MM MECC ANICA

The morning starts off with excitement as I walk to the garage to finally ride my bike this year after rebuilding it. Today is going to be awesome; I was ecstatic as I haven’t ridden in almost 8 months.

… you never know …

As I back the motorcycle off the stand, the tire slips and 400lbs tip perfectly applying all the weight of the bike onto a beautifully crafted carbon fiber rally tower, cracking it and bending the brackets it is attached to. A part that is not only expensive and hard to find, but fairly critical to the ride-ability of the bike today. Sad, upset, frustrated, I stew; man this fucking sucks!

… you never know…

I almost give up on the day, sit in the emotions and then decide push through, still carrying them with me, but optimistic.

I shrug off the blunder as me not being in the moment because of my excitement and rush; proceeding to use some 100 mph tape to fix the carbon fiber, bend brackets back to ‘good enough’ and discover what happened won’t stop me from riding today I’m back to excitement. The bike comes alive; I do a last safety check and start meandering my way on backgrounds into the forest service land and into the back side of the next state to grab a burger. The bike rips; I’m able to smash through the gears, pick up the front end and flow through the rough terrain just as I imagined. Amazing!

… you never know …

Thirty miles from town somewhere in the expansive foothills of the Unitas, no cell service and no one in site for the past hour of riding, the bike starts hiccuping like it is out of gas. I lean down and flip the petcock, but the problem persists. Hmmmm. Clogged fuel filter, bad gas, fuel pump shutting down? All legit options, everything is new, so technically it could’ve gotten bad parts. I find that the bike will run at 1/4-1/2 throttle under the appropriate load and keep me at a 45mph pace to get back to the closest town. The bike is starting to get hot, but I keep an eye on the gauges and adjust speeds and throttle position as necessary. I park, and let the bike cool off; sitting aside it mentally reconstructing and reliving the whole rebuild process trying to identify the culprit. Nothing. The bike cools and I proceed to keep moving, I make it within a few miles of my house and then, complete shutdown. Fuck. I call the better half and I load the bike into the truck and take it home.

The bike returns to the stand it started it’s day on. I check all the easy stuff, then proceed to tear the valve cover off of the bike. Anyone who has spent time around engines knows the image above means a full engine teardown and inspection. Not an ideal situation after a full frame up rebuild on a motorcycle that took months, only to survive a few hours and about 100 miles. How a 17,000 mile broken in cam and brand new DLC coated rockers turned into an abrasive lathe in freshly rebuilt head on my motorcycle, I have still yet to figure out. There are no obvious mechanical issues on the top end, so the current theory is leading toward a blockage in oil passage in the bottom end as the head flows oil fine when bench testing.

… you never know …

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Old me would be taking the anger, frustration and anxiety surrounding this happening and supercharge it into more anger, frustration, anxiety and finding blame, mostly towards myself but others aren’t safe from it either. While those neurosis still exist, they have reduced in magnitude and come and go as waves, leaving me with a calm thinking brain trying to root cause the problem in the present (what a fucking change) rather than dwell in buried feelings that reveal themselves as negative energies and emotions.

Did I go from peaceful, joyful, inspired and open as I was ripping through the gears in the middle of the forest to sad, angry, disappointed and frustrated? Fuck yea. How could I not? I spent countless hours meticulously rebuilding a motorcycle double and triple checking every bolt, every wire… every thing… so that I could take this bike on some amazing adventures this year. I enjoyed every moment of that rebuild, it was cathartic and I used it as an education tool to process all of my evolving self, so where’s the negative if I have to do it again?

Last year, I came across a poem/short story via a Ram Dass podcast. It became almost a daily concept for me to ponder, and has allowed me to reduce my overthinking brain, assumptions and projections from shit that happens and well, just go with it.

There is a story of a farmer who had a horse that ran away.

His neighbor came by and said, “Oh, that’s terrible.”
The farmer said, “You never know.”

The next day the horse came back, and it was leading two other wild horses. The neighbor said, “That’s wonderful.”
And the farmer said, “You never know.”

Later, his son was training one of the wild horses, and while riding the wild horse, he fell off and broke his leg.
The neighbor came by and said, “That’s terrible.”
The farmer said, “You never know.”

The army came through recruiting everybody, taking away all the able young men. They didn’t take the farmer’s son because he had a broken leg.
The neighbor came by and said, “That’s wonderful.”
And the farmer said, “You never know.”

Short, simple and very surrendering when fully absorbed. No where is there any attempt to project a thought onto something out of your control, or dwelling on what happened, or trying to control what happens next. It’s presence, it’s surrender, it’s life.

So here we are, I’m sitting with a motorcycle with a fucked motor. Why? Was it a parts issue, assembly issue, something that could’ve been prevented, something that couldn’t have been prevented? If it was any of those things, does it matter? Today it is, what it is. I think often of “depression is dwelling on the past and anxiety is dwelling on the future.” Every time I remind myself of this, I come back to presence being the only answer in all of these scenarios. Regardless of what hand I did or didn’t have in the failure, I can only solve it by being more present next time. Spending time beating myself up or holding resentment toward someone else’s work on the engine parts, only fuels depression. Dwelling on all the things I’m going to do next and what if this happens again after I’ve spent more time and money on it, only fuels anxiety.

This isn’t a message to give up, let everything just be blah, and operate numbingly in life; this is a message to not assign assumptions to situations, because truly, you never know where this butterfly effect will take you. Be more present and live fully in each moment. So far in this scenario I’ve had a few months of joy building and only a few hours of sad failing. Not a bad ratio.

As I write this, a news feed came across my screen, showing that July was the deadliest month in the state for motorcyclists in history. Three or more of these have been in the past week on roads I frequently ride.

So, I’m left with … you never know … and an engine that will be rebuilt again…