Story by Justin W. Coffey
I don’t know how to sit still, to take it easy, or “just relax.” My father says I’m anxious, impatient, and generally excitable. And he’s not wrong. I value time more than money or material possessions, treating it as an all-to-scarce resource that should not be taken for granted. That can lead me to overdo it. All of it. Even motorcycling.
For the past year I’ve dedicated a great deal of time to improving my enduro riding skills. I’d cut out around lunch, drive 45 minutes to my local OHV park, and ride singletrack for a few hours, heading home just before rush hour. Oftentimes my van was the only vehicle in the staging area on a Tuesday afternoon. And aside from some local wildlife, I was the only living thing crisscrossing the desolate desert landscape just north of the Phoenix Valley. When the summer swung around, my weekday rides turned into weekend camping trips to the north, bookended by campfires and likely one too many hot dogs.
I didn’t think I was riding too much or taking any unnecessary risks, though. Sure, my weekday rides were solo excursions a long way from home or help, but I never pushed myself beyond what I knew I was capable of. That is, until I was invited to race a GNCC at Watkins Glen in upstate New York.
I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say I had an accident, one that left me with a handful of broken ribs, a lacerated liver, and a punctured lung. Greg would say I should have been in an airbag vest (see his review on page 44).
The accident and resulting injuries forced me to slow down. Hell, it forced me to stop doing just about everything, including tying my shoes. Time fell through my fingers. Days turned into weeks. Stasis set in. A couch potato I had become.
The recovery process was slowed further by the need to assist my father through an unexpected cancer treatment and subsequent recovery, which, all told, kept me off a motorcycle for nearly three months.
In the past decade, that’s the longest span of time I’ve spent apart from a two-wheeled machine. I wondered how much I’d lost, how diminished my skillset had become, or how slow my pace might be the next time I hit the trail. I was anxious to get back on a bike, not wanting to waste any more days on the couch.
When I returned home during the most unbearable stretch of summer, my first order of business was to load a bike onto the back of my van and head north toward cooler temperatures and some of my favorite singletrack.
The sound of my Italian 2-stroke idling impatiently against a tree felt like the summation of my last few months. My heart had rattled inside my broken rib cage, anxious for the next opportunity to roll on the throttle and let the world, my worries, and my wasted days blur past in a sage- and sand-colored mélange.
I spent a few hours on my bike that afternoon, navigating tight, technical trails in temperate weather. It was the sort of Saturday I had been daydreaming about. But as much as I had missed these moments, and as strange as it may sound, I couldn’t help but be grateful for the time my injury had afforded me – a time when my father needed me the most and when I really needed to, well, just relax.
Injuries and health issues have a way of putting things into perspective. Time, namely. Because we don’t get as much of it as we’d like to think, and how we spend it can often be frivolous. The time I spent not riding wasn’t wasted. It was used. It allowed my body to heal from the injuries I’d sustained and provided me with the opportunity to aid in my father’s recovery.
Sometimes the world conspires to keep you off a motorcycle – arbitrary tasks, unexpected injuries, or a belated workload consuming those late afternoon hours you could have spent on the trail. But maybe that time away from a handlebar is just what you needed. A moment to reflect on the rides you have taken or to plan new ones. Or maybe those hours and afternoons were better spent with someone that needed your time more than you did.