The Rider in My Helmet

[MotoNews]

Published in: Rides

“Go ahead Paul,” is what dad said looking at me standing on the edge of a bridge 70 feet above the river. He had just dived off it as gracefully as an eagle. I was just 10 and proud. Still am. I could see the “Life is too short” light in his eyes.

So, I raised my arms, as if to implore the luck god, and leaped. Not as gracefully as an eagle, but as, let’s say, a penguin diving off the iceberg. Little did I know then that 35 years later I would end up having so much in common with penguins.

January 2008

My now well-known (lunatic to many) Winter Across Canada trip on motorcycle from Victoria, B.C. to Cape Spear, Newfoundland, is behind me and I’m on another trek… to become the first to cross the Trans Labrador Highway in winter. 2,200 kilometers of ice-covered roads with temperatures hovering around -40°C, and below, on a motorcycle—alone and unsupported.

To this day I still refuse to surrender from life’s challenges and never listen to the usual “You can’t do that!” advice. So, I’ve done a lot of dangerous things. However, there’s something life affirming in being this way. And crossing Labrador was no exception.

During the trip I had to face loneliness in an unbelievably unforgiving, hostile, yet breathtakingly beautiful and vast land. The realization that I would most likely not survive an accident in that climate brought it home just how fragile life is… as well as how beautiful and worthwhile living it is.

I knew I was in for the ride of my life when Mother Nature, the only thing seemingly stronger than my own stubbornness, decided to drop Labrador’s temperatures to a record breaking 50-year low. Plunging the mercury to -61°C (-78°F) while yours truly was out there riding.

Just outside of Goose Bay, my lungs almost froze when the breathing mask filter failed. I’d been taking unnecessary chances by not restocking the mask’s filters and was about to pay the price. Within 15 minutes I started suffering from inverted exposure. I was freezing from the inside out by directly breathing unprocessed -61°C air. It took only 15 minutes for me to stop being able to function fully.

My organs were slowly shutting down. My hands were hard and almost impossible to move. I could not feel my back anymore and my gut was hurting as it could no longer perform basic functions. After trying everything to fend off the sub-freezing onslaught, I knew I could not go on.

I had my Spot and could always push the 911 function but by the time search and rescue would get to my coordinates all they’d find would be 250 lbs. of French-Canadian popsicle. I could not risk their lives in conditions like these for nothing.

So, I did what I NEVER thought I would do and “Surrendered.” After shutting down Frosty, my faithful 650 Dakar, thanking her for being so good and taking me so far, I laid down on the snow bank to die.... It was time to go home to dad and all those I had lost…. Lord knows there are many.

Lying there sprawled on the frozen surface and facing an internal shutdown, I thanked God for the life I had and how wonderful a ride it has been. Most importantly, I asked Him to help those I was leaving behind understand that I died doing what I loved… Living!

I could hear the sound of my frozen lungs crackling in my head. I gave up five times, and each time I somehow found the strength to get up. Whether it was because a group of caribou staring at me, or what looked like some kind of falcon gracefully flying above, or I remember was a wolf about 40 feet from me… the beauty of these creatures made me realize that there is so much more wonder yet to experience in this life.

This thought, a will to live, helped me get up and at least die trying to survive while riding on. Life was biting me, and from behind the visor I decided to bite back. I had been blessed with so much and wanted so much more. To many, this is the adventure.

Those of you who are part of our wonderful motorcycling family can understand what is meant by “Living life from behind the visor”—that therapeutic realm inside our helmets. Viewing in the world from a helmet as the world rushes by is a safe haven in which we not only take refuge, but also try to solve our many problems. It is within this experience that we somehow find peace and it’s where the decision is made that our love affair with riding far outweighed the risks, and possible consequences.

What am I saying exactly? I believe that the adventure we all strive for aboard these machines is not, at all, what the marketers tell us. It’s not about the newest GPS, the most awesome looking suit, and it sure isn’t about riding the most renowned adventure bikes that make an adventure an Adventure.

It is not the beautiful places we all strive to reach on our steeds of steel that make the adventure, either… at least, not entirely. Of course it is amazing and formidable, by itself, to reach the end of our planned trips, whether it is a café in the middle of Montana, the perfect steak in Alberta or a sleep under the Patagonian stars.

None of this would be what it is if not for what the adventure rider lives through inside his or her helmet. In the mind we find an endless playground. We conjure up thoughts of those temporarily left behind while we’re off reaching for our dreams and the passing smiles from strangers in the middle of nowhere, who give us a sense of hope for human kind.

The fears we experience, which threaten who and what we are, help us to appreciate everything even more.

It might have been the time where a thought triggered how much of a jerk you’d been to your co-workers or partner, and from then on you decided to be a better person. It might have been the fear you had when you quit your job to go on this trip, and then, again from behind the visor, realized that this adventure MIGHT NEVER be repeated, even though you would eventually have to return to work in some manner.

It’s the adventure in our minds that capture the hearts and imaginations of others when we relay our stories. Without what we’re experiencing in our hearts, everything else might as well be a one-dimensional canvas passing by. It is the emotional aspect of riding that gives it life… and which keeps calling us back for more. Why else would reality TV grab so many people? It is not the ice road itself that is the adventure (I drove it in my rig and there is nothing to it), it’s the emotional drama.

Most of the physical story we see on the screen is invented and highly romanticized for the sake of ratings, anyway. It’s what we feel from empathizing with the character's experiences that gets to us and that we can, for some unknown reason, understand and feel the same.

That aside, the usual story we give others, when we return from our journeys, is the physical one. We typically discuss the maps, show the pictures, and give descriptions of the roads and the hardware. It is what it is – physical. But if your audience knows you, or you want them to know you, your life’s experience is what will grab their hearts.

How you felt when you came across this kid in Guatemala who forever changed your life. The stranger you had lunch with who told stories about his years in Vietnam. Or, the woman you stared at for way too long, who reminded you of your equally beautiful wife who gave you such wonderful children.

I, for one, would like to see magazines, and other media, provide more articles about what we all love. Riding! But put in more of the stuff that makes us who we are… the human element.

More stories about the eyes and hands behind the handlebars and what makes them tick.  Why do we go where we go, and what makes the same experience different?

For me this Labrador experience helped me rediscover who I had set out to find–the little boy in me I had lost. Not only did I find him, but I also found a new appreciation for life and a ferocious determination to never let people, or events, take away from me what makes me who I am... the man in my helmet watching the world go by.

Go ride, go explore, but more importantly—go live.

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