ADDING A DIMENSION

We send our motorcycle-loving car racer to the Yamaha Champions Riding School so he can learn to think outside the, ahem, box.

- SAM SMITH

“Before you ride,” they tell you, “have a plan.”

Big words. So big, they make you write them down— on the front of your lesson booklet, while sitting in class: B-E-F-O-R-E and so on, everyone in the room saying the words aloud, and then you are there, staring at that paper, wondering about the language.

Who, I thought, ends up on a racetrack without a plan?

A lot of people, it turns out. Me included, though I never would have guessed it. I walked out to the bike with a plan, and then I took a motorcycle on a track for only the second time in my life and tried to get my body to move and work right, all while concentrating on the usual motorcycle stuff like hard-braking downshifts and cornering lines and just plain-old not falling off, and somewhere in there, my plan said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” and proceeded to fly smack dab out the window.

In my head, cars felt easier. Feel is funny that way. Four wheels under a green flag may not have been easier, but if you have a pulse and half a brain in this life, it’s awfully hard to walk into a new world without immediately falling back on one of the very few skills that you believe you possess.

A word of advice: Don’t do that.