Wrapping up #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday

Well, it's Friday and a work week's come and gone since #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday. That's not very long, but it is already quite a bit longer than the amount of time it took motorcyclists all over the world to conceive of a global event, carry it out, and move on.

Almost ten thousand people read the post in which I originally suggested that not just MotoGP riders but all of us should rev our bikes as a way of both commemorating Marco Simoncelli and drawing our community together. That was, by a wide margin, the most-read post ever on Backmarker.

I originally posted that suggestion last Tuesday. Overnight, someone re-tweeting a link to that post created our Twitter hashtag, and late last week we got some support from motorcycle media (including the Cycle World and Ultimate Motorcycling web sites, Motorcycle-USA.com, and even some mainstream media (The Daily Mail newspaper in the U.K.)

The #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday Facebook page drew nearly 1000 members in just a few days, and now dozens of people have uploaded videos of themselves, alone and in groups, revving their bikes. #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday -- a search term that didn't exist at all on Google until last week, now brings up many pages of links related to the event.

In the end, it didn't matter that the MotoGP riders just stood by their bikes and watched fireworks. What was important was that ordinary motorcyclists all over the world had a way of showing their own solidarity with a fallen comrade.

So here's one more Note from the Dept. of Modest Suggestions: let's make 10:30 in the morning on the first Sunday in November the official day of mourning for fallen motorcyclists. It's well timed for it. It's the end of most racing seasons, the date's about half-way between the Day of the Dead and Rembrance Day (in the Commonwealth) or Veteran's Day (here in the U.S.) In much of the Northern Hemisphere, it's about the time bikes are put up for the winter.

Sure whenever May 20 rolls around, someone writes an essay about the crash that killed Jarno Saarinen and Renzo Pasolini in one fell swoop; we remember Joey Dunlop on the anniversary of his death; those guys will never be forgotten. But as a group, we tend to acknowledge the deaths of other riders but briefly and then move on, usually after concocting some story about how that can't happen to us.

But I'll keep saying this: While we don't ride or race motorcycles in order to take risks, risk gives the decision to ride or race meaning. If it was completely safe, or even pretty safe, it would be a completely different sport.

When I was a club racer, I was at some social function where someone introduced me to a stranger by saying, "This is my friend Mark. He's a motorcycle racer."

The guy shook my hand and said, "So you're a motorcycle racer. Golf's my game."

I smiled and said, "That's nice."

But what I thought was, "You idiot; do you really think those two things can be equated? Imagine the most intense pressure situation in all of golf. What would that be? A playoff hole at the Masters, and you can hole a 6 foot putt for the win? A putt you should make, right? But just long enough that you might not. You'd get some pretty bad butterflies alright. And you know what? If you missed it, you might -- for a moment -- wish you were dead. But you wouldn't ever actually be dead. As a motorcycle racer, you live with the realization that cost of any error in judgement can be catastrophic."

So yes, risk gives our sport meaning. That's why most people don't do it; why no matter how many people ever watch MotoGP, motorcycle racing will never be a mass-participation pastime. And why despite the fact that the risks are obvious, every now and then, we have to be reminded that even with continuous improvements in track safety and gear, and all the precautions we take to avoid tragedy, tragedy lurks around every corner. If it didn't; if the sport of motorcycle racing could ever be made completely safe, it would just be another game.

So when a Simoncelli dies out there on the track, his death gives your sport a depth that a mere game will never have.

Shakespeare (as usual) totally got the idea that risk imparts meaning to reward. He makes a great case for this idea in Henry V's epic "Crispen's Day" speech.

We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'



The strangest thing happened as I finished up this post. I thought I'd look up the day of St. Crispian's feast. It's October 25. Marco Simoncelli died on the 23rd -- the closest race day to Saint Crispian's.

All for now, MG

We made noise for Marco Sunday

When I got home from work on Saturday night, the first videos had already been uploaded to the #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday Facebook group, by bikers in Australia. I worked late into the night last night, and had to get up early this morning to go back into work.

Commuting by motorcycle, in Kansas City, in November, is chilly business. So instead of spending any time checking stats or responding to postings on #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday, I had to put on extra layers, go downstairs and take the cover off the bike (and hope that it would start at these temperatures.)



It did start, and as I rode off, my thoughts were of the race in Valencia, which had yet to happen -- and of the on-track tribute to Marco, which by then had already taken place. In the end, they didn't rev the bikes on the track; I suppose the MotoGP organizers never had actually agreed to that suggestion. But they had a ceremony in which most of the bikes in all three world championship classes did a slow lap of the track on a cold and rainy day, then stopped at the start-finish line.

I suppose it was just too much trouble to rev the bikes; God knows what it would cost if you blew one up. So, in Valencia, they shot off fireworks. Which, if you've been to a MotoGP race in Spain you know they shoot quite a lot of fireworks off anyway. There was some sincere mourning to be done, but as far as the people who actually run MotoGP are concerned, the purpose of this display is to help get back to business as normal. A really meaningful tribute would be to say, for one race everyone will run their bikes without any logos at all; just race numbers and the base paint color. That would remind us that what is important are the things we do for love, not money.

As I left my neighborhood heading towards the highway I take to work, I turned a corner that's always wet. There must be a broken water main there. This morning, as I took that bend, the Triumph stepped out. That was nice; it did something to my mood, because I rode to work at quite a spirited pace. I was passing cars on the highway as if they were pylons in a slalom.

At 10:25, I looked out the window of the grocery store and there was another motorcyclist parked beside my bike. It was Kansas City sustainable architecture guru Jim Van Eman, on his Ducati. I pressed another [NAME OF EMPLOYER REDACTED] employee into service as a videographer (thanks Lindsay!) and clocked off for five minutes to run out and rev my bike with Jim. Since the store's a zoo on the weekend, I had no time to chat with my friend; I literally ran out, revved the bike, and ran back in. The rest of the day was a bit of a blur; as you'll hear when I get my video posted, I had a murderous head cold.



I got off work at four p.m., and since last night was the night we turned our clocks back from daylight savings time, the sun was already low in the sky. All the way home up highway 71, I raced my own shadow. Neither of us could eke out an advantage. I didn't have to stop until I got to the bottom of the off-ramp near my house. There was a guy there, holding a cardboard sign that read
HOMELESS
HUNGRY
Anything helps
God Bless
Thanks

He looked at me and called out, "Nice bike!"

I have almost no voice, thanks to this cold, so I just nodded and gave him the thumbs-up. When I finally pulled into my parking spot, I turned the bike east and my shadow fell behind.

Despite the fact that it was cold; despite the fact that I have a cold; despite the homeless guy's comment that the Triumph is a nice bike even though it's actually a piece of crap... Despite all that, it was a good day to be a motorcyclist and to be alive. That's something that #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday has helped many of us to remember.

Ciao, Marco

#MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday is a go!

The first video has already been uploaded to the #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday Facebook group's page -- by Jason Rogers. No, he wasn't cheating, it was already 10:30 on Sunday morning in Australia.



Pascal Bompard, another Aussie, recorded this video, too.

I worked an afternoon shift in the grocery store, and I work Sunday morning, too. So I'll be out in the parking lot of the [NAME OF EMPLOYER REDACTED] store on Ward Parkway in Kansas City at 10:30 CST.

As for what all this means... It's been a long day for me, I'm sick with a terrible cold, and I have to get some sleep because I have a long day of work at my day job ahead of me tomorrow. Yes, organizing global events is just a hobby for me.

So figuring out what #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday really means is a task for another day, when it's had time to sink in. In the meantime, many of you will read this before it's 10:30 on Sunday where you live. Make a plan to get out and rev your bike for 58 seconds -- preferably with other motorcyclists. Whether you do it alone or in a group, please video it if you can, and upload it to our Facebook group page. Even if you don't video yourself, add your comment, tell us what you did and where, and how it felt.

OK, I've gotta' go. It's T-11 hours here in Kansas City.

#MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday -- update Saturday at 1430 GMT

Well, the number of people who plan to make noise for Marco Sunday is increasing. People have joined the #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday Facebook group from all over the world.

On Sunday morning at 1030h, motorcyclists will stop what they're doing, and rev up their bikes for 58 seconds to honor the memory of Marco Simoncelli. Hopefully, lots of them will do it in groups, and I hope that many of them will upload their video tributes to the #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday Facebook group page.

As I'm writing this post, it will be 10:30 on Sunday morning in Auckland NZ in about seven hours. That will be one of the first places motorcyclists will make noise for Marco. Motorcyclists in Moscow will get their chance in 16 hours; Mexicans in 26 hours, and finally, motorcyclists on Maui will make noise for Marco in 30 hours.

Over the course of the 24 hours, our wave of sound will travel around the world. We'll literally wave good-bye.

People have already asked, "How do we make this an annual event?" The timing is about right; smack in the middle of the two-week period that begins with the Day of the Dead and ends with Remembrance Day.  At the end of the racing season, and the riding season in many countries. Maybe this should be the day and time, henceforth, when motorcyclists honor their dead.

There's a part of me that wishes that #MonsterEnergy and #IMS (Indianapolis Motor Speedway) to say nothing of Honda, would get behind the #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday group, since they have the media clout to really help to spread the word.

I guess that, despite the fact that those businesses have whole departments devoted to marketing & communications, and have employees with titles like 'Director of New Media', etc, they can't be expected to respond to a movement that will be conceived, grow up, and stage it's demonstration in less than a week. In any case, maybe it's just as well if this is a truly grassroots effort, with no hint of commercialization.

Anyway, #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday is less than a day away for most of us now. Check your battery; if you've put your bike away for winter, gas it up again. If you make a video, please try to title it, or hold up a sign telling us where you are.

Ciao, Marco!

Memorializing Simoncelli, in a way he'd appreciate - Updated

OK, we've got a hashtag #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday. I guess that's proof, along with thousands of blog hits overnight, that my idea of a round-the-world wave good-bye is resonating.

A blogger in Valencia, ISA (link to her site in comments below) says the time is set for 1030h. So 10:30 a.m. Sunday morning it is. Valencia is almost exactly half-way around the world from the International Date Line, so #MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday will begin in the western Pacific about 12 hours earlier and end in Hawaii about 12 hours later. The big noise in Valencia will be right in the middle of the 24-hour wave. That's perfect.

#MakeNoiseForMarcoSunday = 58 seconds of revving your bike in memory of #58, at 1030h Sunday, November 6. keep checking this blog for details.

Original post follows...

I read that the FIM proposed a minute of silence on the grid at Valencia, as a way of memorializing Marco Simoncelli. Marco's dad Paolo suggested, instead, that all the riders rev up their bikes -- that would be something Marco would have preferred.

So, here's a note from the Dept. of Modest Proposals: Let's all do that.

I propose that we find out from the FIM when, exactly, they plan to rev up the MotoGP bikes for Marco. Then I suggest that at that time on Sunday, in each time zone around the world, motorcyclists stop what they're doing, and rev up their bikes.

The effect of this will be to create a wave of revving motorcycles that will travel around the globe, beginning in the western pacific and circling the globe, back to the International Date Line, over the 24 hours of next Sunday. We'll literally wave good-bye to Marco. We can rev up our bikes for a little under a minute -- say, 58 seconds.

Even a few years ago, organizing a global farewell would have been impossible on such short notice. But in this day and age of Twitter and Facebook, it might just be possible.

I think it would be great if motorcyclists took a short video of the bike-revving, and posted it to YouTube. Then, if they post the YouTube link in the 'Comments' section of this post, I'll embed all the videos on a page devoted to "58 for 58, times 24".

If I pick up RTs and reposts of this entry over the next day or so, I'll post more detailed instructions, and contact the FIM to find out when, exactly, the Valencia moment will happen.

Why Marco Simoncelli didn't think it could happen to him

Last Monday, I wrote about risk in the context of sports like motorcycle racing. Today, I'll close that loop, with an excerpt from Riding Man that addresses the techniques that motorcycle racers use to deal with the psychological stress those risks entail. 

It's a statement of the obvious: racers are acutely superstitious. We've all seen Valentino Rossi's going-on-track ritual, that begins with his deep squat and tugging his bike's foot peg and ends with him pulling the leathers out of the crack of his ass as he rolls down pit lane.

Of course, those rituals are part of a mind-clearing exercise and in some ways actually do help to protect riders, but they don't confer any real luck; he did all that stuff, I'm certain, before he rolled out onto the track in Sepang. Then fate cruelly threw Simoncelli directly into his path.

Did Rossi think, "That could have been me," or was it, "I wish it had been me"? Is he now mulling over last Sunday morning in Sepang, looking for the thing he did do to bring him such bad luck? Or wondering what good luck charm failed him?

The truth is, you can't really race motorcycles without an inner belief that "it can't happen to me." While I was on the Isle of Man researching Riding Man and preparing for the TT, I saw plenty of superstition on the part of racers, and came to term with my own 'magic thinking', as I processed the risks associated with the upcoming race. I addressed those topics in a chapter I called...

Hello, Fairies

The Manx Motorcycle Club annual dinner is pretty much the social event of the winter on the Island. The mayor of Douglas, the Island’s governor, and the leaders of Manx industry such as they are, they’re all guests; Jack Wood had to pull strings to get me a ticket.

I show up a couple of hours early, to attend the club’s annual meeting. Picture a large room full of men in blazers. Several men with snow-white hair announce their retirements. In order to fill their positions, gray haired men are nominated. Nominations are seconded. All in favor say ‘Aye’. The Deputy Clerk of the Course’s term was not up, but he’s unfortunately deceased. He too is replaced. Finally, a new President literally assumes the mantle, as a large medal is hung around his neck on an elaborate sort of necklace. Jack Wood is made an honorary life member. I am the youngest person in the room, or so it seems.

The business of the club attended to – the races presumably preserved for another year –we go back downstairs for drinks. I sit down on a padded bench, beside a guy who is carrying so much weight that he braces an arm on an expansive thigh to prevent his body simply flowing in the direction of gravity. He wants to talk, though it leaves him breathless. When he asks me what I’m doing here, and I tell him, he gets a little defensive. A writer? Am I here to skewer the TT? But I’ve become adept at allaying such fears; I’m here to ride in it, after all, how could I be against it?

Every now and then, someone comes by to say ‘hi’ to him, and offers to buy him a drink. Once, he makes a motion to get up, and a man twice his age puts a hand on his shoulder saying, “No, I’ll get them.” It turns out that he’s the director of the Island’s Emergency Planning department. He enumerates the good things that the TT has given the Isle of Man; a much bigger hospital and better ambulance service, and top flight orthopedic surgeons that a little place like this would otherwise never have.

We go in for dinner. I’m seated at the press table next to Norrie Whyte, a legendary British journalist who tells me he’s been to every MMC dinner “since Read won in ’60.” Then he complains that no one can write any more. There’s a toast to “The Queen, Lord of Man” and after a few brief speeches Tony Jefferies (current champ David’s uncle, and head of the racing clan) is wheeled up onto the stage for a keynote speech that he could give in his sleep, or at least completely drunk, which he is. “He makes me look like a teatotaller,” says Whyte with admiration. Somewhere in there, a meal is served and there’s a swirl of conversation from which I note only a fragment, “That’s the trouble, isn’t it? These young guys are trying to ‘short circuit’ the TT course.”

Standing at the bar, afterwards, I meet two riders, an old guy and his protégé. The old guy is Chris McGahan, an Englishman who nearly made a career of racing, back in the ‘70s. Since then, he’s specialized as a ‘real road’ racer, doing the major Irish meetings, the TT and Manx GP, and a few public road races on the continent.

Chris, who’s probably in his fifties, looks like an ex-lightweight boxer who stayed in shape. Long arms, strong hands and shoulders; his most noticeable feature is a pair of large ears, the tops of which stick out horizontally like wings. “They call me ‘wingnut’,” he grins. In a room where men outnumber women at least 20:1, he seems to have two dates. (The MMC Annual Dinner was actually stag until the mid-‘90s.) The younger guy is Sean Leonard, Irish. “Dere’s noothin’ known about racin’ dat Chris don’t know,” Sean tells me.

They’ve hardly stopped drinking when they call me around 10 a.m. the next morning. They’re going to drive down to Castletown to meet a sponsor, then cut a couple of laps of the Mountain in a borrowed car. Do I want to come?

Chris spins one yarn after another. Famous old racers, fast women; smuggling booze back across the channel from continental races, smuggling stowaways on the ferry to the island for the TT; serious substance abuse continuing right up to the green flag; choose any four from columns A, B, and C. He’s driving as fast as he’s talking. Suddenly, with Chris hurtling along in mid-sentence, Sean blurts, “Fairy Bridge!”

No Island native crosses the little stone bridge without saying ‘hello’ to the fairies. Sean says it, and so does Chris, injecting his “Hello Fairies,” in the middle of a sentence. I say it, too. They kind of laugh it off, like, ‘we don’t actually believe it…’

We park at a pub, and go in. It’s maybe 10:30 a.m., I’m thinking what, tea? Brunch? They stand at the bar and order pints of beer. “What about you, Mark? What’ll you take for a livener?” I order a pint of Guinness, and a second, before the sponsor shows up with his wife. He’s a dapper guy, younger than McGahan (and me, for that matter) but dressed older; he wears a pocket watch on a gold chain. There’s a bit of business done, as Chris discusses plans for a vintage bike, something they’re planning to build for one of the Manx GP classes.

I beg off the third pint, while we socialize. The sponsor, I learn, owns a scrapyard somewhere “on the mainland” but his involvement with Chris isn’t really a business proposition; in ‘real roads’ racing, sponsors provide bikes or money so they can hang out with riders, maybe that’s why the riders tend to be such characters.

We head back north in the car, and pick up the course at Ballacraine corner, about six miles into it. Chris is again in running commentary mode, driving even faster now. As we go over the various “jumps” and bumpy areas on the course, Chris takes his hands off the wheel and makes handlebar waggling movements. Sean reaches up and grips, tightly, the handle above the passenger-side door.

Just past Ballaugh, we come to a white cottage and Chris slams on the brakes. “Gwen’s always got tea and cakes for racers,” he says, then as he gets out “Wait here while I see if she’s in.”

Gwen’s become a minor celebrity, known as the ‘lady in white’. She stands in her garden, for every TT practice session and every race, rain or shine. She always waves as the racers pass, and many of them claim to acknowledge her, though she lives on a bumpy stretch of road so they don’t wave back as much as raise a finger or waggle a foot. For decades, she always wore a white dress, until she was made an honorary corner marshal and issued a white coverall. She’s an honorary member of the TT Rider’s Association, too. There was even a time when the ‘newcomer’s bus tour’ used to actually stop at her cottage, and everyone would troop out and meet her (later, on my bus tour, we didn’t stop. I assume she’s getting too old.)

When I ride past her cottage on my bicycle, I look in the big front picture window. The parlor walls are covered with photos and TT mementos, but I’ve never seen any movement in there. In fact, I’ve been wondering if Gwen is still alive. I’d like to meet her, but it’s not destined to happen. Chris jumps back into the car. “The door was open, but she’s not in there,” he says, and we’re off again.

Back in Douglas, we spend four hours in another bar, “The owner’s one of our sponsors,” Chris says, and we begin drinking as though someone else will pick up the tab. When I finally beg off, they can’t believe I’m not coming with them to the next party.

*

There was no way Sean Leonard was going to cross the Fairy Bridge without saying ‘hello’ to the fairies. Michelle Duff’s (she was previously Mike, but that’s another story) final words of advice to me before I left were, “Say ‘hello’ to the fairies from me.”Nowadays visitors tend to think, "How quaint, the simple folk still believe in magic." But motorcycle racers are superstitious, too.

One of the places that’s been bugging me – frankly, scaring me – on the course is Barregarrow crossroads. Two gnarly blind left-hand kinks, connected by a steep bumpy downhill. But one day as I’m riding along on my bicycle, I come to the farm just before the crossroads. There’s a huge tree on the left here, and I’m making a mental note that I need to be way over to the right, in position for the first kink, by the time I get to this point. As I’m pedaling beneath the tree, I hear a cacophony overhead. Hundreds of crows are living up in the branches. In fact, the road is plastered with their shit, which is another reason to be over to the right. But crows. Suddenly, I’ve lost my fear of Barregarrow.

All this goes back quite a few years. Once, I signed up for a California Superbike School session on a Honda RS125 GP bike. The school took place out at Willow Springs, on the ‘Streets of Willow’ practice course. As usual, I didn’t know anyone there. My lupus was acting up; every joint really hurt, and the prospect of folding myself onto one of those tiny, tiny bikes was not that appealing. As a Canadian in the ‘States, I had no health insurance. All in all, as I waited to get started, I figured I’d put myself in a very good position to make a fool of myself at best, break my body and my bank account at worst.

I was distracted from these glum thoughts by a flock of ravens about a hundred yards down the pit wall. They were fighting over treasure: a bag of old french fries. Suddenly, for no reason, I had a sense that these birds were good luck for me and that as long as they were there, I was going to be alright. This belief sprang fully-formed into my head. Like other people, the things I believe most fervently are based in utter nonsense.

Ever since then big, noisy black birds are good luck for me. I’ve always felt that – especially on the morning of races – if I see one it’s a guarantee I won’t be hurt. And it’s always been true.

(Author’s note: Long after that day at Willows, in the course of my advertising career, I had to write some public service TV spots on the subject of gambling addiction. I went to a few ‘Gambler’s Anonymous’-type meetings where I learned to two things. One was that gambling addicts were pathetic losers. The other was that this irrational belief that something is lucky for you has a name. Psychologists call it ‘magic thinking’ and it is one of the hallmarks of risk addiction.

In fairness, the big black birds have always worked for me. They’ve protected me on days I’ve seen ‘em, and indeed, I’ve had some hairy crashes on mornings when I’ve not seen them. If you set out to debunk my talisman, you’d say, “The birds calm you, and you ride better relaxed; you’re tense when you’re aware you haven’t seen one, and you ride shitty tense.” That may be true. The scientist in me is a little subtler. I think that the birds are common, after all, and there’s probably almost always one to see. I think that when I’m in a state of relaxed awareness, alert to my environment, I can count on seeing one. That’s the state in which I ride well. When I internalize, when I’m looking in and not out, I don’t see them. That’s a state in which I ride poorly.

Whatever the case, after the TT fortnight was over, I drove one of my visitors to the airport, and on the way home crossed the Fairy Bridge. Somehow, lost in thought, I failed to say ‘hello’ though I reassured myself that I’d said it on the trip to the airport and according to the letter of the legend, it is the first crossing of each day which is critical. Nonetheless, most Manx say hello on every crossing, and that had been my habit too.

As I was worrying through this very thought, I noticed a crow hopping in the road ahead of me. I got closer and closer I actually said, “Hey, take off” out loud. But it didn’t. I thought about slamming on the brakes, or swerving, and did a quick visual check to ensure the road was otherwise clear. Then I thought, “Don’t be stupid, they always wait to the last second to get out of the way.”

But it didn’t. I hit it and killed it.

I was fucking aghast.)

A writer's notebook, Simoncelli, and a meditation on risk

The last week or so, there's been several moments when I've found myself thinking, 'That would make a great topic for a blog post,' but I just haven't had the time to jot down more than a reminder to myself.

The hip Hell for Leather site's been paying a little attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement; first covering the NYC cops' apparent use of their scooters as juggernauts, bowling over protesters. Then, they ran this story about Greek rioters using motorcycle gear for protection from police batons, etc. Are they taking a side? It's not yet clear.

Another disgruntled ex-motorcycle journalist, Mark Williams -- the long-time editor of the great UK magazine BIKE -- has taken to blogging about wider topics, and his blog's definitely worth reading.

I've been meaning to weigh in on the (hopefully final, for a while) sale of Cycle World magazine. Then I decided that, instead, I'd conduct a lengthy interview with America's greatest bike mag editor, Cook Neilson.

Cook, who studied Lit at Princeton, was the editor of Cycle from the late '60s through the late '70s. Picture this: When Cycle moved from New York to L.A., they moved into a space that was 25% office and 75% shop. Cook and Phil Schilling developed and built a motorcycle, in their own shop, that Cook used to win the 1977 Superbike race at Daytona.

That interview's epic, and I'll probably finish writing it up and post it in a month or two on the Motorcycle-USA web site. I wish Cycle World well I guess, but it's no Cycle.

I was going to write about two 'Love Ride' motorcyclists being killed in L.A., and point out for the nth time that rides for breast cancer, autism, toys for tots or whatever the hell else you want to benefit are misguided. The only thing we, as motorcyclists, should ride to benefit is spinal cord research. Breast cancer, autism, and toyless tots are all worthy causes, but we should be collecting money for the thing that most affects us, as riders. The only reason we don't is that we're all too scared to even raise the subject.

Oh, and my friend John Stein's amazing history of motorcycle drag racing is about to come out, and that's newsworthy too. All that was stuff I was hoping to write up when I finally got a couple of days off early this week.


Then Marco Simoncelli was killed in Malaysia. That changed everything.

I haven't seen the crash. Since I don't have a television, I wasn't watching it and I won't see it on the internet because my personal policy is not to purposely watch a crash that ends a career. It's just a thing with me; a place I draw the line.

Simoncelli's death, though, underlines the inherent risk in motorsport. The best gear, the safest tracks, the best corner workers and the Clinica Mobile will never take all those risks out of racing. In fact, if racing ever was made completely safe, it would also become boring to me.

Risk, as a philosopher might say, informs motorcycle racing. We don't race in order to take risks, but risk gives the decision to go racing meaning. About 15 years ago, when I was working my way up through the amateur ranks as a club racer, I realized that I wanted to explain that to a public that took a very simplistic view of risk sports. I knew that in order to come to terms with the topic, I would have to go and race in the place where that risk was most obvious. To fully understand that topic, I had to race on the Isle of Man, in the TT.

Although what Marco Simoncelli did for a living was very dangerous compared to, say, soccer, MotoGP is very safe compared to racing in the TT. Simoncelli was the first MotoGP rider to die in a race since Daijiro Kato in 2003. TT riders are killed every single year.

My book about the TT, Riding Man, is largely a meditation on risk and today and Thursday, I'll post a couple of the most relevant excerpts. Here's the first one, a chapter of the book called...

Memorials 

The TT course is lined with memorials to riders. Some of them are big, permanent features of the TT course. The Guthrie Memorial on the climb up the mountain, which is really just a cairn; the Graham Memorial which is anA-framed chapel that looks west down the Laxey Valley; and now the Dunlop Memorial, a bronze statue up at the Bungalow. They’re the exceptions to the general rule, since Guthrie and Dunlop died on other circuits (Guthrie at the German Grand Prix in ’39, and Dunlop in Estonia in 2000.) Even Graham’s chapel was built far from the bottom of Bray Hill where he crashed and died. Officially, little is done to remember the fallen.

The vast majority of TT memorials are much smaller and unofficial; they’re placed by friends and families at the very spot their loved one died. At first, you don’t see them. Then you notice one because it’s relatively prominent, or because it’s new or freshly cleaned. As you get sensitized, you start to see more and more of them, notice ever subtler and older ones, see the ones that are set further back in the weeds. Eventually, you realize that no matter where you choose to stop along the course if you know what to look for, you can see something that commemorates a fallen rider.

They are permanent plaques in stone or metal, screwed to fences or set in the ground. They are personal mementos, stuffed animals or flags or photos, tacked to trees or jammed between rocks. They are flowers, long dried, brown, wilted and molding, or gone altogether leaving a faded bit of ribbon gradually fraying in the constant wind.

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Alpine Cottage is a fast but normally innocuous right -hander between Kirk Michael and Ballaugh. The turn-in marker for this bend is the nearby bus shelter. When I stop to study the corner’s line I notice that the bus stop has a ceramic plaque set into its wall, low down in one corner almost at ground level.

On the plaque, there is a glazed bas-relief illustration of a racing sidecar, with Manx and Swedish flags. It reads: ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF TOMAS & MATS ERICSSON WHO DIED NEAR THIS POINT IN PRACTICE FOR THE 1985 T.T. RACES. THEY WERE BRILLIANT EXPONENTS OF SIDECAR RACING AND FINE EXAMPLES OF THE YOUTH OF SWEDEN WHO THEY REPRESENTED INTERNATIONALLY – COMPETITORS IN SPORT AND LIFE.

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A mile or so down the road, just over the bridge at the entrance to the town of Ballaugh, there’s a fine bronze bas-relief set in a white stucco gate. It is a portrait of a man and since he’s wearing a pudding bowl crash helmet, I’m pretty sure it’s a memorial. I make a note of the name Karl Gall and the date1939, with an eye to checking on them next time I’m in the library.

Later on, I do go to the library and pull the 1939 volume of the local paper. Gall had been one of the leading German riders of the 1930s. In the ’38 TT, Gall had crashed hard at Waterworks and been badly hurt. He’d announced his retirement after that. But as war clouds gathered, the Nazis were determined to wring as much propaganda value as possible from international motorsport. The BMW, DKW and NSU teams all got Nazi support, but it came with heavy pressure to deliver results, especially at prestigious events like the TT. Gall was persuaded to take one more shot at the Senior, on BMW’s all-powerful, supercharged ‘kompressor’ twin. In practice, he lost control going over Ballaugh Bridge, and was flung headfirst into that gatepost. His team-mate, Georg Meier, ended up winning the last prewar Senior on an identical machine.

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One time, Steve accompanies me on a bicycle lap. It’s nearly the death of him. I collect him at Ballacraine, which is already a pretty long ride from his house, considering that he doesn’t cycle or get much of any other kind of exercise. We set off up Ballaspur and haven’t gone too far – we’re near Laurel Bank – when he calls out for me to stop. At first I think he just needs a rest, but he leans his bike against a low stone wall and starts to climb over it. “Come here,” he says “I want to show you something.”

It drops away so the wall is only a couple of feet high from the road, but it’s a five-foot jump to the damp and musky forest floor. The Neb, a little stream, gurgles a few yards away. Hidden here behind the wall amongst fiddleheads are three little plaques devoted to Mark Farmer, a popular rider who died in 1994 while riding a Britten.

“I came here once and noticed that one of these plaques had been removed,” said Steve. “I thought ‘Bloody hell, someone’s stolen one of them,’ but the next time I looked it was back and all polished. They’d just removed it for cleaning.”

We clambered back over the wall. As we got on our bikes, Steve said, “I’ll tell you what my friend… I don’t want to be polishing your memorial around here.”

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After a while, I start to get a little paranoid about the memorials, about the danger. Then one day I stop to study Kate’s Cottage. There never was a “Kate”, ironically. The cottage belonged to the Tates, but at one TT years back, an excited commentator got tongue-tied and blurted out something about “Kate’s Cottage” and the name stuck. It’s a hairy-looking spot; a narrow, fast, blind, downhill kink with – on top of everything else – a constant trickle of water that flows from a crack in the pavement right on the natural racing line, leaving it damp on all but the hottest days.

Dodging cars, I walk down through the corner to look for (more) hazards on the exit. There, I notice a commercial florist’s bouquet that’s been tied to a concrete fencepost with ribbon. It’s been there a long time, I can tell. There’s a tiny white envelope attached to it; the kind that comes with any basic commercial bouquet, which would normally contain a card with a message from the sender. I slip a finger into the envelope, which has been softened by the elements. It’s empty. No card. No clue who it might have been for, or from. I realize that there is some faded writing on the envelope itself. It says “34th milestone (Kate’s)”.

Something about this one, in particular, sticks in my mind. Sometime later, I walk down the Strand in Douglas and look in on a florist, when it hits me: It wasn’t that someone put the bouquet there, they phoned it in. That was why there was no message in the envelope: there was no recipient, at least no one who needed to read anything. The florist had just written the delivery address down on the envelope, and gone out and tied it to the fence.

The people, friends and family who gather in small groups to place the more permanent memorials are – at least in part – doing something for themselves. Getting ‘closure’, to put a pop pscyh label on it. But whoever phoned in that florist’s order was doing something very different. He or she was never going to see the flowers; they were going to be placed by someone with no connection to anything. And really, except for me, they were destined to go almost unnoticed. It was less a public thing than a private message to an anonymous rider, as if he was still out there somewhere, lapping the course.

Something about that flips a neuron in me, and I suddenly realize that, read as a collective, the hundreds of memorials are not sad. Although they often express loss, “You’ll be missed,” not one of them condemns the TT. If anything, they celebrate it as the high point, which it was, of every life thus recalled.

I don’t want Steve polishing my memorial here either. But I can not think of any place I’d rather have one.

Thanks for reading. Check back next Thursday for a second excerpt from Riding Man -- one that will explain why Marco Simoncelli almost certainly didn't think it could happen to him.