Edge Grip

I'd been up that road before, and I knew its twistings well. So I don't know what it was that threw me off my game that day, when I found myself blasting along on my Kawasaki and entering an uphill left too quickly. Perhaps it was the time of day, with shadows from the hillside and the trees obscuring my usual visual cues. Maybe the too-heavy lunch I'd just eaten clouded my brain.

Whatever the cause, I found myself in the corner and beyond my usual turn-in point, facing an unpleasant date with a ditch, or perhaps a tree.

Years of riding, however, have equipped me with unconscious reflexes that take over when my heart's in my throat and I'm puckered so hard when I come off the bike the seat's coming with me.

In what was probably only a moment but felt like a glacial age, I leaned the bike over on it's side, keeping just a touch of throttle (it was an uphill left), and held it there until physics worked as we all hope it does and I sailed out of the turn, accelerating uphill, slightly stunned but unscathed and happy.

Later, at a stop for gas, I looked at my tires and noticed the left side rear showed wear to the very edge, which almost never happens to me, and the front was there too, which never happens. That wear was testament to the marvels of modern rubber compounding and tire construction, which had just saved my ass from an unpleasant wilderness journey/ life flight helicopter ride.

When I leaned my bike over, the tiny strip of rubber on the edge of my tires kept about 800 lbs of bike and rider glued firmly (enough) to the road. Edge grip the racers call it. Without it, those daredevils can't run the lap times required to win, losing a tenth of a second every lap. Without it, I'd be a Christmas ornament, hanging in the Angeles National Forest.

Edge grip may be a racer's friend and fresh tires my best insurance policy, but it occurs to me the concept extends ...

Perhaps our President is suffering from a lack of political 'edge grip'. He's missing that tenth a lap he needs to reach the finish line. If so, it would be nice if his 'pit crew' slipped on a new set of grippy 'tires' and found him that extra confidence he needs to ride through the tighter twists and turns of governing.