It's late so I'll have to keep this short, but the DMV waiver came yesterday and I've been out three times since -- once to get gas (the station attendant was frightened and made me pump it, despite it being full service - fine with me!), once to get inspected, and once to go visit some friends.
A badass looking dude on a cruiser gave me the peace-sign/two-fingered wave as he passed in front of me while I was at a light on Park Avenue. I waved back, and he almost looked surprised, like -- "sportbike guy waved back at me?" -- and then satisfied. Badass cruiser Park Avenue dude, you were my first MC wave. I salute you, and then quickly grab my security blanket front brake.
Tonight I took the West Side Highway up from 20th street to 96th street - my first time at about 50 miles an hour.
Lots more of that this weekend. If I'm still alive next week, I'll have a lot to say, and some pictures (I hope!)
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Friday, August 17, 2007
A Morning Ride ... With Pedals
While waiting for my DMV waiver from the Motorcycle Association of New York State (next week, so they say), I went out for a human-powered ride this morning. I've decided to trade in my elite Manhattan credentials for an actual living space. Some people in Manhattan make jokes about walk in closets larger than their apartment. I don't, because when that's actually true, it's significantly less funny.
Any serious cyclist (of which I am definitely not -- see previous dilettante entry) will turn up their nose at the suggestion that 7 miles to get anywhere is a long way, and they are correct. For most of those 7 miles, it's a very pleasant ride. It starts out in Riverside Park in the West 90s, not far from where I live:
Riverside Park is not really comparable to other NYC parks on account of its shape -- it isn't a big, central area like Prospect Park or Central Park where you go for a day. It doesn't have a theater, or a zoo, or a pond or a lake or rowboats or cars. It is long and narrow, stretching from the low 70s up to the low 100s. A little sliver of pedestrian/bike way called the Cherry Path actually continues all the way up to 125th street right on the Hudson, though you're about ten feet from the West Side Highway, which doesn't do a lot for tranquility.
Around 86th street, the Greenway cuts out of the park and onto a shared bike/pedestrian path right on the river. It isn't very long -- it only goes to around 72nd street before it takes you off the river path (that becomes pedestrian only) and underneath the West Side Highway.
The Greenway runs parallel to the West Side Highway from 59th street all the way down to Battery Park. The only really remarkable thing for most of this stretch is the USS Intrepid, the WWII-vintage Aircraft Carrier turned Air and Space museum that typically lives around 48th street. It is currently in drydock for repairs until next year (at least) and so no picture of an empty pier.
I had also never before biked over the Brooklyn Bridge (or walked it), mostly on account of living on the Upper West Side doesn't give you too many excuses to ride the 5 1/2 miles to get to the bridge, another mile over the bridge, and then wherever you want to go in Brooklyn.
Any serious cyclist (of which I am definitely not -- see previous dilettante entry) will turn up their nose at the suggestion that 7 miles to get anywhere is a long way, and they are correct. For most of those 7 miles, it's a very pleasant ride. It starts out in Riverside Park in the West 90s, not far from where I live:
Riverside Park is not really comparable to other NYC parks on account of its shape -- it isn't a big, central area like Prospect Park or Central Park where you go for a day. It doesn't have a theater, or a zoo, or a pond or a lake or rowboats or cars. It is long and narrow, stretching from the low 70s up to the low 100s. A little sliver of pedestrian/bike way called the Cherry Path actually continues all the way up to 125th street right on the Hudson, though you're about ten feet from the West Side Highway, which doesn't do a lot for tranquility.The park itself can be one of the more peaceful places in the city. It gets heavily crowded on the weekends, but there are lots of little pockets of grass and picnic tables that are out of the way from most of the park's traffic, which consists of people like me using the park (and the connected Greenway) to walk or ride somewhere in Manhattan. I can get to Times Square from the Upper West Side in about fifteen minutes on my bicycle and I am hardly an aggressive rider -- I have a hybrid bike I bought when I lived upstate and so I'm not equipped to be an aggressive rider anyway.
Around 86th street, the Greenway cuts out of the park and onto a shared bike/pedestrian path right on the river. It isn't very long -- it only goes to around 72nd street before it takes you off the river path (that becomes pedestrian only) and underneath the West Side Highway.There is an overpriced outdoor cafe right around here called the Boat Basin Cafe (so named because of its proximity to the 79th Street Boat Basin) where people routinely wait at least an hour for a table and pay a lot of money for standard grill food. Nevertheless, as one of the few places to eat in Manhattan right on the water, we've all been there at least once.
The Greenway runs parallel to the West Side Highway from 59th street all the way down to Battery Park. The only really remarkable thing for most of this stretch is the USS Intrepid, the WWII-vintage Aircraft Carrier turned Air and Space museum that typically lives around 48th street. It is currently in drydock for repairs until next year (at least) and so no picture of an empty pier.Instead, this is lower Manhattan, where you turn off of the Greenway to Chambers Street to get to the Brooklyn Bridge. There are no signs at this point for cyclists. I guess they don't want you to know it's there.
It is.
Over 4,000 people bike across the Brooklyn Bridge each day.
They don't do it at 11:30 in the morning, thankfully. It was hectic enough with just a few bikes and a lot of people. I guess there aren't as many people on the bridge during the morning rush hour, because I was nearly run over by guys zooming along on their road bikes. Good Road Invisibility practice.
I'd like to take a moment to complain that there is no easy semantic way of distinguishing "riding" a bike from "riding" a motorcycle unless you call bicycle riding "cycling," which, to me, refers to the sport of cycling. I am a guy who gets on a beat up old bike with mismatched tired and enjoys the little bit of fresh air that New York has to offer. A cyclist is somebody who not only owns several sets of spandex, but looks good in them -- and they were probably given to him by a sponsor. Cyclists have sponsors. I'm a dude on a bicycle. But not a biker. Motorcyclist sounds too stodgy and official, like I'm the Department of Transportation. So, for now, I will stick to "guy on motorcycle" when referring to somebody with a clutch lever, a helmet, and leathers.
When I first arrived in New York, it seemed to me like they had a bunch of Bridge left over after finishing the Brooklyn Bridge and so decided to build the Manhattan Bridge right god damn next to it. Of course it is not actually right next to the Brooklyn Bridge, but it seems that way when you are standing on one of them. And of course they did not complete the Brooklyn Bridge and immediately set about building one right next to it. The two bridges also look completely different.
One day, they will plan ahead and just build an enormous, 30-lane bridge. When they do, bicyclists and pedestrians will still only have a four foot lane.
Brooklyn. Home of the Dodgers (departed), the hawt dawg, the aggressive Park Slope Mother, and the mythical G Train (I have still never seen it, but I am assured it exists.)
This is Brooklyn Heights (I think), on Bergen Street, which is pretty close to the bridge. Brooklyn has gentrified quite a lot over the last ten years. I don't know the actual definition of "gentrification," except to say that it carried an undercurrent of resentment and alarm -- the idea that they are coming from the hills, some nebulous body of people who are not us and will want us out.
I am looking for a place to live not in the really fancy parts of Brooklyn, but in the just plain fancy parts. These are most likely the parts that, ten or twenty years ago, would be less nice (but with more character, so the argument goes) and have since been gentrified. I guess that makes me the gentry. Instead of asking if the apartment is rent-stabilized, I ask if it's rent-gentrified. If they say no, I dab my eyes with a white silk handerchief I carry in my breast pocket and leave for some place more charming.
Then it's back home up the West Side Drive on the Greenway. About 75 minutes in each direction, which isn't bad; it'd be about 45 by subway but I'd have seen a lot less. When the weather is good, I ride the subway around once a week -- typically when I am going out in the evening and will either be coming home inebriated or can't show up in the t-shirt and shorts I bike around in. ATGATT on my bicycle means my sunglasses, which have not been approved by the DOT, and which, if impacted at high speeds by a bird or a pebble, would probably shatter into a thousand tiny pieces of glass, impale me through the brain pan and kill me instantly.
I am sure on some level it is absurd that I have motorcycle gear for every part of my body but I don't even wear a helmet on my bicycle. Probably a lesson in there somewhere.
Thursday, August 9, 2007
MSF Day 2 & Wrap Up
Total Mileage: 15
"Feel free to write to the school and complain about my tendency to occasionally raise my voice just a little," instructor Phil O'Hagan told us at the end of the class, in all seriousness. "I get a talking to about it around once a month."
One gets the impression that he's been getting these talks for most of his life, and that the cumulative effect is visible in the wide grin on his face as he hands seven of the original eleven of us our Motorcycle Safety Foundation Basic RiderCourse completion cards, worth nothing except for "putting them on the fridge with your kids' drawings," except that the Motorcycle Safety School won't provide you with a magnet. Finally, as O'Hagan announces our test scores to the room and produces the cards, he looks skywards and announces: "May God forgive me for passing you."
It comes as little surprise to me the next day when I look up some press about the Brooklyn-based Motorcycle Safety School (with ranges in the Bronx, Ulster, and Brooklyn) and discover articles from five and six years ago in which the author describes "MSF Boot camp" and "instructor Phil O'Hagan" who, as it turns out, is as politically involved with motorcycles (as a lifelong member of the AMA and representative for one of their districts) as he is verbally involved in your face when you do not follow his instructions.
Having now lived through two days of this treatment, my hesitation the other day as to whether or not his style of instruction is appropriate has turned into an unwavering demand that everyone who takes the course after me gets the same medicine. Like a post-initiation frat boy or a grunt just out of basic, it no longer seems to matter to me on any intellectual level whether or not there are other ways of learning how to ride a motorcycle. It only matters to me that there is suffering just like we went through, because otherwise, it's not fair!
On a barely more serious note, in retrospect, I don't disapprove of the man's teaching style. It was rattling, and the people who did not pass the course were the ones who were the most rattled by it (though they will be back on Monday for a re-test), but I can't deny that being rattled on a bike is inevitable and you may as well get used to doing the right thing under those conditions right away.
The second day opened with the Blue Box of Death. Designed for a snail-speed double U-turn exercise, the blue box is some number of feet wide by some number of feet long. Viewed through the motorcycle squid helmet visor, it's about the size of a matchbook.
O'Hagan demonstrates the maneuver with aplomb, making it look so easy that any moron could do it (a good thing, since he has described in some detail the extent to which several of us are morons.) There is one fellow in the course who is a master at this particular exercise, and we all watch him with envy before we set about riding well outside the lines of the box, putting our feet down, or both.
We go through the next several exercises without too much incident: cornering, running over 2x4s, braking during a turn (or, rather, quickly ending your turn and then braking), swerving. Most everyone has improved from the first day.
Several hours later, we're ready for the Road Test, an event which is objectively not especially difficult but practically made problematic on account of everyone is terrified of it. The road test has four parts:
- Two slow-speed U-Turns in The Box
- Swerve to the right
- Emergency stop
- Cornering
The Box is the most difficult part but also the least critical as you don't lose many points for going outside of the box. Miraculously, the only time I finished the Box exercise perfectly was during the test; I was positive that I would lose a few points, but I managed to get through that only to lose points on the emergency stop, which is the easiest part of the test.
The guy before me dropped his bike during the emergency stop. He was one of the better riders in the class and the event was written off due to nerves. It was still an automatic failure, but he was quickly scheduled for a retest that everyone knew he wouldn't have trouble with.
Determined not to repeat his experience, I was a little conservative with the brakes and did not stop in as little distance as I might have and lost a few points.
The test ends without much more drama and we all wait around for our scores. The youngest guy in the class (18) fails from too many points down and looks discouraged, but I wouldn't have had the courage to take that class at 18 so nobody thinks any less of him. One guy who had received a little bit more love from the instructor than the rest of us lost too many points and schedules a retest.
The rest of us get our little cards, go home, shower, and collapse.
Two weeks until we get a DMV form in the mail that we take in to get our licenses.
That's right: I polish my bike and move it across the street several times a week, but I haven't actually ridden the thing yet.
I'm also really more of a baritone.
"Feel free to write to the school and complain about my tendency to occasionally raise my voice just a little," instructor Phil O'Hagan told us at the end of the class, in all seriousness. "I get a talking to about it around once a month."
One gets the impression that he's been getting these talks for most of his life, and that the cumulative effect is visible in the wide grin on his face as he hands seven of the original eleven of us our Motorcycle Safety Foundation Basic RiderCourse completion cards, worth nothing except for "putting them on the fridge with your kids' drawings," except that the Motorcycle Safety School won't provide you with a magnet. Finally, as O'Hagan announces our test scores to the room and produces the cards, he looks skywards and announces: "May God forgive me for passing you."
It comes as little surprise to me the next day when I look up some press about the Brooklyn-based Motorcycle Safety School (with ranges in the Bronx, Ulster, and Brooklyn) and discover articles from five and six years ago in which the author describes "MSF Boot camp" and "instructor Phil O'Hagan" who, as it turns out, is as politically involved with motorcycles (as a lifelong member of the AMA and representative for one of their districts) as he is verbally involved in your face when you do not follow his instructions.
Having now lived through two days of this treatment, my hesitation the other day as to whether or not his style of instruction is appropriate has turned into an unwavering demand that everyone who takes the course after me gets the same medicine. Like a post-initiation frat boy or a grunt just out of basic, it no longer seems to matter to me on any intellectual level whether or not there are other ways of learning how to ride a motorcycle. It only matters to me that there is suffering just like we went through, because otherwise, it's not fair!
On a barely more serious note, in retrospect, I don't disapprove of the man's teaching style. It was rattling, and the people who did not pass the course were the ones who were the most rattled by it (though they will be back on Monday for a re-test), but I can't deny that being rattled on a bike is inevitable and you may as well get used to doing the right thing under those conditions right away.
The second day opened with the Blue Box of Death. Designed for a snail-speed double U-turn exercise, the blue box is some number of feet wide by some number of feet long. Viewed through the motorcycle squid helmet visor, it's about the size of a matchbook.
O'Hagan demonstrates the maneuver with aplomb, making it look so easy that any moron could do it (a good thing, since he has described in some detail the extent to which several of us are morons.) There is one fellow in the course who is a master at this particular exercise, and we all watch him with envy before we set about riding well outside the lines of the box, putting our feet down, or both.
We go through the next several exercises without too much incident: cornering, running over 2x4s, braking during a turn (or, rather, quickly ending your turn and then braking), swerving. Most everyone has improved from the first day.
Several hours later, we're ready for the Road Test, an event which is objectively not especially difficult but practically made problematic on account of everyone is terrified of it. The road test has four parts:
- Two slow-speed U-Turns in The Box
- Swerve to the right
- Emergency stop
- Cornering
The Box is the most difficult part but also the least critical as you don't lose many points for going outside of the box. Miraculously, the only time I finished the Box exercise perfectly was during the test; I was positive that I would lose a few points, but I managed to get through that only to lose points on the emergency stop, which is the easiest part of the test.
The guy before me dropped his bike during the emergency stop. He was one of the better riders in the class and the event was written off due to nerves. It was still an automatic failure, but he was quickly scheduled for a retest that everyone knew he wouldn't have trouble with.
Determined not to repeat his experience, I was a little conservative with the brakes and did not stop in as little distance as I might have and lost a few points.
The test ends without much more drama and we all wait around for our scores. The youngest guy in the class (18) fails from too many points down and looks discouraged, but I wouldn't have had the courage to take that class at 18 so nobody thinks any less of him. One guy who had received a little bit more love from the instructor than the rest of us lost too many points and schedules a retest.
The rest of us get our little cards, go home, shower, and collapse.
Two weeks until we get a DMV form in the mail that we take in to get our licenses.
That's right: I polish my bike and move it across the street several times a week, but I haven't actually ridden the thing yet.
I'm also really more of a baritone.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
MSF Review: Day 1 and 1/2
Total Miles Ridden: 10
Superficial Lesson Learned: Hair does not like motorcycle helmets, particularly for upwards of six hours. Prepare for that Mad Scientist look.
I am a day and a half into the two-and-a-half day "Basic RiderCourse" offered by the Motorcycle Safety School in the Bronx. The only alternative around here is to go all the way out to the Queensboro College campus, where Trama's Auto School has a campus. Both courses had a waiting list of about a month when I first signed up in the beginning of July. Given the 7:30 AM start times, I went with the Bronx.
The facilities leave a lot to be desired, but I suppose in New York City it's either that or else pay even more than the already-high $350 for the course. Picture a trailer in Mott Haven on the Bronx River with a couple of port-a-potties and a lined course about the size of a smaller supermarket parking lot.
And really, if you want luxury, buy a Lexus. So I forgive the Motorcycle Safety School for not having a sauna.
There is no way for me to get to know our primary instructor, who teaches the classroom sessions and is present for both six-hour stints on the course, well enough so that I could (maybe) present him as anything other than a blue collar Bronx-Irish stereotype in the few days that I am going to be in his company. Since I can't escape this low-brow literary device, I might as well embrace it and tell you to envision a vein-bulging, eye-popping, eighty-decibel-shouting bearded Harley rider with a Bronx accent.
Of the 11 students (10 men, 1 woman), two are my age (mid-late twenties), a couple people in their early-mid thirties, one eighteen year old kid (who was distressed that he was the only kid) and the rest in their late 30s to mid 40s.
Of the gentlemen present, only three of us did not have visible, large tattoos, and one of those three is the 18 year old who just recently turned old enough to get some.
I am fairly certain that I was the only actor.
The first day (last night) was all classroom work and he was amicable, encouraging, and soft-spoken. He obviously wanted to make everyone feel comfortable. He pointed out the schools' passing rate of 94% (88-92% on their first try). Even today, after several of us gave mixed performances on the course, once you got off the bike, he was pretty forgiving.
On the course, though, this is the School of Abuse. He and his fellow instructor weren't patient or supportive. If they explained the instructions and you didn't ask a question and then had a problem, you didn't get words of encouragment: you got threatened with being "counseled out," a polite euphamism for The Boot, and not even an especially accurate one since all of us (particularly those of us who ride) are very good at ignoring counsel and you could sooner ignore a stampeding elephant than Our Instructor Irishman.
I am very lucky that I took quickly to all of the exercises that we were doing and so I avoided most of the instructor's wrath. If you had to screw up, screwing up something difficult like a tight turn was largely OK; stalling was verboten and doing anything other than what the instructors said was sure to win you a warm place in their hearts.
I was mostly paying attention to my own bike and the person in front of me, so I don't have my own sense of how the rest of the class did. But based on Minutes Spent Receiving a Lashing, I am near the top of the class. We will find out tomorrow, during the road test, if this parleys into actual performance.
There are a few reasons why I thought the tough guy behavior on the instructors' part might be an act.
There is a school of thought in teaching proficient motorcycling that says: Riding a motorcycle is not only not a natural thing for the human mind to learn, but it is also a stressful pasttime. Particularly since you never go above 3rd gear and about 20mph in the MSF, they cannot possibly simulate what it is like to pull onto the Jersey Turnpike with an armada of SUV-driving cell-philes busily discussing nothing at all right along with you. Because it is the instructors' job to prepare you as best they can for real-world riding, they should take every opportunity to inflict real stress on you -- especially as whatever abuse they send at you, however distressful it might be, isn't actually going to endanger you like a real road situation might. There are no physical safety consequences of being yelled at.
The opposing school of thought probably says that destroying a student's confidence within two hours' of their first time ever on a motorcycle can result in their failure to develop both proper riding aptitude and proper riding attitude and is more likely to make that student fail the course, give the MSF and motorcycle safety the New York One-Fingered Salute, and find some backwater place in the boonies to take their DMV road test on a Vespa -- or maybe just skip the whole licensing step entirely, since, as they informed us, a lot of riders involved in crashes are not licensed.
I'd like to think that this is one of those situations where a middle road is best, but I am not a Motorcycle Safety Instructor, and ours has been teaching for sixteen years. So I can't bring myself to be very critical of his style of the hands-on aspect of the course where you actually learn to ride a motorcycle, particularly as, at least in my case, I am much more confident and capable on a bike this evening than I was this morning. How much more? Nine more.
The other reason I thought that our instructors might be in a bad mood was because the temperature hit the mid-nineties today and the only relief that anybody has on a motorcycle course comes from being on a motorcycle at speed. We got very little speed and so were miserable the entire day, despite drinking our body weight in water and gatorade. Students performing poorly means more time on the course means a longer day in wretched climate and so I assumed that our collectice ineptitude had pushed the day, originally scheduled from 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM (with threats of immediate failure if you arrived late for any reason), well past 6:00 or 6:30.
When I finished my written test this afternoon and left, it was 3:30 PM.
The classroom portion of the class consists of a few hours before you ever sit on a bike and a few more hours after your first day on a bike. We would read the MSF Basic RiderCourse Manual, watch an MSF Basic RiderCourse DVD Companion, and then answer questions from the study guide in the back of the manual to prepare for the written test -- 50 questions on subjects from the book.
On the plus side, the book presents some difficult concepts in a very straightforward and brief manner. It doesn't get into physics or detailed explanations of why things are the way they are or why you should do This but not That -- presumably on the basis that you can only absorb so much knowledge over three days and this is probably not the time to become one with your motorcycle.
My criticism of this part of the class most likely does not contain any really original thoughts. The problem with the content of the class is that it's very, very canned. Here's the best example:
The instructor asks the class to name some things that can impair the rider's ability, judgment, or vision. The obvious things like drugs and alcohol are named, along with hunger/thirst, emotions, and a couple others. Thinking of David Hough's Proficient Motorcycling, I remembered an incident he described while touring through Europe with a group in which a pair of English bikers along with him suffered from heat stroke and weren't aware of it -- so by the time they actually stopped, both riders had high fevers and were incapacitated. They were hospitalized -- if memory serves, for over a month.
I volunteer that weather can impair a rider.
The instructor looks at me like I'm crazy. "Weather? Impair a rider?"
To which I replied: "Yes!"
To which he replied: "Nonsense!"
I don't take this personally, because I'm there to learn everything I can and not to assert my own, puny knowledge of Motorcycles to people who have been riding them longer than I've been alive, but one possible reason for his rejection of my comment immediately became clear with a little MSF-sponsored memory trick to remember major categories of impairments:
Hunger
Anger
Limits
T....something I don't remember.
Of course, you could say that things like hypothermia, dehydration, or heat stroke all fall under "limits" since you've exceeded the safe operating parameters of Yourself. Hunger and Anger could easily fall under that umbrella as well. There was no question about this on the test and I can think of no reason why anyone should learn by rote four and only four categories of human impairment.
But that gripe is my only real complaint and other than being shot down in front of the class (most of whom were already sore at the instructor for threatening them with failure) there were no consequences.
The written test, based entirely on the content of the book and videos, was fifty questions. It took about three minutes to finish.
Tomorrow comes the hard part of completing the course -- the road test.
Superficial Lesson Learned: Hair does not like motorcycle helmets, particularly for upwards of six hours. Prepare for that Mad Scientist look.
I am a day and a half into the two-and-a-half day "Basic RiderCourse" offered by the Motorcycle Safety School in the Bronx. The only alternative around here is to go all the way out to the Queensboro College campus, where Trama's Auto School has a campus. Both courses had a waiting list of about a month when I first signed up in the beginning of July. Given the 7:30 AM start times, I went with the Bronx.
The facilities leave a lot to be desired, but I suppose in New York City it's either that or else pay even more than the already-high $350 for the course. Picture a trailer in Mott Haven on the Bronx River with a couple of port-a-potties and a lined course about the size of a smaller supermarket parking lot.
And really, if you want luxury, buy a Lexus. So I forgive the Motorcycle Safety School for not having a sauna.
There is no way for me to get to know our primary instructor, who teaches the classroom sessions and is present for both six-hour stints on the course, well enough so that I could (maybe) present him as anything other than a blue collar Bronx-Irish stereotype in the few days that I am going to be in his company. Since I can't escape this low-brow literary device, I might as well embrace it and tell you to envision a vein-bulging, eye-popping, eighty-decibel-shouting bearded Harley rider with a Bronx accent.
Of the 11 students (10 men, 1 woman), two are my age (mid-late twenties), a couple people in their early-mid thirties, one eighteen year old kid (who was distressed that he was the only kid) and the rest in their late 30s to mid 40s.
Of the gentlemen present, only three of us did not have visible, large tattoos, and one of those three is the 18 year old who just recently turned old enough to get some.
I am fairly certain that I was the only actor.
The first day (last night) was all classroom work and he was amicable, encouraging, and soft-spoken. He obviously wanted to make everyone feel comfortable. He pointed out the schools' passing rate of 94% (88-92% on their first try). Even today, after several of us gave mixed performances on the course, once you got off the bike, he was pretty forgiving.
On the course, though, this is the School of Abuse. He and his fellow instructor weren't patient or supportive. If they explained the instructions and you didn't ask a question and then had a problem, you didn't get words of encouragment: you got threatened with being "counseled out," a polite euphamism for The Boot, and not even an especially accurate one since all of us (particularly those of us who ride) are very good at ignoring counsel and you could sooner ignore a stampeding elephant than Our Instructor Irishman.
I am very lucky that I took quickly to all of the exercises that we were doing and so I avoided most of the instructor's wrath. If you had to screw up, screwing up something difficult like a tight turn was largely OK; stalling was verboten and doing anything other than what the instructors said was sure to win you a warm place in their hearts.
I was mostly paying attention to my own bike and the person in front of me, so I don't have my own sense of how the rest of the class did. But based on Minutes Spent Receiving a Lashing, I am near the top of the class. We will find out tomorrow, during the road test, if this parleys into actual performance.
There are a few reasons why I thought the tough guy behavior on the instructors' part might be an act.
There is a school of thought in teaching proficient motorcycling that says: Riding a motorcycle is not only not a natural thing for the human mind to learn, but it is also a stressful pasttime. Particularly since you never go above 3rd gear and about 20mph in the MSF, they cannot possibly simulate what it is like to pull onto the Jersey Turnpike with an armada of SUV-driving cell-philes busily discussing nothing at all right along with you. Because it is the instructors' job to prepare you as best they can for real-world riding, they should take every opportunity to inflict real stress on you -- especially as whatever abuse they send at you, however distressful it might be, isn't actually going to endanger you like a real road situation might. There are no physical safety consequences of being yelled at.
The opposing school of thought probably says that destroying a student's confidence within two hours' of their first time ever on a motorcycle can result in their failure to develop both proper riding aptitude and proper riding attitude and is more likely to make that student fail the course, give the MSF and motorcycle safety the New York One-Fingered Salute, and find some backwater place in the boonies to take their DMV road test on a Vespa -- or maybe just skip the whole licensing step entirely, since, as they informed us, a lot of riders involved in crashes are not licensed.
I'd like to think that this is one of those situations where a middle road is best, but I am not a Motorcycle Safety Instructor, and ours has been teaching for sixteen years. So I can't bring myself to be very critical of his style of the hands-on aspect of the course where you actually learn to ride a motorcycle, particularly as, at least in my case, I am much more confident and capable on a bike this evening than I was this morning. How much more? Nine more.
The other reason I thought that our instructors might be in a bad mood was because the temperature hit the mid-nineties today and the only relief that anybody has on a motorcycle course comes from being on a motorcycle at speed. We got very little speed and so were miserable the entire day, despite drinking our body weight in water and gatorade. Students performing poorly means more time on the course means a longer day in wretched climate and so I assumed that our collectice ineptitude had pushed the day, originally scheduled from 7:30 AM to 5:30 PM (with threats of immediate failure if you arrived late for any reason), well past 6:00 or 6:30.
When I finished my written test this afternoon and left, it was 3:30 PM.
The classroom portion of the class consists of a few hours before you ever sit on a bike and a few more hours after your first day on a bike. We would read the MSF Basic RiderCourse Manual, watch an MSF Basic RiderCourse DVD Companion, and then answer questions from the study guide in the back of the manual to prepare for the written test -- 50 questions on subjects from the book.
On the plus side, the book presents some difficult concepts in a very straightforward and brief manner. It doesn't get into physics or detailed explanations of why things are the way they are or why you should do This but not That -- presumably on the basis that you can only absorb so much knowledge over three days and this is probably not the time to become one with your motorcycle.
My criticism of this part of the class most likely does not contain any really original thoughts. The problem with the content of the class is that it's very, very canned. Here's the best example:
The instructor asks the class to name some things that can impair the rider's ability, judgment, or vision. The obvious things like drugs and alcohol are named, along with hunger/thirst, emotions, and a couple others. Thinking of David Hough's Proficient Motorcycling, I remembered an incident he described while touring through Europe with a group in which a pair of English bikers along with him suffered from heat stroke and weren't aware of it -- so by the time they actually stopped, both riders had high fevers and were incapacitated. They were hospitalized -- if memory serves, for over a month.
I volunteer that weather can impair a rider.
The instructor looks at me like I'm crazy. "Weather? Impair a rider?"
To which I replied: "Yes!"
To which he replied: "Nonsense!"
I don't take this personally, because I'm there to learn everything I can and not to assert my own, puny knowledge of Motorcycles to people who have been riding them longer than I've been alive, but one possible reason for his rejection of my comment immediately became clear with a little MSF-sponsored memory trick to remember major categories of impairments:
Hunger
Anger
Limits
T....something I don't remember.
Of course, you could say that things like hypothermia, dehydration, or heat stroke all fall under "limits" since you've exceeded the safe operating parameters of Yourself. Hunger and Anger could easily fall under that umbrella as well. There was no question about this on the test and I can think of no reason why anyone should learn by rote four and only four categories of human impairment.
But that gripe is my only real complaint and other than being shot down in front of the class (most of whom were already sore at the instructor for threatening them with failure) there were no consequences.
The written test, based entirely on the content of the book and videos, was fifty questions. It took about three minutes to finish.
Tomorrow comes the hard part of completing the course -- the road test.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
The Process of Motorcycle Acceptance
In order to mentally accept the risks involved in riding a motorcycle, you must first accept that there is something wrong with your life as it is. It could be any number of things; you are weary from your daily commute. You don't get out much. Your life seems constrained and lacks a sense of freedom.
The reason for this necessary step is that, unless you are pre-disposed to be a motorcycle jockey from a young age, you have to talk yourself into it. When I first told a few people that I was going to buy a bike and learn to ride (hopefully not in that order), many of them assumed that I was having some sort of mid-life crisis about fifteen years early and discounted whatever I said by way of explanation as the raving of a crazy person. There may be some truth to this, but it is also true that there is a kind of internal sales pitch required for some of us. At my stage of Motorcycle Acceptance, where I have spent a combined total of a couple days practicing under supervision and am about to take a three-day safety course (more on this later), this is the thought process as I sit on a motorcycle:
I feel really cool right now!
followed by
This is a Very Bad idea.
Anyone with an average sense of self-preservation needs to regard motorcycles as a means to an end and that end has to be of significant value. Otherwise it's just an avenue for thrill-seekers, which is fine, but not me. Some people I've talked to get very philosophical when describing their motivation.
In my case, it is far less profound: I hate public transportation. I'm not talking about subways and busses to get across town. I'm talking about leaving New York. I have to give New Jersey credit for NJ Transit, because as a New Yorker, any trip I could possibly want to take to any desireable part of New Jersey is accessible and affordable thanks to NJ Transit.
The problem with this arrangement is that it inevitably deposits you in New Jersey.
I could dedicate several pages to why I find New Jersey to be such a perplexing place, but I will save us both from a half-hour of our lives we would never get back and simply observe that I rarely meet anyone from New Jersey who will proudly stand up and say "I love New Jersey!" (Bergen County not included.)
The only other option for public transportation around here is Amtrak, a giant government-funded organization which annually declares its surprise and befuddlement at the discovery of all these trains it seems to have and then proceeds to ask, like your neighbor with a broken-down car, if it can borrow your ride to work.
If you are willing to put up with Amtrak, you can go to Boston, Philadelphia, or Washington D.C. and several suburban points between. The cheapest round-trip ticket to from New York to Boston is about $160. For your $160, you get to go to Penn Station, an experience like no other, and arrive at your destination about fifteen minutes sooner than if you'd taken a car.
If you haven't experienced any of these things, a motorcycle might seem to you an inane solution to a non-existent problem in a place like New York. After all, motorcycles are for the wide-open road, which is a concept that doesn't exist within a fifty mile radius of this place. This is not an insignificant consideration.
All of the fun things to do on a motorcycle cannot be done in New York City.
There are no deserted parking lots in which to practice.
There are no twisty roads with no traffic.
Parts of the Henry Hudson Parkway and the FDR Drive could be described as scenic, but only by comparison to the rest of the grid. "Scenic" around here means that you can look at some water and either Queens or New Jersey while you sit in traffic.
I should emphasize that, when I say "New York City" I am referring specifically to Manhattan, where I live. It could be that there is some dark corner of Brooklyn or Queens where the above is not true, but it takes, on average, only slightly less time to get to anywhere other than the edge of another borough as it does to get to Philadelphia (via public transit). For all practical purposes, the inner parts of Queens and Brooklyn are in other states, and Staten Island is another country.
The first question of Motorcycle Acceptance is: "Is it worth it?" I've tried to answer that in this entry.
The next question is "Can I do it?" This is a question that a lot of people seem unconcerned with. Some un-scientific facts whose sources may be the Hurt Report (an early 1980s study of Motorcycle accident statistics), The Internet (always reliable), Some Guy, or Made Up:
- Riding a motorcycle is between 16 and 40 times more dangerous than driving a car, depending on how you measure "more dangerous," but:
- In over half of all motorcycle fatalities, the blood alcohol content of the rider was above the legal limit
- In only a small percentage of motorcycle fatalities did the rider have any formal training (such as the course offered nationwide by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation
- A large percentage of riders killed do not actually have a motorcycle license
- Protective gear is rarely required by law (helmets are in many states, but not armored jackets/leathers or pants) and rarely worn
Let's be brutally honest about it for a moment: it's okay if you don't want to ride a motorcycle, but if you try and can't, that's somehow worse than not trying at all. Admitting that you may just not be cut out for it takes enormous presence of mind and lack of regard for what cool biker dudes will think about you. Nonetheless, it seems to me that, statistically, some of those cool biker dudes belong to this group but don't know it.
Over the next few days, I will be taking what the MSF calls their "Basic RiderCourse" at the Motorcycle Safety School in the Bronx. This is two and a half days of classroom and course work in which you learn how not to kill yourself or others.
There are plenty of riders out there with a low regard for the MSF, for a wardrobe full of safety gear, and for anything other than throwing caution into the wind in a no-holds-barred embrace of biker culture and freedom.
I am willing to bet that they aren't in musical theatre.
Even if I were a biker dude with intimidating leathers and knives and I rode a gigantic Harley with nothing but tattoos for protection, whatever street cred this might buy me would go down the toilet the minute I produced my Actor's Equity card. You can't play Schroeder in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and really belong to badass biker subculture.
I'm hoping that there's a pseudointellectual dramatic nerd biker subculture. In that country, I am King.
The reason for this necessary step is that, unless you are pre-disposed to be a motorcycle jockey from a young age, you have to talk yourself into it. When I first told a few people that I was going to buy a bike and learn to ride (hopefully not in that order), many of them assumed that I was having some sort of mid-life crisis about fifteen years early and discounted whatever I said by way of explanation as the raving of a crazy person. There may be some truth to this, but it is also true that there is a kind of internal sales pitch required for some of us. At my stage of Motorcycle Acceptance, where I have spent a combined total of a couple days practicing under supervision and am about to take a three-day safety course (more on this later), this is the thought process as I sit on a motorcycle:
I feel really cool right now!
followed by
This is a Very Bad idea.
Anyone with an average sense of self-preservation needs to regard motorcycles as a means to an end and that end has to be of significant value. Otherwise it's just an avenue for thrill-seekers, which is fine, but not me. Some people I've talked to get very philosophical when describing their motivation.
In my case, it is far less profound: I hate public transportation. I'm not talking about subways and busses to get across town. I'm talking about leaving New York. I have to give New Jersey credit for NJ Transit, because as a New Yorker, any trip I could possibly want to take to any desireable part of New Jersey is accessible and affordable thanks to NJ Transit.
The problem with this arrangement is that it inevitably deposits you in New Jersey.
I could dedicate several pages to why I find New Jersey to be such a perplexing place, but I will save us both from a half-hour of our lives we would never get back and simply observe that I rarely meet anyone from New Jersey who will proudly stand up and say "I love New Jersey!" (Bergen County not included.)
The only other option for public transportation around here is Amtrak, a giant government-funded organization which annually declares its surprise and befuddlement at the discovery of all these trains it seems to have and then proceeds to ask, like your neighbor with a broken-down car, if it can borrow your ride to work.
If you are willing to put up with Amtrak, you can go to Boston, Philadelphia, or Washington D.C. and several suburban points between. The cheapest round-trip ticket to from New York to Boston is about $160. For your $160, you get to go to Penn Station, an experience like no other, and arrive at your destination about fifteen minutes sooner than if you'd taken a car.
If you haven't experienced any of these things, a motorcycle might seem to you an inane solution to a non-existent problem in a place like New York. After all, motorcycles are for the wide-open road, which is a concept that doesn't exist within a fifty mile radius of this place. This is not an insignificant consideration.
All of the fun things to do on a motorcycle cannot be done in New York City.
There are no deserted parking lots in which to practice.
There are no twisty roads with no traffic.
Parts of the Henry Hudson Parkway and the FDR Drive could be described as scenic, but only by comparison to the rest of the grid. "Scenic" around here means that you can look at some water and either Queens or New Jersey while you sit in traffic.
I should emphasize that, when I say "New York City" I am referring specifically to Manhattan, where I live. It could be that there is some dark corner of Brooklyn or Queens where the above is not true, but it takes, on average, only slightly less time to get to anywhere other than the edge of another borough as it does to get to Philadelphia (via public transit). For all practical purposes, the inner parts of Queens and Brooklyn are in other states, and Staten Island is another country.
The first question of Motorcycle Acceptance is: "Is it worth it?" I've tried to answer that in this entry.
The next question is "Can I do it?" This is a question that a lot of people seem unconcerned with. Some un-scientific facts whose sources may be the Hurt Report (an early 1980s study of Motorcycle accident statistics), The Internet (always reliable), Some Guy, or Made Up:
- Riding a motorcycle is between 16 and 40 times more dangerous than driving a car, depending on how you measure "more dangerous," but:
- In over half of all motorcycle fatalities, the blood alcohol content of the rider was above the legal limit
- In only a small percentage of motorcycle fatalities did the rider have any formal training (such as the course offered nationwide by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation
- A large percentage of riders killed do not actually have a motorcycle license
- Protective gear is rarely required by law (helmets are in many states, but not armored jackets/leathers or pants) and rarely worn
Let's be brutally honest about it for a moment: it's okay if you don't want to ride a motorcycle, but if you try and can't, that's somehow worse than not trying at all. Admitting that you may just not be cut out for it takes enormous presence of mind and lack of regard for what cool biker dudes will think about you. Nonetheless, it seems to me that, statistically, some of those cool biker dudes belong to this group but don't know it.
Over the next few days, I will be taking what the MSF calls their "Basic RiderCourse" at the Motorcycle Safety School in the Bronx. This is two and a half days of classroom and course work in which you learn how not to kill yourself or others.
There are plenty of riders out there with a low regard for the MSF, for a wardrobe full of safety gear, and for anything other than throwing caution into the wind in a no-holds-barred embrace of biker culture and freedom.
I am willing to bet that they aren't in musical theatre.
Even if I were a biker dude with intimidating leathers and knives and I rode a gigantic Harley with nothing but tattoos for protection, whatever street cred this might buy me would go down the toilet the minute I produced my Actor's Equity card. You can't play Schroeder in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and really belong to badass biker subculture.
I'm hoping that there's a pseudointellectual dramatic nerd biker subculture. In that country, I am King.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
Limited Zen, Questionable Maintenance
"It's a problem of our time. The range of human knowledge today is so great that we're all specialists and the distance between specializations has become so great that anyone who seeks to wander freely among them almost has to forego closeness with the people around him."
-- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Welcome to my self-aggrandizing chronicle of things that I'm doing.
I am trying to make a concerted effort not to waste anybody's time beyond the mutual understanding you and I have that brought you here to begin with -- that is, you wouldn't be reading somebody else's journal if you didn't want to waste at least a little time. Nonetheless, as my first real blogging effort, I am going to try and write for you and not regurgitate every last idea, insecurity, and philosophy that pops into my head. I feel as though they still sell those nice, leather-bound journals at Barnes and Noble if you want to keep a diary.
Who I Am and Why This Blog is Better than Other Blogs
I'll answer the second question first: it isn't. That's the question I'd be asking right about now. "Who is this douchebag and what has he got to say that isn't being said by a dozen other Internet losers who think I care about their lives?"
Not a whole lot, but I promise that every effort will be made not to say something original, a task which is for me terribly draining and ultimately unsatisfying for both of us, but to say what has already been said in a particular, perhaps theatrical, occasionally insightful, definitely WASPish sort of way.
Now you know pretty much everything you need to know about me:
I live in New York City.
I work in the theatre business. My job is to appear in the morning before casting assistants and sing to them. If I do my job well, I get a laugh from a tired, overworked young woman (the ranks of the junior casting assistants seem disproportionately filled with young women) who has, at best, a marignal connection to the actual casting process of any real theatrical production.
If I don't do my job well, I see a tiny piece of that woman's soul extinguished in the ninety seconds allotted to me and hear the least sincere (but still somehow required) words in the entertainment industry:
"Thank you."
I cannot emphasize enough to anyone who has never enjoyed this confidence-destroying pasttime the extent to which myself or any of my thousands of unemployed colleagues will spend weeks developing material, reciting things in front of mirrors, and grooming ourselves just so that we might instead hear:
"Thank you!"
It is the most powerful piece of puncuation in the business.
All of this has an orthagonal relationship to landing a job and that is why most actors will tell you that they don't even consider whether or not they'll actually get the job before they audition. The right people are usually not present; the show is already cast; the young woman whose soul you are placing at risk (or, in the case of Andrew Lloyd Webber audition material, actively demolishing) is paid to fill a chair because the Union Requires It.
More on that another day.
I am not a waiter. I played a waiter for one scene in one show one time, and I was so horrible at even the pretense of waiting tables that I have never tried the real thing. Instead, I am a web developer, a business so excruciatingly boring to anyone who doesn't need a web site right now that I won't tell you about it until I have run out of other things to tell you. That's not to say I don't enjoy it; but enjoying something yourself and expecting other people to give a shit is a distinction that I often wish most people were better at and so I will do my best to make it myself.
-- Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Welcome to my self-aggrandizing chronicle of things that I'm doing.
I am trying to make a concerted effort not to waste anybody's time beyond the mutual understanding you and I have that brought you here to begin with -- that is, you wouldn't be reading somebody else's journal if you didn't want to waste at least a little time. Nonetheless, as my first real blogging effort, I am going to try and write for you and not regurgitate every last idea, insecurity, and philosophy that pops into my head. I feel as though they still sell those nice, leather-bound journals at Barnes and Noble if you want to keep a diary.
Who I Am and Why This Blog is Better than Other Blogs
I'll answer the second question first: it isn't. That's the question I'd be asking right about now. "Who is this douchebag and what has he got to say that isn't being said by a dozen other Internet losers who think I care about their lives?"
Not a whole lot, but I promise that every effort will be made not to say something original, a task which is for me terribly draining and ultimately unsatisfying for both of us, but to say what has already been said in a particular, perhaps theatrical, occasionally insightful, definitely WASPish sort of way.
Now you know pretty much everything you need to know about me:
I live in New York City.
I work in the theatre business. My job is to appear in the morning before casting assistants and sing to them. If I do my job well, I get a laugh from a tired, overworked young woman (the ranks of the junior casting assistants seem disproportionately filled with young women) who has, at best, a marignal connection to the actual casting process of any real theatrical production.
If I don't do my job well, I see a tiny piece of that woman's soul extinguished in the ninety seconds allotted to me and hear the least sincere (but still somehow required) words in the entertainment industry:
"Thank you."
I cannot emphasize enough to anyone who has never enjoyed this confidence-destroying pasttime the extent to which myself or any of my thousands of unemployed colleagues will spend weeks developing material, reciting things in front of mirrors, and grooming ourselves just so that we might instead hear:
"Thank you!"
It is the most powerful piece of puncuation in the business.
All of this has an orthagonal relationship to landing a job and that is why most actors will tell you that they don't even consider whether or not they'll actually get the job before they audition. The right people are usually not present; the show is already cast; the young woman whose soul you are placing at risk (or, in the case of Andrew Lloyd Webber audition material, actively demolishing) is paid to fill a chair because the Union Requires It.
More on that another day.
I am not a waiter. I played a waiter for one scene in one show one time, and I was so horrible at even the pretense of waiting tables that I have never tried the real thing. Instead, I am a web developer, a business so excruciatingly boring to anyone who doesn't need a web site right now that I won't tell you about it until I have run out of other things to tell you. That's not to say I don't enjoy it; but enjoying something yourself and expecting other people to give a shit is a distinction that I often wish most people were better at and so I will do my best to make it myself.
There's also a motorcycle.
I have yet to stumble on any graceful segue from musical theatre to motorcycles (or web sites to motorcycles), and the general lack of crossover between those subjects is both responsible for the cute title I've given this blog -- the two or three words designed to jump out at you from a list of dozens of blogs, grab you by the back of the head and smash your face into the hyperlink that brought you here -- and one of the few honest insights into my own psyche I'm able to provide.
I should mention that I don't know a whole heck of a lot about motorcycles, and that by no means should this be considered a "motorcycle blog," lest my mother and anyone else who might read it make the mistake of thinking that they will learn anything about motorcycles from me. This is because, much like my involvement with technology and the entertainment business, I am a dilettante:
noun. a person who takes up an art, activity, or subject merely for amusement, esp. in a desultory or superficial way; dabbler.
Specifically, I take up every subject in a desultory way. I am not sure what that means but it sounds very appropriate.
One of the reasons I am starting this blog today is that I am at the beginning of one such desultory adventure -- the one ingredient which, for whatever reason, makes the rest of the sauce edible (or at least remarkable) and without which I would have had to settle for a blog title like "another new york theatre guy with a computer."
Or just "desultory."
The brief explanation I can provide is that I have always understood there to be a sort of unspoken covenant between New Yorkers, an agreement to which you are made a party when you first move to Manhattan. That agreement can be described as:
Thou shalt not partake in any transportation without at least a hundred other people.
In other words, you don't have a car. It's not that people in Manhattan don't have cars; we all see them parked on the street, or sitting in traffic. But none of us know anybody who has one, leading to the idea that vehicle ownership in Manhattan is a sort of mystic quality granted only to the extremely rich or else the extremely car-obsessed, and in the latter case probably also daft as car-obsessed and Manhattan do not really go together.
Motorcycles are the loophole. Owning one does not catapult you into the sacred ranks of the extremely wealthy and, in fact, probably gets you nothing but animosity as those lucky few who drive in New York regularly regard bikers as nuisances who further warrant the idea that some BMWs really should come with machine guns.
And among the lay people who own no vehicle, owning one just makes them wonder about how long it will be before they might be in a position where they could inherit all of your stuff, or at least take care of it for you while you're in a vegetative state.
It seems unlikely to me that there are no other people out there, or even just in New York, who are stage actors, web developers, and who own a motorcycle. I would be delighted to meet you if you are one such person. But please don't blog about it. I'll run your shit right over.
I have yet to stumble on any graceful segue from musical theatre to motorcycles (or web sites to motorcycles), and the general lack of crossover between those subjects is both responsible for the cute title I've given this blog -- the two or three words designed to jump out at you from a list of dozens of blogs, grab you by the back of the head and smash your face into the hyperlink that brought you here -- and one of the few honest insights into my own psyche I'm able to provide.
I should mention that I don't know a whole heck of a lot about motorcycles, and that by no means should this be considered a "motorcycle blog," lest my mother and anyone else who might read it make the mistake of thinking that they will learn anything about motorcycles from me. This is because, much like my involvement with technology and the entertainment business, I am a dilettante:
noun. a person who takes up an art, activity, or subject merely for amusement, esp. in a desultory or superficial way; dabbler.
Specifically, I take up every subject in a desultory way. I am not sure what that means but it sounds very appropriate.
One of the reasons I am starting this blog today is that I am at the beginning of one such desultory adventure -- the one ingredient which, for whatever reason, makes the rest of the sauce edible (or at least remarkable) and without which I would have had to settle for a blog title like "another new york theatre guy with a computer."
Or just "desultory."
The brief explanation I can provide is that I have always understood there to be a sort of unspoken covenant between New Yorkers, an agreement to which you are made a party when you first move to Manhattan. That agreement can be described as:
Thou shalt not partake in any transportation without at least a hundred other people.
In other words, you don't have a car. It's not that people in Manhattan don't have cars; we all see them parked on the street, or sitting in traffic. But none of us know anybody who has one, leading to the idea that vehicle ownership in Manhattan is a sort of mystic quality granted only to the extremely rich or else the extremely car-obsessed, and in the latter case probably also daft as car-obsessed and Manhattan do not really go together.
Motorcycles are the loophole. Owning one does not catapult you into the sacred ranks of the extremely wealthy and, in fact, probably gets you nothing but animosity as those lucky few who drive in New York regularly regard bikers as nuisances who further warrant the idea that some BMWs really should come with machine guns.
And among the lay people who own no vehicle, owning one just makes them wonder about how long it will be before they might be in a position where they could inherit all of your stuff, or at least take care of it for you while you're in a vegetative state.
It seems unlikely to me that there are no other people out there, or even just in New York, who are stage actors, web developers, and who own a motorcycle. I would be delighted to meet you if you are one such person. But please don't blog about it. I'll run your shit right over.
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