Thoughts on aging, experience, and...

[M_Six]

...wisdom. The three are practically inseparable, but still very distinct. And all three played a part in a seemingly benign incident today that left me thinking about the pros and cons of all three.

I decided to take the backroads home today. The highway gets a bit dull and it was a nice afternoon. The backroads from work to home run almost due south across vast, empty corn and bean fields. In places the road is fairly wide, very flat, and completely desolate for miles. It's not at all unusual to hit 100MPH on these roads, one of the reasons I like to take them home occassionally. I miss the autobahn.

So I'm breezing home today and I came upon one of many very tiny "bridges" over a stream. They're really just bumps in the road over a concrete pipe. I happen to hit one just a tad faster than I wanted to. Nothing bad happened. The car got light for a second and then settled right down. But I happened to notice that the DSC (Directional Stability Control) kicked in for just a second. (A little yellow light on the dash flashes.) As I continued on my way I started thinking about that light. The fact that it flashed meant my rear tires lost grip for just a split second as I passed over the bridge. No big deal really. I'm used to seeing the DSC light flash on gravelly spots or wet areas. But the fact that it flashed at 70MPH or more as I was briefly airborne began to gnaw at me.

I had a pretty nasty motorcycle wreck once (the experience part) that left me out of commission for 5 weeks. I still vividly remember the shock and sudden intense pain that just would not go away. Your mind races as you try to figure out what happened while at the same time you're doing anything to ease the pain. Anyone who's been there knows what it's like. Not fun at all.

Once you recover, you take things a little slower and think twice before taking another risk (the wisdom part). This second thought process can be dangerous in itself, but for the most part it keeps you from doing another dumb thing that'll get you hurt. Before my bike wreck I wouldn't think twice about some idiot who turned left in front of me or nearly sideswiped me. I always managed to avoid the bozos and figured I'd always be able to do so. After my wreck, I was so overly cautious that I eventually gave up the bike because it seemed that everyone was out to run me off the road. I spent more time cringing than enjoying the ride. I suddenly felt very exposed on the bike and it ceased to be enjoyable.

Back to the ride home today. I kept thinking about the flashing DSC light and I started imagining what would happen if I lost control at those speeds and rolled into a field. I have no doubt the car would tear itself to pieces with me in it. What would my wife do? Could my parents deal with it? And how much of the wreck would I be conscious for?

As a kid I wouldn't even consider the possibility of wrecking my car. Anytime I had a close call, I patted myself on the back for my excellent driving "skill" (read: pure luck) that helped me avoid the wreck. But as I've aged I've begun to start seeing the worst case as a real possibility. It's sobering and it tends to take a lot of the fun out of life. Safe is boring. But you have to be alive to be bored. And thinking that way is the worst part of aging.

[John Prophet]

hehe..as a kid I used to jump and race bmx bikes...alllll the time...wrecked some...never broke anything....I wasnt SUPER wreckless...but I did some wild stuff....went in the airforce at 18 and that was the end of my riding...till the year 2000..at age 32 I took it back up, lol...I went racing again..after like 16 years of not riding

Needless to say it was way different than I remember..the jumps etc are wayyyyyy bigger now...and I wasnt nearly as 'carefree" as before...took me a while to get my courage up..but soon enough I was going full blast and cutting off peeps in corners etc etc.

I still never quite got my jumping touch back and some of it was simply due to fear...and overcautiousness....in a sport like that you have to "flow"...you cant "overthink" or "over guide" it...it has to be sort of fluid.

Anyway, I ended up breaking a rib and then later my collarbone....hehe, thats what I get for being cautious, lol. Actually I was sorta timid in the jumping and hanging around and stunting..but I was super agressive in the racing..mixing it up and bumping etc etc...that overagressiveness cost me....cuz I only wrecked while I was winning, lol...Id be in the lead and see someone in my peripheral vision and Id move to agressively block them and Id wreck myself and let them win, lol.

When I broke the rib (I think, not sure EXACTLY which wreck it was) I was winning the race and would have had 1st place in the "state championship" for North Carolina in my age group...so I have won the super critical "race to the first corner"..I have the inside lane..race over more or less...but nooooooo that wasnt good enough for me....I tried to pedal to soon coming out of the corner while I was still leaned over....the pedal dug into the concrete corner and instantly flipped me over at like 30mph and I landed flat on my back on the concrete....ouch.

What all that has to do with wisdom..I have no clue....but I think fear and overcaution is just as dangerous sometimes as youthful abandon.

(of course I used to drive a car like a maniac http://www.techimo.com/photo/showpho...cat=500&page=1 but that definitely went away, lol...of course I only have a tercel now...hard to get into trouble with it. When I had the Pontiac..if a girl made me mad I could storm to the car and blaze away in a cloud of smoke and noise....now all I can do is storm to the car, lol)

JP

[Bovon]

I can't count the times I was extremely lucky to live when I pulled something like that. Not only on the road, but in the air...yes, I have a pilots license..invalid now due to health reasons, but I sure got away with a lot while pulling stunts I was nowhere qualified to do..many while I was still a student but soloed.

By the time I was in my 30s, I had begun to realize that I wasn't gonna make it if I didn't begin to take some responsibility with my driving, etc. I think maybe..if there was any one thing that caused me to sit up and take notice of what I was doing was at a rule examination for the company I worked for. About every 2 ~ 3 years, we would take a test on the company rules...this particular year, we had a rules examiner who gave all of us a chat, and a bit of his wisdom. During his talk..he said that every rule in the book was written in blood...meaning that rule has defined what not to do because someone died doing it. The more I remembered that over the next several years... I began remembering the rules of the road and flying..if they were also written in blood.. I was asking for a pine box.

[sao95]

this post made me remember right after i got my license. I was driving my moms car (a 79 dodge aspen), My friend and I had taken a rarely traveled dirt road just to see where it went. Well it didn't go anywhere, and the brush and trees were right on top of us so we had to back out, but the reverse lights didn't work so i couldn't see and I couldn't stick my head out the window cause of the trees and brush, so he sat on the trunk and screamed right or left as I backed out (way too fast) over very bumpy ground and through a not too straight path. funny, it didn't seem stupid at the time


edit: btw good thread topic

[Knothead]

What an excellent commentary on gaining survival wisdom, M_Six...




(Next day edit...) I think I was in a grumpy mood last night, so please don't take what I wrote seriously.

M_Six's point (and No.1 Vern's amplification of it) should be taken seriously, especially by our younger friends.

Sorry 'bout that!

[no1_vern]

By the time one realizes their "skill" was blind luck, its usually too late. Welcome to maturity - many dont get this far at your age, and some will never make it. The fear you feel probably will never go away, all you can do is deal with it - it is after all part and parcel of the learning process.

One of the last things that happened when I was on my motorcycle was a car that was passing me suddenly turned into my lane I BARELY missed having their rear bumper clip my front wheel. I was so badly shaken I pulled into the next parking lot and shook for several minutes before I was able to ride home(I was doing only about 50mph so I might not have been hurt badly, but...). It scared me nearly to death.


BTW - Glad you didnt get caught, those cops have absolutely no sense of humor, they will try to MAKE you be responsible in spite of yourself. After all, if you crash and burn, what WILL your parents, loved ones, or the guy who has to do overtime because your not at the business think? How will they feel about you( esp the guy making hundreds in overtime)?

Post-traumatic stress disorder(your bike wreck) can be very damaging if you let it control your life DONT LET IT.

[vass0922]

I wish I didn't know now, what I didn't know then
Bob Segar

[sixf00t4]

If I knew then, what I know now, I would no more, know less.
-My sister.

Hope you don't mind a 21 year old chiming in here M_Six. Not a time goes by in a car that i don't think, "this could be the day." I have never had a car accident, but i have been in them, and i have seen them, and seen the effects of them.
The part that really saddens me though, is that i am 21. I am young! I should be nieve. I should be wild and out of control. I can't be though, i have seen what comes from wrecklessness in other people, and i don't want to see it happen to me.
You mention that it is sobering to think about that. When i decided to walk 3 miles home in a light warm rain on day, i said it is humbling. Thinking that I have no control over what is going to happen. I can be as cautious as i can be, and still run the risk of tragedy.

[Zotzmein]

I too was a reckless youth who plodded heedlessly through life but now that I am in mid-thirties with a family it’s as if I’ve gained prescience. I can now see beyond the immediacy of the here and now, instead instantly calculate the various outcomes of a given an event or situation, pondering the ramification and potential alteration it would have in my life and those around me.

Sometime I loath my caution, wishing perhaps for one last glimmer of the bold folly of youth; then I see my family and realize that I am greater the man, not the lesser, thinking of others, rather than not thinking at all.

This is a great thread.

Warmest Regards,
Zotz Mein

[Centurion]

Funny - A friend stopped by last week - at my work - chatted for a few minutes - reliving times of youth - he drove a 1150es at 200 - I had various 2 wheeled wonders -

It was a remarkable revelation that we had both not gotten injured during our teens and 20' even though any of this stuff today would have gained attention of the police quickly now.

Whether it had 2 wheels or 4 we had to know -

C