WHEN I FIRST BECAME AWARE OF MY CONDITION AFTER MY
accident and began therapy to deal with the paralysis, the
therapist asked what my goal was. "To be independent,"
I replied. Imagine my frustration, then, when the first task
I worked on--rolling side-to-side in bed--seemed impos-
sible. "Okay," I thought after a few days of trying, "I'll be
completely independent except for the rolling part." The
problem is, being able to roll around is integral to many
other daily activities: turning in bed, sitting up, getting out
of bed and even getting dressed all require a great deal of
rolling around. My independence would require an awful lot
of work, as I was to find out over the next few months.
The mistake I made was thinking that once my other
injuries healed up I would magically become adept at all the
new ways I'd have to perform daily tasks. Getting in and out
of a car, taking a shower, preparing a meal...all require a
whole different skill set to accomplish when you're sitting in
a chair. I find it ironic that you can draw a parallel here with
the approach many people take to riding motorcycles. They
think riding well is something that just happens--that there
is an easy way to become as fast as Valentino Rossi on the
track, or ride as smoothly as the local expert in a canyon.
I saw this repeatedly when instructing with Jason Prid-
more's Star School: I'd be talking to a student about a
certain technique, their eyes would glaze over and they had
obviously stopped listening. If I wasn't able to tell them how
to instantaneously be faster, they
weren't interested in what I had to
say. They wanted the secret. As we
joked at the school, however, the
secret is that there is no secret--
riding well is a lot of hard work, even
though the better riders can make
it look so easy. And just like people
flock to Los Angeles thinking they'll
automatically become a movie star
but end up waiting tables, the stu-
dents that want the secret usually
leave the school disappointed.
In any discipline, be it racing,
music, art, or even a menial job,
gifted people rise to the top of the
field, seemingly without breaking
a sweat. Others--like most of us--
face an uphill battle to get there.
But we can get there. The key is to
set attainable short-term goals and
work diligently to reach them. Just
as it was unrealistic for me to blindly
say I wanted to be independent on
the first day of therapy, going riding
with the singular goal of being world
champion won't get you very far.
Once I realized how difficult the
road to independence would be, I
buckled down and applied the same approach to therapy
that I've been using for years to work on my riding: an
orderly, structured path of learning the techniques required
rather than relying on brute force and sheer will. Now, more
than eight months after my accident, I'm close to indepen-
dent and ready to head home.
Another parallel: As the weeks of therapy marched on,
the tasks became harder and harder, and the last few
things I had to finish up were the most difficult. Now, rolling
around on a mat is easy. But only recently was I able to get
up in the chair from the ground, something that requires
strength and technique combined. In a similar way, as your
riding progresses the process becomes more difficult, the
gains smaller and smaller. To a more experienced rider,
something like countersteering is second nature while trail
braking into a decreasing-radius corner may call for some
more thought.
All that said, I realize now that my goal of complete
independence will probably never be fully realized--there
will always be something on the top shelf just out of reach,
something too awkward to lift. Likewise, your quest to be
a better rider should never end. You can always find ways
to be faster, smoother, safer. The process is more difficult
and frustrating as time goes on, and the improvements may
seem infinitesimal, but don't give up; the rewards of master
ing the subtleties are worth every bit of effort.