Balance is one of those things you don’t think much about until you lose it.
On a motorcycle, it’s obvious when you don’t have it. The bike is unsteady. You dab a foot. You tip over in what often feels like slow motion. But life is a little less straightforward.
For the last several years, I was in full hustle mode. I worked nonstop, skipped days off, convinced myself that if I just pushed a little harder, produced a little more, or moved a little faster, eventually things would feel manageable again.
The tricky thing about life getting out of balance is that it rarely happens all at once. It happens slowly and quietly. One late night becomes routine. One canceled day off turns into months of telling yourself you’ll slow down later. The imbalance stops feeling temporary and simply becomes normal. The more I accomplished, the more was expected of me. It consumed nearly everything, and I forgot that life was supposed to contain things besides productivity.
It’s amazing how many hours suddenly appear in a day when you finally leave a situation like that. Sometimes hitting a breaking point puts things into perspective. I’m back in the gym, playing sports, and making time for hobbies and projects around the house. Not to mention I’ve been able to spend time tinkering with motorcycles just for fun again. Recently, that tinkering has been on a trials bike.
I’d dabbled in trials riding years ago. In high school I had a Gas Gas TXT 280 I’d mess around on in the backyard, hopping logs and rocks with the confidence of someone whose body still believed crashing had no long-term consequences. But that was a long time ago.
I’m now the proud owner of an older Sherco ST 2.9 that requires nearly as much finesse in the garage as it does on the sections. When I signed up for my first observed trial put on by my local trials club, I knew the basic idea: keep your feet up, stay in bounds, don’t stall, don’t crash. Lowest score wins – one of the few sports where your goal is to avoid scoring points.
Round 1 didn’t exactly go to plan. A mechanical issue knocked me out for most of the first loop. I DNF’d, rode the remaining loops as practice, and tried to absorb what this strange, technical sport was actually asking of me.
Round 2 went suspiciously better. Better enough that I somehow found myself standing on the podium in 1st place. Beginner’s luck? Almost certainly.
Round 3 was a harsher teacher. The sections were rocky, technical, and humbling in all the ways trials riding specializes in. Nearing the end of the three and a half hour time limit, I turned in my final score card and b-lined for the truck, where I promptly lay down because that’s all my body could handle. I felt like I’d just finished a hard enduro course in record time.
Trials riding is balance in its purest form. Not speed. Not horsepower. Balance. The bike moves underneath you. The terrain changes constantly. The instinct, especially when things get sketchy, is to tense up and muscle your way through, but that rarely works.
The better approach is maddeningly counterintuitive. Relax. Stay loose. Make small corrections. Trust your traction. Accept that perfect control is an illusion. I didn’t expect a niche motorcycle sport to mirror my life back at me, but there it was.
For years, I approached life the way a beginner attacks a difficult trials section: death-gripping the bars, overthinking every move, trying to force outcomes through sheer effort. And just like on the motorcycle, the harder I fought for control, the more exhausted and unstable I became.
Balance, I’m learning, isn’t about holding perfectly still or dividing your time into neat equal parts. It’s dynamic. It’s recognizing when you’re leaning too far in one direction and having the awareness, and maybe even the courage, to put a little weight on the other peg.
Marisa is the newest member of Rider’s editorial team. She wrote a profile of motorcycle designer JT Nesbitt for the June issue, and her Costa Rica travel story is on page 42.