DO YOU HAVE... BALANCE?
Well, I don't! And I know I don't, haven't had much that even resembled balance going on for the last 25/30 years or so. And here's why...
My Personal History: I have ALWAYS been plagued by sinus issues as far back as I can remember. Even as a small boy of 5 years old, I had to have surgery to correct a "tied tongue". That's where the little strip of skin under your tongue that acts like a limit strap that keeps your tongue in place is too short and your tongue can't move as freely as it should, limiting your ability to pronounce certain words as smoothly as others can. And I doubt if my tongue surgery at age 5 had anything to do with my lifelong sinus issues, but hey, I thought I'd toss it out there anyway. I do NOT know, at almost 60 years of age IF I still have my tonsils and adenoids, but I suspect they removed them when they were doing the surgery for my tongue. Back to the sinus issues... Severe nose bleeds as a child, every now and then would actually have to go to the ER where they would have to cauterize whatever it was that was spewing my lifeblood out through my nose. And it always worked, but even as a child I wondered if it might cause me issues later on in life. As a teen, I sort of evolved into a "mouth breather" since my nose was usually stopped up completely most of the time anyway. Breathing thru your mouth, is simply NOT the way God intended for us to breath. It dries out the mucus membranes in your throat, and introduces a lot more germs into your body that your nasal hairs would normally catch. So if you can breath thru your nose, it's a lot better for your body all the way around. As an adult, I had trouble flying. The pressure changes going up or down were extremely painful to me, and unlike most everyone else, I couldn't get my ears to clear using the "pinch and blow" method either. Had a lot of sinus trouble throughout my military career too. After I got out in 1990. it got worse. The term my ENT used was "Pan Sinusitis", which simply means the whole damn thing is stopped up, SOLID! And it got worse... My ears clogged up, quit draining and sometime in 1990, my balance went on vacation and never came back. We progressed thru 3 sets of "tubes" with the last being sewn into my eardrums. And for about 10 years, I had a fairly normal life as far as hearing, draining and balance was concerned. And then I ruptured both eardrums simultaneously and blew both tubes out where they landed on my shoulders. In 2014, things flared back up again after a pretty bad head cold and sinus infection and everything turned into vertigo, and I still fight it every day even now. If you have never had vertigo, then bless your ass! I wouldn't wish the living nightmare that is vertigo on someone I hated and wanted to see dead.
So that's where I am in life right now. You learn to adapt, to compensate, to adjust, but it can really make life a bitch to handle. Sometimes my balance is so bad, that I have to hold onto something while I am standing still because I loose all sensory input that tells me which way is up, down, etc. It makes seemingly simple things like walking, hearing, driving a car, etc. VERY hard to do. Especially with any resemblance of normalcy. I have my methods of coping, but in a nutshell, I now operated under VFR conditions ONLY. VFR??? It mean "visual flight rules" to a pilot. And to a pilot, it also means you can only fly when you can see, so no night flying, no bad weather flying, no instrument flying, eyeballs ONLY! But like I've said, you adapt and compensate. And I think I have actually done very good as a matter of fact. You rely on your sense of balance to drive a car a lot more than you think you do. Yep, acceleration, braking, cornering, are ALL extremely dependent on your ability to process those signals coming from your body's "balance center". Yeah, mine don't work anymore, and what signals I do get, are shit. So not only do I have to figure things out visually, BUT I also have to IGNORE a head full of bad data that my faulty balance center is trying to feed me. It's not always fun, but so far, I still come home ALIVE at the end of a ride!
I use my head, literally, like a big ass counterweight on a stick to "sense" things like acceleration, cornering and braking. And I do damn good with it too! Enough that I could probably road race motorcycles if I wanted to. Where I have my balance issues the most are that first few feet when starting off and the last 5 feet when stopping. There simply is not enough data available at those very slow speeds for my little brain to go on, for me to do it "smoothly". I wobble! Not a lot, but a wobble is still a wobble. And that's all I need if for some rookie cop to see me a "wobbling" and assume I am drunk or otherwise impaired. Yeah, then he stops me, then he runs me thru NCIC and then he finds out I've got felony warrants in 16 States and 3 Country's! And I don't even drink! And I was just kidding about those warrants too. No, really! Matter of fact, I even have a current and valid concealed carry weapon permit (CCW) which required an extensive background investigation before it was issued by my County Sheriff. So trust me, I've been run thru the mill every which way from Sunday and I passed with flying colors!
So... Where am I going with all this? Well, when I climbed back on the Triumph (whom I am affectionately referring to as "Blue" these days), I just looked at the tires, felt of the tires and thumped the tires to make sure they were sufficiently aired up enough t ride safely. And they were. And I wobbled, a lot. The bike felt fine as far as handling went, and I just thought that maybe my excessive wobble was just because it had been a year since I had ridden. OK, I'll get better, right? But I didn't. No matter how much I tried, or what I did to try to compensate, that wobble was still there. According to the Triumph's Owner's Manual, the front tire pressure should be 36 psi cold, and the rear should be 46 psi cold. It's really a pain in my ass (my back actually) to get down low enough to get my tire chuck into position and then hold it in place long enough to air up the tires or check the pressure, so I really didn't want to do it, at all. I mean the tires looked sufficiently aired up, and it rode OK. So I kept putting it off, and putting it off. And the wobble was still with me, each time I rode.
Well, I finally heard something that concerned me the first of this week. As I went over a particular textured section of pavement, I noticed that "hollow" sound that a low tire sometimes makes. So no more excuses, time to hurt myself before I REALLY hurt myself by having a tire come off the bead. A "blowout" on a motorcycle is usually a deadly thing at speeds above 30mph or so because there is NO recovery, especially if it's a front tire. I took the Triumph out of the garage again the next morning as usual and had her running out in the sun when I realized that I never checked the air pressures in the tires the last time I rode. So... Back in the garage I go! And it just so happened that where I stopped put the two valve stems for the tires in the most absolute worst positions to reach with my air chuck, wouldn't you know it. My back was already singing it's familiar whiney song, so I hastily popped the air chuck on and noticed the front tire was reading around 32 psi and the rear was about 39 psi, so a tad low. If this was a car tire I would have thought nothing of it. But I knew the bike was handling sluggish so I squeezed the air trigger a few times on each tire and let it go at that. Took off on my roll down the ally as usual when I "launch" the Triumph and I could immediately feel the difference in the handling. I smiled! When I made my usual 90* right turn to leave at the end of the ally, something now didn't feel "right" so I was going to just go around the block and right back in the garage to see what was going on. On my ride around to the garage, the bike was very erratic, very squirrely, and I actually had some difficulty executing just simple 90* turns too.
Back in the garage, and I got lucky and my valve stems were now at their easiest to get to positions. I popped my air gauge/chuck on and whoa! I now had 40 psi in the front and 50 in the rear tire. Looks like I had squeezed the trigger just one too many times and I had actually OVERFILLED each tire by 4 psi. I used the built-in air bleed on my air chuck to bleed off the excess pressure, checked it twice in each tire, and I was now absolutely certain I was dead on balls accurate (an industry term...). Back out on the road and the difference between the CORRECT air pressure and ANY other random air pressure was AMAZING! And the difference it made in the way I could ride the Triumph was equally amazing as well. I instantly went from riding a cow with only a 2x4 to steer it with to being on a purebred cutting horse that knew and anticipated my every move! I think the bike would have stood up on it's on WITHOUT the kickstand! My "wobble" was almost completely gone and all was again right in my world!
So IF you ever have one of those days where your motorcycle just doesn't seem to want to go where you point it, take some time to bond with your air pressure gauge and your tires and see if that will get you back in the saddle with a smile on your ass! READ the Owners Manual and try those recommended air pressures first. And if that doesn't change your ride from a cow to a cutting horse, then break out the magnifying glass and start reading the sidewalls of the tire to find the tire manufacturer's recommended tire pressures. It might just make all the difference in the world to you too!
Well, I don't! And I know I don't, haven't had much that even resembled balance going on for the last 25/30 years or so. And here's why...
My Personal History: I have ALWAYS been plagued by sinus issues as far back as I can remember. Even as a small boy of 5 years old, I had to have surgery to correct a "tied tongue". That's where the little strip of skin under your tongue that acts like a limit strap that keeps your tongue in place is too short and your tongue can't move as freely as it should, limiting your ability to pronounce certain words as smoothly as others can. And I doubt if my tongue surgery at age 5 had anything to do with my lifelong sinus issues, but hey, I thought I'd toss it out there anyway. I do NOT know, at almost 60 years of age IF I still have my tonsils and adenoids, but I suspect they removed them when they were doing the surgery for my tongue. Back to the sinus issues... Severe nose bleeds as a child, every now and then would actually have to go to the ER where they would have to cauterize whatever it was that was spewing my lifeblood out through my nose. And it always worked, but even as a child I wondered if it might cause me issues later on in life. As a teen, I sort of evolved into a "mouth breather" since my nose was usually stopped up completely most of the time anyway. Breathing thru your mouth, is simply NOT the way God intended for us to breath. It dries out the mucus membranes in your throat, and introduces a lot more germs into your body that your nasal hairs would normally catch. So if you can breath thru your nose, it's a lot better for your body all the way around. As an adult, I had trouble flying. The pressure changes going up or down were extremely painful to me, and unlike most everyone else, I couldn't get my ears to clear using the "pinch and blow" method either. Had a lot of sinus trouble throughout my military career too. After I got out in 1990. it got worse. The term my ENT used was "Pan Sinusitis", which simply means the whole damn thing is stopped up, SOLID! And it got worse... My ears clogged up, quit draining and sometime in 1990, my balance went on vacation and never came back. We progressed thru 3 sets of "tubes" with the last being sewn into my eardrums. And for about 10 years, I had a fairly normal life as far as hearing, draining and balance was concerned. And then I ruptured both eardrums simultaneously and blew both tubes out where they landed on my shoulders. In 2014, things flared back up again after a pretty bad head cold and sinus infection and everything turned into vertigo, and I still fight it every day even now. If you have never had vertigo, then bless your ass! I wouldn't wish the living nightmare that is vertigo on someone I hated and wanted to see dead.
So that's where I am in life right now. You learn to adapt, to compensate, to adjust, but it can really make life a bitch to handle. Sometimes my balance is so bad, that I have to hold onto something while I am standing still because I loose all sensory input that tells me which way is up, down, etc. It makes seemingly simple things like walking, hearing, driving a car, etc. VERY hard to do. Especially with any resemblance of normalcy. I have my methods of coping, but in a nutshell, I now operated under VFR conditions ONLY. VFR??? It mean "visual flight rules" to a pilot. And to a pilot, it also means you can only fly when you can see, so no night flying, no bad weather flying, no instrument flying, eyeballs ONLY! But like I've said, you adapt and compensate. And I think I have actually done very good as a matter of fact. You rely on your sense of balance to drive a car a lot more than you think you do. Yep, acceleration, braking, cornering, are ALL extremely dependent on your ability to process those signals coming from your body's "balance center". Yeah, mine don't work anymore, and what signals I do get, are shit. So not only do I have to figure things out visually, BUT I also have to IGNORE a head full of bad data that my faulty balance center is trying to feed me. It's not always fun, but so far, I still come home ALIVE at the end of a ride!
I use my head, literally, like a big ass counterweight on a stick to "sense" things like acceleration, cornering and braking. And I do damn good with it too! Enough that I could probably road race motorcycles if I wanted to. Where I have my balance issues the most are that first few feet when starting off and the last 5 feet when stopping. There simply is not enough data available at those very slow speeds for my little brain to go on, for me to do it "smoothly". I wobble! Not a lot, but a wobble is still a wobble. And that's all I need if for some rookie cop to see me a "wobbling" and assume I am drunk or otherwise impaired. Yeah, then he stops me, then he runs me thru NCIC and then he finds out I've got felony warrants in 16 States and 3 Country's! And I don't even drink! And I was just kidding about those warrants too. No, really! Matter of fact, I even have a current and valid concealed carry weapon permit (CCW) which required an extensive background investigation before it was issued by my County Sheriff. So trust me, I've been run thru the mill every which way from Sunday and I passed with flying colors!
So... Where am I going with all this? Well, when I climbed back on the Triumph (whom I am affectionately referring to as "Blue" these days), I just looked at the tires, felt of the tires and thumped the tires to make sure they were sufficiently aired up enough t ride safely. And they were. And I wobbled, a lot. The bike felt fine as far as handling went, and I just thought that maybe my excessive wobble was just because it had been a year since I had ridden. OK, I'll get better, right? But I didn't. No matter how much I tried, or what I did to try to compensate, that wobble was still there. According to the Triumph's Owner's Manual, the front tire pressure should be 36 psi cold, and the rear should be 46 psi cold. It's really a pain in my ass (my back actually) to get down low enough to get my tire chuck into position and then hold it in place long enough to air up the tires or check the pressure, so I really didn't want to do it, at all. I mean the tires looked sufficiently aired up, and it rode OK. So I kept putting it off, and putting it off. And the wobble was still with me, each time I rode.
Well, I finally heard something that concerned me the first of this week. As I went over a particular textured section of pavement, I noticed that "hollow" sound that a low tire sometimes makes. So no more excuses, time to hurt myself before I REALLY hurt myself by having a tire come off the bead. A "blowout" on a motorcycle is usually a deadly thing at speeds above 30mph or so because there is NO recovery, especially if it's a front tire. I took the Triumph out of the garage again the next morning as usual and had her running out in the sun when I realized that I never checked the air pressures in the tires the last time I rode. So... Back in the garage I go! And it just so happened that where I stopped put the two valve stems for the tires in the most absolute worst positions to reach with my air chuck, wouldn't you know it. My back was already singing it's familiar whiney song, so I hastily popped the air chuck on and noticed the front tire was reading around 32 psi and the rear was about 39 psi, so a tad low. If this was a car tire I would have thought nothing of it. But I knew the bike was handling sluggish so I squeezed the air trigger a few times on each tire and let it go at that. Took off on my roll down the ally as usual when I "launch" the Triumph and I could immediately feel the difference in the handling. I smiled! When I made my usual 90* right turn to leave at the end of the ally, something now didn't feel "right" so I was going to just go around the block and right back in the garage to see what was going on. On my ride around to the garage, the bike was very erratic, very squirrely, and I actually had some difficulty executing just simple 90* turns too.
Back in the garage, and I got lucky and my valve stems were now at their easiest to get to positions. I popped my air gauge/chuck on and whoa! I now had 40 psi in the front and 50 in the rear tire. Looks like I had squeezed the trigger just one too many times and I had actually OVERFILLED each tire by 4 psi. I used the built-in air bleed on my air chuck to bleed off the excess pressure, checked it twice in each tire, and I was now absolutely certain I was dead on balls accurate (an industry term...). Back out on the road and the difference between the CORRECT air pressure and ANY other random air pressure was AMAZING! And the difference it made in the way I could ride the Triumph was equally amazing as well. I instantly went from riding a cow with only a 2x4 to steer it with to being on a purebred cutting horse that knew and anticipated my every move! I think the bike would have stood up on it's on WITHOUT the kickstand! My "wobble" was almost completely gone and all was again right in my world!
So IF you ever have one of those days where your motorcycle just doesn't seem to want to go where you point it, take some time to bond with your air pressure gauge and your tires and see if that will get you back in the saddle with a smile on your ass! READ the Owners Manual and try those recommended air pressures first. And if that doesn't change your ride from a cow to a cutting horse, then break out the magnifying glass and start reading the sidewalls of the tire to find the tire manufacturer's recommended tire pressures. It might just make all the difference in the world to you too!
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