PERSPECTIVES

PERSPECTIVES FEAR OF FLYING

BY MITCH BOEHM

T

hese days I hear a lot about folks who start riding, or pick it up again after a long layoff, and proceed to very quickly scare themselves silly (or worse) — and quit. It’s happened for 120 years, I’m sure, but it’s clearly not a positive, especially when it comes to younger riders who are, after all, the future.

I’ve been riding forever, so motorcycling’s dark-side is pretty much already baked into my psyche and doesn’t really resonate much. Still, I can see how it happens — ’cuz it happened to me. Not in motorcycling, because by the time I got into riding

street bikes in college I had already spent a whole decade riding off road and racing motocross, but in, of all things, aviation.

When I first joined the staff of Motorcyclist magazine in 1985, editors Art Friedman and Jeff Karr were pilots. Both owned light aircraft (Art a Cessna 210, Jeff a Mooney M20) and both flew a lot — to bike intros, shows, and races. I went all over the western U.S. with those guys, and used to call Art and his Cessna “Air Friedman” for good reason.

I eventually decided that I, too, wanted to fly, so I cobbled together a grand or so (not easy with my piddly salary) and started taking lessons at Van Nuys Airport in LA’s San Fernando Valley. One day several months later with 50 or 60 hours under my belt (and 35 or so of them solo) I was returning from an hour-long solo practice flight from the desert in a rented Cessna 172 when I had a bit of a moment.

I’d planned to do a few touchand-gos (where you land and then take off again without stopping) when I reached the airport, and got clearance from the tower, and as I did the third and final one I spied a big C130 cargo plane on final approach for the larger 16 Right runway, which ran parallel to the airstrip I was using. I asked the tower if I could extend my downwind leg (opposite the direction of landing) to let the 130’s powerful wingtip vortices (swirling tornadoes of air coming off each wingtip) dissipate

“...one thing I know for sure is that riding on the dirt before you swing a leg over a street bike — as I did — pays dividends galore down the road.”

and drift out of my path before I turned base and final.

I extended my downwind leg about a mile or so, but it wasn’t enough, because as I was gliding calmly toward a typically bumpy Mitch landing on final approach, the Cessna suddenly went 30 or so degrees right and nose down, the C130’s vortices having grabbed the lightweight little Cessna and twisted it like a kite. At that point I was only 500 or 600 feet off the ground — a situation called “low and slow” — so it was not a good position to be in.

Some student pilots would have panicked and pulled back on the yoke, which likely would have stalled the wing and caused an almost certain spin and nosedive into the ground. But recalling my instructor’s constant “airspeed is your friend” refrain, I pushed the yoke forward, aiming the nose even more toward the ground and allowing the plane to gain airspeed and, with help from a full-throttle application, pulled out of the dive, did a go-around and landed a couple of minutes later with nauseating adrenaline flooding my system.

I flew a little after that, but not much, and soon drifted away from the whole general aviation thing. I’d learned a lot about aviation, weather and navigation; I’d soloed; and I’d enjoyed the process of doing something really challenging. But I’d spooked myself, and the idea of being that most dangerous of pilots — the “weekend warrior” — bothered me, as I knew I’d be a danger to myself and possibly others if I continued.

Riding motorcycles is not like flying (unless you really screw up), but in terms of fear, the “dark side” quotient and its effect on ridership retention, there are definitely plenty of similarities, especially for newbies and re-entry riders.

What to do? It’s a complicated question with myriad possible answers, but one thing I know for sure is that riding on the dirt before you swing a leg over a street bike — as I did — pays dividends galore down the road. Whether it’s getting kids on bikes early (from Strider and STACYC bikes to minibikes) or introducing newbie (or re-entry) adults to off-road riding, the whole dirt riding thing — which packs years’ worth of two-wheeled vehicledynamics experience into just a couple of months — can only help. And that’s a good thing. More on this in this issue’s Garage section.

Mitch Boehm is the editorial director of the AMA

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