Finding my passion while riding a motorcycle
Sometimes it takes almost losing a thing before you remember how much it means to you.
Mar 08, 2021
It was almost a decade ago. It was a late fall weekend, an absolutely beautiful day. As usual I was out racing my motorcycle in the low deserts of the Southwest, where I lived at the time. That particular day I had no business being on a motorcycle, let alone racing one. It takes a great deal of concentration to ride a dirt bike at one’s limits. It’s both mentally and physically demanding in the most extreme ways. On this day, my concentration was elsewhere as my father had passed away only two weeks earlier. My family all encouraged me to participate in this event as it was something I had really worked hard to make happen. They told me “it would get my mind off things.” As well-meaning as that was, it was the wrong advice.
A couple hours into the event, my mind began to wander. Predictably, I was caught off guard by a short series of bumps, sometimes called “whoops.” I messed up the entry and the bike got crossed up (no longer pointing directly forward) going over one of the bumps. When this happens, the forward momentum of the bike will cause it to self correct when the bike hits the next bump, but in this case the correction was too much and the bike spit me over the handlebars. I did half of a front flip and landed with my arms extended as a reflex to soften the impact, feet in the air. My left hand hit first, and I heard a crunch. As I was sliding to a stop, I reached down and grabbed my left hand and the first thought that went through my head was “I just wrecked my career.” In that moment, I thought my hand was completely mangled.
After a minute or two, I gathered myself and realized that I had either broken or dislocated a finger, and the rest of the pain was heat burn generated from the speed of impact essentially burning my hands. A quick glance at my left hand clearly revealed that something was wrong with my pinky. I tried putting it back in the socket, but I felt enough crunching that I assumed it was broken. I needed to get moving back to civilization, so I picked up my bike, which luckily had only a slightly bent handlebar. Magically it started and ran just fine, nothing cracked or leaking. My next thought was to plan my route back to a place where my wife could pick me up, as she was driving chase that day. After consulting my handheld GPS, I confirmed that the Zzyzx Road exit off Interstate 15 was the closest exit (Zyzzyx Road is also the title of a horror movie). It was 52 miles of sandy, bumpy, rocky, brutal terrain and I was struggling to pull in the clutch lever.
Fast forward. I got to Zzyzx Road / Interstate 15 and parked. A hundred miles in every direction from there is an open desert hotspot for off-roading. I called my wife to inform her that she needed to pick me up, only to find that she was ahead of me in the bustling metropolis of Baker, Calif. (you know, the place with the world’s largest thermometer). She was buying me beef jerky, my favorite, from Alien Fresh Jerky as a post event surprise, which was supposed to end a little ways outside of Las Vegas. I told her I’d be there in 15 minutes. I jumped back on the bike, merged onto Interstate 15 north and met her right in front of the jerky store, where I downed two large Gatorades and an entire package of of Teriyaki jerky. We loaded the bike onto the truck and headed to the emergency room just west of Vegas. We waited for a while to see the doctor with a few others who had crashed as well. I let the guy who ran into a barrel cactus go in front of me; he was having a really bad day compared to my pinky finger issue. By that point it wasn’t hurting too bad, but it certainly needed to be fixed. We ended up at Bally’s in Vegas that night, where we had planned to stay after the event. I ended up having a couple too many beers and won a pretty decent chunk of money at the roulette table.
So why tell this goofy story? Well, the moment I hit the ground, the first thing that ran through my head was that my professional woodworking career was over. Why would I care about that? After all, I was struggling to get by with two reasonably good hands as it was. Keep in mind that this was right in the middle of the recession and more than once the thought of quitting had crossed my mind. There were a few years where making money from woodworking was nearly impossible.
Why would that be my first thought? (I didn’t have kids at the time). In that brief moment, when I thought I had lost it, my passion for woodworking came into crystal-clear focus. On the way home from Vegas, I reaffirmed a promise I made to myself years earlier when I started my business: I’m going to succeed in this industry or I’m going to die trying. With that I washed away any thoughts of changing careers.
As I pore over the Fine Woodworking site, I see people with a different story than mine, but somehow we all arrive here with a relentless passion for our craft. Read Nancy Hiller’s blog; she speaks with brutal honesty about professional woodworking. Watch Chris Gochnour’s shop tour video and hear him speak about his excitement for getting out to the shop every day. Read The How and Why of Woodworking, or A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook. Listen to Garrett Hack talk about a handplane. Check out Masters of the Craft; I’m partial to the one with John Reed Fox. I could go on… Everyone of these craftspeople have their passion tachometer past redline. I feel very lucky to still be healthy enough to pursue this craft, and even more lucky to participate on this site alongside these other amazing pros.
To this day I’m still crazy about riding motorcycles, but I’ve learned to slow down and take in the sights. It’s not called two-wheeled therapy for nothing.
P.S. This wasn’t the first time I smashed my left hand and it wasn’t the last. If you want to hear about the first time I busted up my hand listen to Shop Talk Live 214, where I tell the tale of how I took a terrible tumble and one of my very best customers helped patch me up.
P.P.S. I just posted a video showing how I rebuild a really neat planer. If you’re a tool geek, you may be interested.
Comments
Those look like Tamaracks, Western Larch, along the road in Fall in Colorado. They turn a beautiful bright yellow before losing their needles for the winter. For those not in the know, the Tamarack is a deciduous conifer. When they get their new growth in spring, it is a bit lighter than firs and pines. It's an extremely hard wood. They make good firewood, lots of heat and little ash. We have a lot of them in northern Idaho.
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