Pain Management. I just read an article
in my Motorcycle Consumer News. The writer Mark
Barnes, PhD wrote it from personal experience.
Something caught my eye and the article hit home and
reminded me of an exact incident Shihan Mary and I
had on one of our cross county trips on our
Harley's. Been riding going on 13 years, so I talk
from experience, and we had many close calls, I
think my (RT) reaction time save our butts many
times.
We headed out of Pueblo Colorado heading
East and the weather was turning from bad to worse.
Rain coming down, visibility somewhat fair, no fog
yet. We had reservations at a motel, we were camping
but this was a day break to shower and get rested up
at a motel. We headed up into the mountains, I could
feel the weather change as you always do from riding
(not from a car) elevation means colder, black ice,
snow, I do not like those conditions because
"Terror" has a tendency to sneak up on you or jump
you all at once.
We figured going South we would need no
rain gear, wrong, today its with me all the time. I
knew Mary's finger circulation was poor and did not
have the heated grips I installed later on, lesson
learned, no rain gear, no heated grips, no heated
vest. We figured we could tough it out and I myself
keeping the picture of the hot tub in my mind, gave
me something to focus on. We ascended to the top and
it was freezing, cold, rain and sleet, crap our
leathers were getting soaked.
I worried more about Shihan Mary, maybe
this was not a good idea, but we were halfway there,
like being on highway 10 in Texas and seeing the
sign that says 880 to your right, that meant you
were halfway across Texas 12 hours either way. So I
made a decision to keep going. What happens here, do
we start to disintegrate, give up, no!
Then it came to me, from my Martial
Arts training. Duh! People block one thing from
awareness by putting something else in its place.
When I rode home a few years ago with cracked ribs,
I had to concentrate on riding with extreme
smoothness-----my pain was reduced with fewer shocks
to my torso, but more importantly, my mind was
focused on the task instead of the scary fact that
it hurt to breathe. So when we found ourselves
coming over the mountain in a downpour of rain, some
sleet, temperatures close to zero, mountain
switchbacks, we needed to shift our attention from
hypothermia (my mother died from it) to
concentrating on riding, Believe me then is wasn't
an issue of physical pain, but to sheer terror
knowing we could crash any moment.
There are times you are a long way from
civilization, and you have to make do. Something I
did sticks with me forever, my mental shift was
still on riding and holding course, period. But
Sometimes I could wrap myself in a blanket of
imagination, thinking about that hot tub a few miles
away and how good it will feel once we got to our
destination. Sometimes I could detach myself from
physical sensation altogether, retreating into my
mind so completely that signals from my body
registered only as neutral information, stripped of
any compelling impact. Sometimes I have repeated a
song, over and over. But mostly the trick has been
to focus my attention sharply on a key element of
riding technique----something I was continuously
doing right now, and right now, and right now.
Thanks to Training in my Martial Arts.
P.S. We arrived in a state of
Hypothermia took off all our clothes and jumped
right into the hot tub.