{"id":189,"date":"2011-05-28T13:45:27","date_gmt":"2011-05-28T21:45:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/?p=189"},"modified":"2011-05-28T13:45:27","modified_gmt":"2011-05-28T21:45:27","slug":"air","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/words\/air\/","title":{"rendered":"Air"},"content":{"rendered":"

Air can hurt you too \/<\/em>
\nSome people say not to worry ’bout the air \/ <\/em>
\nSome people never had experience with air<\/em><\/p>\n

– Talking Heads, “Air”, Fear of Music<\/span>, 1979 <\/em><\/p>\n

I have lots of time to think about things while I ride. Of course. I have nobody to talk to other than myself, and I can only sing to myself so much.\u00a0I find that I spend a lot of time thinking about air, specifically the ways it interacts with me on my motorcycle.<\/p>\n

I first remember thinking about this in 2005, during my first extended motorcycle trip. I was riding south on Hwy 97 in Eastern Oregon and, after being buffeted about by yet another semi, I started thinking about turbulence – specifically that of large blocky vehicles such as semis, RVs and trucks with big trailers. I want to see video of a semi riding through a cloud – of fog, smoke, whatever. This would a) be very cool to see and b) help me understand exactly what’s going on.<\/p>\n

Interacting with the air off of large vehicles can be wild. It feels to me that there’s a wall of laminar flow – like the clean wave off the bow of a boat – immediately off the cab of a big rig, which gets turbulent pretty quickly as it passes down the side of the vehicle. Behind one of these large vehicles, the air is even more turbulent as the two streams of already-turbulent air collide.<\/p>\n

Of course, this makes for interesting riding no matter how you’re experiencing it.\u00a0Hitting it head-on (when passing a truck in the opposite direction, for example) tends to push the bike away as you go through the laminar, then buffets as you travel through the turbulence. Passing when in the same direction of travel is the reverse – there’s an odd shift toward the centerline as you pass through that laminar wave. And then there’s riding behind, which is a lot like hell.<\/p>\n

As I crossed the Southwest and the prairie, I got a lot of experience with air of a different sort: wind. There’s that old traveler’s prayer:<\/p>\n

May the road rise to meet you,
\nMay the wind be always at your back.
\nMay the sun shine warm upon your face …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So far, not so much wind at my back. In my face, broadside, 45\u00b0 to my front or back? Plenty of those.<\/p>\n

Other than riding directly into a strong wind, it turns out that it’s not so tough to handle. I learned a long time ago to just lean into it (crossing the 520 bridge on days of high wind on the lake), but that wasn’t working so well for extended distances. Finally, after several days in a row of strong winds, what I finally came to realize is that only the bike needs to lean, not me. As the wind ebbs and flows, shifts directions, whatever, I can just relax into it and allow my motorcycle to move underneath me, as I remain essentially upright. The alternative – being uptight, I guess – results in me fighting the wind. Which is pointless. If you fight the wind, it will eventually win.<\/p>\n

And that doesn’t sound like an appealing option to me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Air can hurt you too \/ Some people say not to worry ’bout the air \/ Some people never had experience with air – Talking Heads, “Air”, Fear of Music, 1979 I have lots of time to think about things while I ride. Of course. I have nobody to talk to other than myself, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/updegrave.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}