Motorcycle Riding, Oh, the Horror!!

After I set a tentative BHAG for myself, riding LuLu, my Triumph Tiger 800xc 2000 miles from Arizona to Ohio, in the month of April, I move onto the next planning step…

Step 4:  Now, I get into the serious planning phase, putting finger tips to laptop keys.  I do a Stoic Inversion process on my BHAG.  If you’d like to read up a bit on this powerful thinking approach, skip over to read Inversion: The Crucial Thinking Skill Nobody Ever Taught You by James Clear.  The way that I use this idea is, basically, to ask myself, “How Would I Fail to ride LuLu 2000 miles solo?”

I begin brainstorming answers to the question with as many of the messy, awful, terrifying possibilities as I can possibly dream up. It’s the ginormous “What if??” list.  And, here’s what that looks like…

• I’m not prepped enough for the route
• I don’t start early enough to get everything prepped to go
• 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 possible sit in that seat for one more second, etc)
• 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)
• I find I’m not being comfortable going alone
• 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 (checking oil, refilling oil, adjusting calipers, other?  What’s likely?  Battery issues, broken chain)
• I get a hole in a tire
• I don’t take adequate food/water/clothing
• I experience hypothermia – my heated gear dies
• I run out of gas in the middle of nowhere
• I don’t account for bad people that come across my path
• I experience loneliness and it gets the best of me
• My Sena headset dies, taking my ease of communicating, listening to my GPS, and my music entertainment
• I hit something (wildlife, person, vehicle, tree)
• I get hurt
• I get lost
• No one knows where in the world I am
• My Garmin InReach Mini satellite transponder battery dies
• I’m not able to find a place and/or an affordable place, for me to stay
• I unknowingly go through a state that doesn’t allow conceal carry and I get myself thrown in jail
• It rains (it slows me down, scares me, I get hypothermia, I have low visibility)
• 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
• I accidentally get on a highway and that is too fast and scares me or is a danger to me
• The bike is too tall for me to ride safely
• I end up riding long past my exhaustion point due to unforeseen circumstances
• I accidentally get off road
• 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 😉
• I drop the bike in busy traffic
• I get in an accident
• I hit snow in Colorado in April or bad weather in any of the northern states
• I get stuck in a blizzard?
• I suddenly run into gravel at speed and wreck
• I stop and don’t notice that I’m stepping into a pothole or that I’m on the crown of the road that drops off on each side and I drop the bike

Well, if that doesn’t throw ya’ off the thrill of an adventure, I’m not sure WHAT in the world would!!

As I wrote down all the things that could go wrong, terror gripped at my heart.  So much was unknown!  And, so much of what could happen was really, really bad… like, awful!!

But, if I know anything about this process, I know that that is a natural first step in the process, and to not pay the anxiety too much mind.  Fortunately, I’ve worked myself through this before, know what purpose this little exercise serves, and that all I have to do for the moment is… BREATHE, in, then out!!  Over and over again.

And, to listen to my self-talk which always centers around how I don’t have to take a single other step past this one if I don’t want to.  Also, to trust the overall process to get myself where I want to go.

In my next post, I’ll do something with this nightmarish list of horrors!!  No worries, the shock and horror will quickly get cut down to size, dispelled by turning on my grey matter, and applying a little bit of organization and imagination to it!!