A Brief and Violent Study in Kinetic Energy

By Louise Conley

I have always been attentive to detail. I love statistical and analysis-related subjects. I love digging into psychology, especially logic and rationality. I used to believe all the rationalizing I have done in my life was a result of being highly intelligent. I am certain that was not correct. In fact, I think it makes me slightly dumber than some. For example, an evening on Christmas Eve a couple of years ago.

The asphalt looked harmless at first. Smooth, familiar, and seemingly trustworthy. Then it turned into a twisted slab of raised pavement that sent my red Yamaha R1 into a violent jolt. One second, I was gliding, the next the front wheel snapped left with the attitude of something that had been waiting all day to ruin my life.

I heard myself think the word shit in a weird calm voice, as if my brain had selected meditation mode while my body entered demolition mode.

The rear tire dug back in and that was the moment everything turned hostile. My usually loyal motorcycle suddenly wanted me gone. The handlebars started thrashing side to side like it was trying to flick me off its spine. Not a wobble. A full death shake. Physics saw my confidence and said hold my beer.

Inside my helmet I tried to sound composed. Straighten it. Fix it. You cannot crash. Meanwhile, my arms were already screaming. Turns out all the exercise workouts I planned on doing to strengthen my arms never happened. Every correction to the handlebars only made the next swing worse. The bike was no longer fighting the road. It was fighting me.

I looked behind me. Cars. A whole swarm of them. It was Christmas Eve, and every street was clogged with people racing between malls, stores, and whatever last minute panic shopping humans do before pretending to be merry and festive. Not a single lane was empty. No shoulder. No bailout option. No mercy from traffic, physics, or the universe in general. Just the cold realization that momentum had taken the wheel, and I was now a passenger with very little input left.

I decided to end the situation before it ended me. Look at me making adult decisions under pressure. I deserve a hashtag growth post and at least three sarcastic likes.

I waited for the next violent swing and put my weight into it; when the bike lunged left, I followed through. I dropped using all my weight and pulled the bike down on me. I did it gracefully to my surprise, doing my best to prevent both me and the motorcycle from taking an overly severe beating. The frame sliders scraped the asphalt with a horrible grind, the sound of metal begging for mercy.

The bike and I slid like a honeymoon couple running across a beach holding hands in slow motion. Except there was no beach, no sand, no romance. Just asphalt eating us alive. I thought about my friend’s sliders getting erased down to nothing when he crashed and figured mine had maybe three seconds before they turned into dust or bailed off the bike entirely.

My brain was on one command only. Get off. Get off right now. I kicked free, but my hands stayed on the bars for one last moment, pure instinct, pure loyalty, pure stupidity. I do not know if I twisted the throttle or if it jammed open on its own, but the R1 let out one last furious scream.

I yelled “I am sorry” at my motorcycle, because apparently that was the relationship I chose to prioritize during a crash. The moment I let go, the bike shot off without me, scraping and sparking across the lanes of the main street before cartwheeling further away from me like it had someplace better to be. It threw sparks like it thought it was filming a slow-motion action scene, except there was no movie, no camera crew, and absolutely no reason for this level of dramatic energy.

My poor bike and I did not get a single clap, not even one sympathetic gasp. I have been to funerals that felt more supportive. There was not even a single GoPro camera rolling. Zero fucks given.

Upon letting go of the handlebars my body took over. I expected the bike to continue its dramatic exit while I safely slid to a stop in whatever dust and spark it left behind. Wrong. My momentum grabbed me by the spine and turned me into a high-speed tumbleweed. I rolled. I bounced. I rotated in ways that the human skeleton is absolutely not advertised to endure. I tried to spread out and slow down like some kind of starfish, but the asphalt slapped that idea straight out of me. Every time I tried to stop the force just launched me again like a ragdoll on repeat.

Eventually friction took pity on me and let me stop rolling. I sprang up, not out of bravery, but out of a “pure please do not let a Honda Civic” finish me off type of energy.

Luckily, all the cars had stopped. Well, they had better have. They were all eating my dust just a few minutes earlier, which means they were behind me, not the other way around. They definitely witnessed my grand performance, and yet not a single person got out. No shouts. No “holy shit, are you okay?” Nothing.

For a moment, I actually wondered if I owed the drivers money, because their lack of enthusiasm made me question if the crash even happened. I wiped out in front of a live audience, and nobody rated my magnificent stunt. Not even a single pity star. Not even a comment like “bike’s form was solid, rider needs work.”

I scanned the lanes behind me and saw a whole line of annoyed people trapped in their cars. I could practically feel the Christmas spirit radiating off them, all of them silently praying I would drag my useless freshly exfoliated body off the road so they could continue their holiday shopping.

I looked down the street and saw my bike about eighteen meters away, looking like a burnt offering to the gods of bad decisions. Slightly smoking. Most likely broken. Financially depressing. I noticed the full tank of gas had straight up abandoned ship and was pooling and vaporizing on the ground like it was too embarrassed to be seen with the rest of the disaster. I could hear my wallet whimpering from home where I forgot it like the responsible adult I had grown up to be.

I took my first real step toward my bike and the pain finally hit. My knee throbbed. My palms were burning through my gloves. My jacket now had “custom ventilation” courtesy of asphalt. I reached for the top of my helmet and felt my pigtails still attached, the ultimate badge that a female rider just ate pavement at sixty and survived.

Still not a single reaction. Humanity observed me like an unwanted loading screen on a desktop computer running the old Windows 95 operating system. For a split second I considered getting up and smacking off their side mirrors just to return the emotional support they gave me, which was none.

Then it hit me. I was doing that thing I always do, trying to turn the chaos into logic so I would not have to feel stupid or wounded. Unfortunately, this was not something I could out-think; this was not about humanity or sympathy. This was physics, and physics does not care about my coping habits.

The second I let go of the bike, the shared momentum shattered. The motorcycle kept its larger mass and velocity while my lighter body took its own portion of kinetic energy and continued on a separate path. It did not feel like math. It felt like someone plugged my nervous system into a wall socket and hit the on switch.

They teach you early: momentum equals mass times velocity (p = m × v). Back then, it was just another formula on a whiteboard. On this day, it was the reason my skeleton briefly tried to exit my body.

Nobody imagines learning it through denim, asphalt, and skin. Of course I did. I like being the odd one. If my old physics teacher could have seen me in that moment, bleeding, burned, standing in the middle of the street like a half-conscious science fair project, Mr. Chau would have been proud.

Not of my choices, but of the data.