’t have to be exacting, just items grouped by their similarity.

BIKE HEIGHT and WEIGHT

• The bike is too tall for me to ride safely
• I drop the bike in busy traffic and it’s too heavy to pick back up
• I drop the bike in the middle of nowhere, with no one around to help me pick it up, and it’s getting dark, and wolves are howling close to me, and Sasquatch is eyeing me for his lair 😉

ROUTE/PLANNING

• I’m not prepped enough for the route
• I run out of gas in the middle of nowhere
• I accidentally get on a highway and that is too fast and scares me or is a danger to me
• I accidentally get off road (dirt, gravel, back road)
• I suddenly run into a gravel road at speed
• I’m not able to find a place and/or an affordable place, for me to stay at the end of the day
• I end up riding long past my exhaustion point due to unforeseen circumstances (traffic jam, construction, weather, etc)

TIMING

• I don’t start early enough to get everything prepped to go on the trip (eg everything that needs some prep work as a result of making this list)
• I don’t leave myself enough time to complete the trip with a margin for the unexpected circumstances (I’m exhausted and need to take days off, I don’t make the mileage I planned on over the days for various reasons, I’m tired, I can’t possibly sit in that seat for one more second, etc)

WEATHER

• I encounter bad weather – starting at the wrong time of year and having to travel in unsafe conditions (eg icy, unexpected freak storm, high winds)
• It rains (it slows me down, scares me, I get hypothermia, I have low visibility, it affects my judgement)
• I hit snow in Colorado in April or really bad weather in any of the northern states
• I get stuck in a blizzard

EQUIPMENT/GEAR

• I haven’t tested my equipment thoroughly enough (bike, clothes, gear)
• I experience equipment failure (bike, clothes, gear)
• I don’t know how to use my equipment (locking luggage boxes)
• I don’t know how to do simple maintenance to be able to continue (checking oil, refilling oil, adjusting calipers, other?  What’s likely?  Battery issues, broken chain)
• I get a hole in a tire
• My Sena headset dies, taking my ease of communicating, listening to my GPS, and my music entertainment to keep my brain occupied over the long haul
• My Garmin InReach Mini satellite transponder battery dies
• I lose cell service
• I don’t have my GPS for some reason
• I lose my phone!!  Omg!  Or it gets broken or water damaged and won’t work

PACKING

• I don’t take adequate food/water/clothing for the trip
• I experience hypothermia – my heated gear dies
• I bring too much stuff from NV to AZ to be able to carry with me

MISC

• I find I’m not being comfortable going alone – I’m scared to the point I can’t move
• I experience loneliness and it gets the best of me psychologically, to the point I can’t move

PERSONAL SAFETY

• I don’t account for bad people that come across my path
• I hit something (wildlife, person, vehicle, tree, guardrail)
• I take a curve too fast
• I get hurt
• I get in an accident
• I get lost
• No one knows where in the world I am
• I unknowingly go through a state that doesn’t allow conceal carry and I get myself thrown in jail

Ok, so now I’m getting somewhere.  I don’t have dozens of things that might foil my plans.  Instead, I have a handful of categories of items that I can look at, and grapple with, individually.  I notice that a lot of items are similar.  This exercise starts bringing my terror down to size!

Some items could potentially land in multiple categories – I just place each under the heading that makes most sense to me, and I put similar items next to each other under each category – I treat this process as a work in progress.  This is, also, a good time to add any additional items as I think of them or other people bring them to my attention.

Just the process of resorting the list forces me to engage with my greatest fears for another round.  Becoming intimately familiar with all the things I can dream up that could possibly go wrong starts to lessen their grip on me.  Familiarity Breeds Attempt!!

Being thorough in this process is the beginning of my MASTERY.  I’m exploring all the ways things could go wrong, so that, rather them owning me, I can find ways to become the master of each of them.

Next step I’ll be taking is how to make all these things either a moot point, or finding a way to minimize their attendant risk.  Come on, lesssss gooooo!!   😉