Modern Vespa

In his book, "Deep Survival", Who Lives, Who Dies and Why, author Lawrence Gonzales has a teenage discussion with his father about the difference between acting cool and being cool. Acting cool was apparently taking possibly deadly risks in the midst of teenage hijinks and according to L.G's dad, "There is no reason to die making your own cool".

Mr. Gonzales argues that these choices are not "stupid" or "reckless" but choices made from a strickly emotional, almost genetic place. He wonders if we enjoy the feeling of speed because it reminds us of pursing prey. I understand this because riding can be quite heady but sometimes you can push it too far.

I cannot sum up the entire book but it is a great book and something that every biker/rider who thinks he has, "The Right Stuff", needs to read. A little common sense or survival sense can go a long way to helping you to avoid that urge to do something reckless. Just because you have ridden recklessly before and escaped injury, doesn't mean that this isn't the time where you or others get hurt.

Of course this is just one aspect of the book. But check it out. I think it is very applicable to a variety of situations.

On the other hand, just because someone sees a rider doing something "reckless" doesn't mean that it is a reckless activity for the rider

This doesn't mean there aren't a ton of people out there doing dumb stuff but I have heard many people call things "reckless" simply because they don't have the skills and abilities to do the same.

I think we should get up a collection and buy a copy for Bill Dog

The theroy proposed, and demonstrated through the numerous real life and death examples within the book, is that people put themselves in risky situations, just because they totally believe that they are somehow endowed with abilities that make the activity NOT risky, for them alone.

When, no matter what they believe, the activity is very risky/dangerous.

It is about peoples ability to fool themselves or their inability to correctly assess the situation because they are driven by emotions or the fact that they have done this before and not been injured.

Read the book, it is illuminating.

You mean risky as in riding a 300lb exposed machine on tiny wheels at highway speeds surrounded by inattentive people in 2000lb cages? Or even on deserted roads where impact with a rabbit on a scooter can be fatal where in a car it would be little more than a "thump"?

I'll check it out, thanks for the rec.

Well above 25 mph all bets are off. That's about as much speed as your body was engineered for. So really the whole thing is reckless, not safe at all.

Typewritist has got it. I do things every day on the scoot that would make others wince. My choice and based on my experience. It's a calculated risk which changes dependent on circumstances.

This is a good reminder. I like to think of each ride as starting from scratch. Just because I've returned home unscathed many times before, this has done nothing to reduce the odds of something happening on today's ride. I suppose that no matter what the risky behavior (driving drunk, rock climbing, scooter riding), we build up a sense of invulnerability the more we do it successfully. I'm not discounting the role that accumulated experience plays in helping us stay out of trouble, but this does little to protect me from some idiot cager doing some idiotic thing.

Riding in London is a calculated risk. I get the impression (and it is only an impression) that this is a quite a reckless thing to do. People from outside London are often overwhelmed by the traffic.

okay - here is a far better review than mine, abiet a bit longer!

"To survive," writes novelist/journalist Gonzales (One Zero Charlie, 1993, etc.), "you must first be annealed in the fires of peril." Well, yes: and peril, though sometimes in the eye of the beholder, is a constant companion of many folks, whether they court it or not-one reason, Gonzales observes, that inner-city kids tend to do better in outdoor survival training than do suburbanites, who have far less experience with predators. Thrill-seekers who put themselves in harm's way for the sake of the adrenaline rush may have all the right gear and even a little know-how, but most of them are just ordinary Joes who, "when put under stress, are unable to think clearly or solve simple problems. They get rattled. They panic. They freeze." Cataloguing, often by way of personal anecdote, the dazzling array of possibilities by which gnarly outdoor experiences can become annihilating ones-a body surfer hits the wrong tide and gets dashed against the rocks, a snowmobiler gets chewed up in an avalanche, a hang glider augers into a mountain or a parachutist into the waiting earth-Gonzales ponders just what traits, and just what training, can increase such an ordinary person's odds of survival in tight situations, short of simply staying home. (But even then, he reckons, we get snuffed. Given that one person dies in this country every minute in a transportation accident, the death of only a dozen-odd climbers every year makes mountaineering seem a safe bet by comparison.) This work, oddly delightful for all its gruesome moments, closes with a compendium of tips for staying alive in the wild, among them the necessity of staying calm when danger rises, waiting for the fear to pass, planning what to do next, and believing that the odds are with you against all evidence to the contrary.

Like I said, it is a great read and hard to put down.

Dovetails with this idea:

It's difficult, almost impossible, for us to accurately evaluate our competencies. So says David Dunning, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Cornell University...
Why? Because our own incompetencies blind us to our incompetence.

http://gmj.gallup.com/content/102319/can-evaluate-your-own-abilities.aspx

It gets dicey when you start believing your own bs!

Great article. I love delving into the psychology of why we do what we do.

As they say, "It is a wise man who knows his limitations."

BTW, I know my first comment was flippant, but that sounds an interesting read. I say this because a lot of the comments so far seem to be along the lines of 'are you saying I'm reckless? How very dare you?' rather than focusing on the book!

There might be a cure for reckless riding. In pill form.

I am not making this up.

The pill that could cure you of motorcycling

The human body is an amazing organism, but ALL of us are different.
What may seem like a ridiculously ludicrous move to some, seems a mere shortcut to others.
Some of us NEED (in the same way as an addict) certain brain chemicals to function normally, ie. without being grumpy, aggressive, depressed. One of the biggest hits from the brain is ANANDAMIDE, followed closely by ADRENALINE, both of which I'm happy to say I need lots of to feel good.
You don't get the shite from a bottle, and ESPECIALLY not from wondering about human behaviour from an isolated desk in a library.........

You might not be making it up, but a search of the medical literature makes no mention of Dr Sapowski's hypothesis, nor is there any evidence of his having published anything subject to peer review. Basically, his theory is limited to his web site and other web sites that have picked up on it.

BTW, the CDC states that 60 million Americans carry the parasite, or about 20% of the population.

I predict we will here more about it in the near future. Sounds about right.

If there is anything I learned from my training in and experience in investigating mishaps both small and catastrophically fatal, it is that mishaps (or whatever term one wishes to use for them) do not "happen". They are caused. Further, the cause is often a chain of events, almost always including human error. Eliminate one or two links in that chain, and the mishap can be prevented.

Second, no level of skill can overcome the laws of physics. There is, for example, a point where a PTW can lean no further without going down, regardless of rider skill.

Third, performing an unsafe act without suffering a mishap does not make the act "safe". You just beat the odds. Taking a turn at a speed which forces you into the oncoming lane may work out as long as there is no oncoming traffic, but that lack of traffic has nothing to do with your skill or "safety". That's luck. As one of my mishap investigation instructors stated, and I later sadly found to be true, people all too frequently admit in a mishap investigation involving an unauthorized act, "I don't understand why I had a crash from doing that. It never happened any of the times I did it before."

Hopefully, riders stay within the normal operating limits of their machine as well as their personal skill limits. Hopefully, riders keep their skills hones. Hopefully riders realize that there is a point where physics takes over and skill offers no further help.

I've posted before and say again, virtually all responsible studies of fatal PTW accidents find that the majority of the cause factors were behaviors totally within the control of the PTW rider.

Aviator47

+1

The voice of reason coupled with personal experience is like beautiful melody.

Great comment.

TYPEWRITIST if you run into either one of these rabbits in/on anything your pretty much screwed

I am sorry, but this guy's statement about infection rates with Toxo are crap. If this were the case, then there would be WHO statements about worldwide infection rates to back it up, and probably an advisory from the CDC about soil contact in France.
I have seen CT scans of people with Toxo cysts in their brains, and it's not pretty, nor would it be allowed to go unrecognized if 68% of a population were infected. And while it does alter rat behavior, it has not been shown to do the same in primates.

AAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!

Look at the size of it's teeth!!!!!

I was surprised but these photos are REAL. Scopes investigated and found the rabbit weighed 18 pounds. But he is small compared to Humphrey at 28 pounds (2 stone)



http://tinyurl.com/ccocw9

It's on the internet, Leia. It has to be true.

Hope all is well there. Miss ya!

On the positive side of riding and your brain:

Study finds riding motorcycles useful for brain training
Thursday 05th March, 06:09 AM JST

TOKYO -
A Tohoku University study group and motorcycle maker Yamaha Motor Co said Wednesday they have found riding motorcycles useful for brain training. The group, led by Ryuta Kawashima, a professor who is known for brain research, looked into brain functions as measured by devices put on the heads of 21 males riding motorcycles and found their brains' prefrontal areas activated. The area covers memory, information processing and concentration functions.

In another test, 22 males who had licenses but did not ride motorcycles often were divided into two teams-one for riding motorcycles for two months and the other abstaining. The motorcycle-riding team demonstrated improvements in memory, space recognition and other functions of the prefrontal area. The group and Yamaha said past research data have indicated the prefrontal area does not work as much when driving an automobile.

''Balancing and other sensitive control functions are required for riding motorcycles,'' said Kawashima. ''Any motorcycle rider's brain may become more tense in order to process information actively during riding.''

http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/study-finds-riding-motorcycles-useful-for-brain-training

I think I might just get a copy of that book. It sounds very interesting.

For the past two Monday evenings I've been working on a 2 hour progressive ride toward the coast and back.
Most of it is on two lane A roads where 65 - 70 mph is possible with lots of little twisty bits to break up the straights.
Now, to ride these roads that I know well at speed gives me a greater thrill than most other activities that I can think of but at no point do I ever put myself or others at risk.
Apart from in the rain I ride with confidence but never wrecklessness.
I pretty much know my parameters and eventhough it's tempting sometimes to outstep them I like my limbs the way they only have one bend in them and the way my face looks so if I'm ever going to become a cropper I'd like it to be someone else's fault and not mine.
You see I'm quite dull. I don't drink, smoke or take any recreational drugs but riding and riding well gives me a buzz beyond anything else.
It's one of the few things I can do with confidence and if it involves a bit of risk to truly enjoy it,well so be it.
By that I don't mean there has to be risk to enjoy it but it certainly adds to the sensation when you think of what could go wrong.
As for riding in London I ride slower because there are more things getting in the way and there are so many variables which truly make you aware of your vulnerability so I'm happier in the country.
When you are on a dry wide open road with no junctions, very few cages and obvious apexes it's hard not to ride with a smile on your face.

Bill X

I worked with Toxo back in the 70's (actually raised it and sold the antigen to labs) and most of what has been said here is BS. The prevalence of Toxo varies wildly from country to country with only about 6+% of the population in UK being positive for antibody, 10 to 11% in the US, and over 68% in Brazil.

There was a stupid scare caused by a women's magazine article back in the 70'S that it would kill your unborn baby and that it all came from cats. So tens of thousands of cats were disposed of to make the world safe from Toxo; in the US mind you.

While there has been some chatter about psychological effects, I am unaware of any peer reviewed research on it.

[And I wouldn't take that author too seriously based solely on his hair and beard.]

Funny thing you should mention

Here's the CDC's page on the subject. But since it's on the internet, feel free to disregard it.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr4902a5.htm

I am sure that Al's tongue was firmly in cheek when he said that about the internet.

With respect to antibody immune assays as a measure for infection rate, there is a tendency to conflate exposure to disease. If your body mounts an effective immune response due to exposure to a pathogen, that doesn't necessarily mean that you have clinically significant disease. Additionally, the IgM assay used is very non-specific, so many false-positive results arise. IgA antibody identification for Toxo is more specific, but also more expensive, and not used as often.

If folks are really worried about Toxo, don't eat undercooked meat, or dig in soil with your bare hands. Those are more prevalent routes of infection than the poor cat.

I'm having trouble finding CDC reference to:

The new drug ­called co-trimoxazole­ has been proven ten times more effective than previous remedies against the condition Toxoplasmosis ­a bacterial infection Dr Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University says is unusually common in motorcyclists, and which he believes could have contributed to our desire to ride the things in the first place.

The underlined is what I was referring to as having no other proponents, literature nor peer review. Just Sapolsky's "belief", unsupported by references, data or collaboration.

And yes, there was an element of tongue in cheek, but I still find his "belief" unsupported. However, I never challenged that Taxo exists or raises other concerns.

I pointed it out because it was an intriguing hypothesis. Odd that people would get worked up about it to the point of denialism, since it wasn't presented as anything more than an interesting side note.

But hey, it's the internet, where everything is a pissing contest.

Not sure what "denialism" is, but I tend to recognize bad (alleged) science fairly well, and simply identified this as such.

Emphasis on "intriguing hypothesis". Bad science comes later in the process.

Wait, if it is a bacteria in our brains that is making us ride....

then that makes US the ZOMBIES!

And now my two threads have joined forces to be come one giant bandwith eating, MEGA WASTE OF TIME! SUCKING IN ALL THOSE WHO COME NEAR!

I was tampering with forces I could not possible comprehend!!!

God help us all!

TECH the current biggest rabbit in the world is a 42lb bunny in England Almost 3 1/2 ft long Continental giant. My French Lop was 14lbs and i thought he was big

Remember, if taking risks was evolutionarily stoopid, the genetic traits that predispose men to do it would be gone from the gene pool long long ago.

that's not a rabbit, that's a panda good grief. imagine the carrots it gets through. and poop the size of golf balls.

belkwilith started this? u're not still mad at the sportbiker who accelerated between you and your hubby ru?

I thought it was a bear with big ears.

It could get it's own cartoon series.

Bill X

Our furry carrot crunching friends are now riding PTWs? Wow, evolution IS gathering pace...!