There’s no single lane position that’s best for all riding situations, but there’s one that’s always worth returning to.
My friend Bob, a resident of Brussels who has given me shelter on many a European journey, minced no words when he made the following observation: “Larry, for someone who travels so much, you’re really not very good at it.”
I would take issue with that statement. I don’t think I’ve traveled so much at all. Certainly not compared to Clem Salvadori, who has visited a hundred countries on a motorcycle. With all that worldly experience, I suppose Clem never loses his passport, misses a flight, or stumbles tipsily through the door marked Damen.
Truly, what makes Clem a better traveler is the ease with which he connects to faraway places, though no one I’ve ever known appears quite so content under his own roof. Those restless souls who call the highway their home are more likely found on Nashville song sheets, I think, than on real roads. Most of us feel the gravity of a place we call home, and if we can’t be there, we try to establish a home base.
I can still remember one of my earliest motorcycle conversations. I was hitchhiking (probably with a helmet under my arm after my bike had broken down), and the older driver, a veteran motorcyclist, was interrogating me on my riding knowledge.
“Do you know what part of the road yer supposed to ride in?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “It’s not the middle of yer lane. A lot of people think it is, but it’s not. It’s the left wheel track. Did you know that?”
I did. Vaguely. Maybe I’d figured it out on my own or perhaps from watching other riders. I understood that I got a better view most of the time from the left wheel track and that truckers could see me better in their mirrors. I’d heard horror stories about grease in midlane and intuitively knew that the part along the shoulder was where the mopeds and bicyclists rolled. So yes, when the driver picked me up hitchhiking, I think I’d already decided that the left wheel track was my “home base.”
Since I was blessed to learn about motorcycling in an area chock full of serpentine roads, I quickly learned that the left wheel track position gave the best view prior to entering a right curve, though not so for the left hander. My home base was a lot like my parents’ home or my home on campus—a place I often looked forward to returning to, but one from which circumstances prevented me from spending all of my time.
For many riders, home base is the middle of their lane. That’s the best position in which to crest a blind hill and often the best compromise position when sandwiched by hazards. But those are reasons to visit, not to move in. The reason why people make the middle of their lane their home base is usually distrust of oncoming traffic—a healthy aversion, actually, and I don’t relish head-on collisions any more than the next guy. But motorcycle accident studies, the Hurt Report to name but one, show us that the chances of crashing into a parallel vehicle are slim compared to the odds of colliding with something traveling perpendicularly. Why do you think the fastest roads (interstate highways) have the lowest accident rates?
Now, mentally exit the interstate, and you see that there are driveways, cross streets and tertiary roads almost everywhere, but the ones that cough up the most collisions are the ones on the right side. That’s because we’re closer to them and have less time to react. So if I see driveways on the left and driveways on the right, I’m going to position my motorcycle just as close to the center stripe as I can, even if that means hanging a mirror or a saddlebag over the centerline. I’d stay there all day, if I could, but it’s seldom long before I’m looking into the eyes of someone piloting a vehicle much larger than mine, so I never challenge oncoming drivers. I move right and create at least as much space as that which passes between the dual-track vehicles. If there’s even the possibility that other vehicles are hidden in the slipstream, I move way right, to ensure that a shadow vehicle doesn’t pull into my pathway to overtake or turn left.
You may think I do a lot of moving about within my lane, and you’d be right. But I tell my students to be like a snake rather than a waterbug. If you’re looking well up the road, anticipating where risk can invade your path, then you can move to and from the home-base position in a series of graceful and fluid movements.
Even if I could, I wouldn’t want to be the world’s most efficient traveler. Sometimes the fondest travel memories lurk behind the “wrong” door, but stumbling blindly from one junction to another is not a recipe for continued success on a motorcycle. One lesson my feckless travels have taught me is to always carry the sleeping bag—my two- pound bundle of home away from home. And that’s how I feel about negotiating traffic. Though I may not always be able to position my bike in total safety, my little piece of home is never more than a few seconds away. Where’s yours?
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