Doing Your Thinking Ahead of Time

Technical Editor Kevin Cameron shares his wealth of motorcycle knowledge, experiences, insights, history, and much more.Cycle World

In 1980 Kenny Roberts told me, “My reflexes aren’t all that fast so I have to get a lot of my thinking done ahead of time. I think of my mind as a big Velcro board, and stuck to it are all these packets, one for every situation that’s likely to come up on the track. When something happens, I don’t have to think – I just do what’s in the packet.”

I just read a particularly pointed example of that very method of mental preparation. A veteran pilot was making a ‘routine’ take-off in a C-119 “Flying Boxcar” some time in the 1950s. Well into the take-off roll the prop regulator on the #2 engine malfunctioned, resulting in “uncommanded beta” – reversal of the prop pitch on the engine.

Instantly the pilot reversed pitch on #1, arresting the sudden yaw to the right before the heavy airplane could run off the concrete. He wasted no time trying to correct the problem on #2, but did the one thing that had a good chance of promptly restoring control and stopping the airplane.

This is why racing motorcyclists and others who must deal with a variety of possible sudden emergencies spend a fair amount of time rehearsing in their heads. They may seem to be daydreaming or even sleeping, but they are in fact busy preparing themselves – loading those Velcro packets with carefully pre-planned responses.