lifeoutside the lines

“Your test is when?” asked my instructor as he almost choked on his coke.

The end of the week, I repeated.

“And you have never ridden a motorbike before?”

“Never” I replied, growing increasingly insecure.

“Good luck.” was all he said. I got the sense he thought I would need it.

Turns out one week is a stupidly short amount of time to go from never riding a motorbike to passing the practical examination required to get my license. I was however, not given much choice. My flight was already booked to take me from Perth to Bali on the 25th of this month, and there was only one test slot available. I had 7 days.

There were 3 things I learnt very quickly.

1. Riding a motorbike is not as easy as it looks.

Left hand, clutch and indicators. Right hand, front break and throttle. Left foot, clutch. Right foot, rear break. All of which need to flow smoothly and simultaneously to avoid stalling, falling over, flying over the handlebars or about 87 other possible ways to screw up and really hurt yourself.

My instructors personal doubt that such a sharp learning curve would prove fruitful made me think back to how long it took me to be confident driving a car. With growing dismay I remembered all those lessons with Mum and Dad, weekend trips, hours in empty car parks and quiet backstreets.

This time, instead of 4 wheels, and months of practice I had 2 wheels and a grand total of 6 hours of allotted training time to get my brain to coordinate itself with the rest of my body, and the bike.

2. Our brains are designed to screw us up.
No one likes to fail, and I am no exception. My slow turns and figure of eights sucked. My corners were wide and roundabouts were tantamount to… well, I can’t think of anything witty to say, but they sucked too.

The reality that I was going to fail began to set in. As it did, I began to screw up even more. My ability to indicate went out the window because I was so afraid of forgetting to indicate! WTF is that about? It may not sound like a big deal but when everyone in my life keeps telling me that motorbikes = meat mincers, it starts to mess with your head.

Then I remembered that I had just spent the last 7 years of my life at the leading edge of the personal development industry! Hooray! Surely there would be something in my brain that could help me upload how to ride a motorbike in a week.

If Neo can learn kung fu, I could learn to ride a motorbike.

Fear, I recalled is the assumption that at some point in the future I was going to experience more pain than pleasure or more bad than good in my life. Of course we all know that flies in the face of quantum mechanics and particle theory because those scientists with the fuzzy hair now know for certain that there are in fact hundreds of little mice behind the scenes making sure every event in our life is actuality made up of equal parts of both positive and negative – any perceived imbalance is just that. Perception.

The mice in my head however took too much acid when they were young and have since gone rogue.

They, instead of balancing me out, were insisting that failing my test was going to mean embarrassment, humiliation, self flagellation and ultimate financial poverty as payment for my examination was non refundable. One little Speilburg protégé went as far as forcing me to accept the emasculating truth that instead of me looking like Maverick racing F1-11 jets up the tarmac on his bike in Top Gun, I was going to look like Jim Carry with snot frozen to his face on his scooter in Dumb & Dumber.

My mice suck, but I know Kung Fu.

I sat down and found about 20 benefits to failing my test. Here are some examples:

If I passed after just 3 lessons I would probably be cocky and think I was gods gift to riding. Cocky and motorbikes go together like skydiving and narcolepsy. Failing, and accepting a small dose of humility to start my new life as a motorbike rider would actually be quite a good thing.

Failing would mean that I would need to take more lessons – further refining my skills under close supervision and ensuring I would look even better in front of the ladies in due course. Again, a good thing.

Failing would mean that it would take longer for me to actually buy a motorbike, saving me money and delaying the hassle of me needing to judicate over all the catfighting women who would surely be throwing themselves at me by then. Benefits everywhere.

Once the perceived positives matched the perceived negatives, *POOF* the fear disappeared, so did my nerves. I was now completely relaxed during my lessons, and could get on with actually having a good time.

3. Our brains can’t tell the difference between this world, and the real world.

There’s a story that someone made up once that talked about a prisoner of war who visualised playing golf at his local course back home while he was imprisoned. Upon his release, he discovered he had dropped 7 strokes off his handicap.

So, I watched the secret and visualised riding a shiny red Ducati 695, and what do you know! The next day, I opened the door and there it was!

Oh wait. No. That was just a load of crap.

I did however visualise every detail of the ACTIONS I would need to take to pass my test. Gear changes, head checks. To ever finer detail I focused my mind on what I needed to DO for perfect execution. I could feel the clutch engage as I went around my imaginary round-abouts, I could feel the wind hit me in the face as I accelerated up through the gears. To ever finer details I imagined myself riding flawlessly.

My examiner as it turned out was a young, athletic, 5′ll”, blond, blue eyed angry German male who wouldn’t look me in the eye. Excelent! I thought. I am not even going to make it out of the carpark and his guy is going to flunk me.

Although I was still a little wobbly on my slow turns, my execution was functionally perfect. Fate had also given me the last slot on a Friday afternoon so all my German friend wanted to do wanted to do was get the hell out of there. I passed my test with flying colors (apart from the wobbles) and immediately begun to think about all the drawbacks of now being fully qualified to ride like a bad ass.

Although boring, equanimity has its privileges.

Rock on.