What I Wasn’t Thinking About When I Almost Crashed

On May 7, 2020, I walked out of the BMV feeling high as a kite, with a little extra pep in my step. Halfway through my thirtieth revolution around the sun, I had decided I was going to learn to ride.

Sitting in my car with my freshly printed permit in hand, I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I didn't know I was about to embark on 10,000-plus miles of some of the most life-changing, and quite often soul-altering, riding of my life. Miles across long, desolate stretches of I-80. Miles up sketchy gravel forest service roads to fire watchtowers. Miles where the scenery was so spectacular that I occasionally had to remind myself to keep looking at the road.

I'm not going to pretend I'm the most seasoned rider out there. I'm not. But I've put down my fair share of miles.

While most newlywed couples head for tropical beaches and spend their honeymoons lounging in hammocks and drinking something out of a coconut, mine consisted of a four-day motorcycle loop around Wyoming. We started in the northeast, traveled down through Thermopolis and the Wind River Range, then worked our way back up through the Tetons and Yellowstone.

We rode through what felt like incessant downpours on washed-out gravel roads where the water came almost as high as our exhaust pipes.

I've done an Iron Butt challenge from the muggy upper Midwest down to central Texas, complete with multiple hardware failures on the ride home. Why, yes, that was my saddlebag sliding down the highway in my rearview mirror. Clutch cable? That’s optional, right?

I've conquered the Tail of the Dragon. Twice. Needles Highway? Check. The madness that is Sturgis? Two times. Custer State Park? Been there, done that. Teton Pass on a loaner ADV bike with a seat height seven inches taller than my cruiser? Riding on pure adrenaline, baby.

But that's the thing about riding: no matter how many miles you've put down, there is always something new to experience.

The One I Didn’t See Coming

Last month, I experienced the closest call I've ever had. And the strangest part was that, by all accounts, I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing.

It was the perfect day for a ride. One of those late-summer days when the sun still has enough warmth to keep you toasty, but the air has started to carry those crisp whispers of fall. The humidity was surprisingly tolerable. Traffic was light. I was riding home from the gym on a route I'd taken countless times before.

I was less than a mile from my house. Fully geared up. Riding at a reasonable speed. Paying attention. Not in a hurry.

Just another ride home.

And that's probably why what happened next caught me so completely off guard.

The thing is, I haven't always been an ATGATT rider. Not because I thought gear made you look lame, and not because I was trying to prove anything. Mostly, I just didn't know. Every beginner starts there, regardless of what they're learning. That's the nature of being new at something: you don't know what you don't know.

When I first started riding, I understood that motorcycle gear was supposed to protect me. What I didn't fully understand was everything else it could do.

That distinction matters, because the longer I've ridden, the more I've realized that confidence on a motorcycle doesn't come from believing nothing will go wrong. It comes from knowing you've done what you can to be ready if it does.

That's a lesson I've learned in a lot of different ways over the last six years.

When people find out I ride a motorcycle, the first reaction is usually something akin to the shock of discovering that your great-aunt Matilda was the starring act in a sideshow circus in the 1940s: equal parts aghast and borderline horrified that I would willingly put myself in that kind of danger.

Is riding inherently more dangerous than driving a car? Sure. But playing it safe has never been my thing. Life is too damn short.

And what I usually tell people is that I think the road would be a safer place if more of us learned to ride. Riding teaches you to anticipate. To pay attention and to stay present.

There is very little room for mentally checking out when the thing you're operating has two wheels, and your body is the actual crumple zone (who needs bumpers anyway?)

That awareness has become one of the things I love most about riding.

I'm also, admittedly, a fairly achievement-driven perfectionist, and I consider myself a pretty safe, proactive rider. Over the last six years, I've been fortunate enough to get myself out of some tricky situations. Road-raging drivers. Unexpected road debris. An increasingly enclosing herd of bison that I quietly decided was not the moment to test my luck.

I'm always trying to stay one step ahead. And for years, that has worked pretty well.

But there's a flaw in trying to stay one step ahead of the road: you can only anticipate what you can see coming.

You can spend years learning how to predict the unknowns on the road and still fail to see the thing you never thought to look for.

That afternoon, I was riding through a small town where the speed limit is 30 mph. It gradually increases to 45, then eventually to 55 once you get further out into the boonies.

I approached a four-way stop like I had hundreds of times before. I was surprised to find myself entering the intersection alone. I double-checked to my left, came to a soft stop, and rolled through the final right turn on my route.

As I left town, I had barely hit 30 mph.

I’m not typically a speed demon, especially around intersections, but that day I felt even less rushed. The weather was perfect. Why hurry?

When the speed limit increased to 45, I settled in right around 45 mph.

But unlike most other days, I saw a deer. Odd time of the day to be out and about, but ok. I noted that it crossed the road about a quarter mile ahead of me.

If you live anywhere that deer do, you probably know that they hardly ever travel alone. See one deer, and there's a decent chance another two or three are standing somewhere nearby, waiting for their turn to make your insurance premiums interesting.

So I kept my speed around 45 mph and watched the road ahead as I approached the place where the deer had crossed. It was about 2 p.m., full daylight, with excellent visibility.

I turned my head for a second to make sure there weren't any more ungulates preparing to launch themselves across the highway like Rudolph running behind schedule. It couldn't have taken more than a second or two.

But when I turned my head back toward the road, I realized I had been looking for the wrong threat because there was a pickup truck directly in front of me. Stopped. Middle of the road. Only the third brakelight was on.

And I knew immediately that I didn't have enough distance to stop.

So my brain went into emergency mode. Time seemed to crawl. Everything narrowed into a series of decisions. 

I applied the brakes as aggressively as I could. My bike doesn't have ABS, and this was one of those moments when I would have gladly accepted the technological intervention. I tried to pump the rear brake to maximize traction while simultaneously figuring out where I could go.

I couldn't move into the left lane because there was oncoming traffic.

Staying straight meant hitting the back of the truck, sending the bike into the tailgate and potentially sending me over the top.

The right side offered a steep hill leading toward a drainage ditch. That seemed like the least terrible option. So I braced myself.

And then, by some miracle, the truck started accelerating again. I had maybe six feet.

The Distance That Mattered

Six feet was enough.

I released the brakes and watched the truck pull away as if nothing had happened. To them, it probably hadn’t.

I don't think I breathed for what felt like an eternity. And eventually, my brain caught up with what had just happened.

And that's when I started thinking about everything that could have gone wrong. Not in the abstract. In specifics.

I thought about my ability to work out. I thought about riding. I thought about all the ordinary physical things I do without thinking because I've always been able to do them. I thought about what it would mean to suddenly lose some of that ability.

What surprised me most, though, was what I didn't think about in those moments.

I didn't think about whether my skin was going to meet asphalt. I didn't think about how my knees and elbows would take the impact. I didn't think about whether the clothes I was wearing would stay intact.

Those calculations simply weren't taking up space in my head.

And I think that matters more than we give it credit for.

Because when everything goes wrong at once, your brain has limited bandwidth.

You don't get to calmly open another browser tab and say, Hang on, I'm going to think through the consequences of my clothing choices before I make this evasive maneuver.

You have seconds, maybe less.

The only things that mattered in those seconds were the truck, the traffic, the ditch, the brakes, the bike, and the handful of decisions that might determine what happened next.

I didn't have to spend any of that mental capacity wondering what would happen to my body if I went down. My gear had already answered that question for me.

Now trust when I say that that’s not the same thing as saying gear makes you invincible. It doesn't.

Wearing full, CE-certified gear doesn't guarantee that you walk away from a crash without injury. It doesn't make bad decisions good ones. It doesn't make a motorcycle as physically forgiving as a car.

What it can do is remove one variable from an already complicated equation. And sometimes, I think that's the part of motorcycle gear we talk about the least.

When Protection Becomes Freedom

We talk about abrasion resistance. Impact protection. Armor ratings. Waterproof membranes. Reinforced stitching. All of that matters.

But there is another kind of protection that is harder to measure: mental protection.

The freedom that comes from knowing you've prepared for the possibility that something might go wrong.

I didn't ride away from that near miss feeling invincible; I rode away feeling grateful.

Grateful that I had been paying attention. Grateful that the truck moved. Grateful that six feet was enough. And, perhaps most importantly, grateful that when my brain needed every available ounce of attention to deal with the situation in front of me, it wasn't also worrying about what would happen if I hit the pavement.

That experience cemented something for me.

I'll be an ATGATT rider for life.

Not because I'm a bad rider. Not because I think every ride is one mistake away from disaster. And certainly not because I want to stand on a street corner with a megaphone, blasting the holy word of ATGATT into your eardrums until I convert you. Because your body = your choice.

For me, wearing full gear is about something much simpler.

It's about preserving my ability to ride. To work out. To travel. To climb onto a motorcycle on some random Tuesday afternoon and disappear down a back road just because the weather is perfect and I have nowhere else I need to be.

I started riding because I wanted more life in my life.

Six years and more than 10,000 miles later, I still do.

The irony is that the thing that makes me feel most confident on a motorcycle isn't believing that nothing will happen to me.

It's knowing that something might, and being prepared anyway. That, for me, is what ATGATT is all about.