The Cure Feels Like The Crash

Coming around turn two I got my weight wrong. Not by a lot. A few inches of laziness, sitting where I’d been sitting instead of where the bike needed me. The front tire told me first. It went light, then vague, then the bars started that shimmy that every rider knows in the base of the spine before they know it in the brain.

Every cell in my body wanted to roll off the throttle. That’s the whole seduction of the instinct: it feels like the responsible thing. Slow down, back out, reassess. It arrives dressed as wisdom.

I gave it more gas instead. The bike stood up, the shimmy dissolved, and the whole event was over in less time than it takes to describe the fear.

The physics are almost rude in their simplicity. When you roll off the throttle, the bike’s weight pitches forward onto the tire that’s already in trouble. You’re taking the panicking employee and handing them more work. When you roll on, weight transfers to the rear, the front unloads, the geometry settles. The machine was engineered to be stable under drive. It’s the hesitation it can’t handle.

I keep thinking about that on the days when nothing I’m riding has wheels.

The instinct doesn’t only live in wrists.

When a launch wobbles, when the market goes vague under a business, the reflex is the same: roll off.

Pause the spend. Soften the positioning. Shrink the claim until nobody could disagree with it. And the roll-off almost never comes as a full stop, which might at least be a decision. It comes as half throttle. The rebrand that keeps the old logo on some of the trucks. The strategy the company adopts and also quietly keeps its exit from. The bold claim with three qualifiers bolted to it in legal review.

Half throttle is the worst place to be on a motorcycle. You’ve given up the stability of commitment without gaining the stability of stopping. All that’s left is the wobble, sustained indefinitely, at expense.

Watch what companies do to their people mid-shimmy and you’ll see the same weight transfer, in the wrong direction. Hiring freeze, training budget gone, everyone asked to hold on tighter with less. That’s loading the front tire. The team is the rear wheel. Drive comes from there or it doesn’t come at all.

I’d love to tell you I gave it gas at turn two because I understood the physics. I didn’t, not in that moment. I’d just been told, enough times, by riders further down the road than me, that the throttle is your friend right up until it’s your last mistake, and that the difference is mostly whether you believed it before you needed it.

That’s the uncomfortable part. The throttle only proves itself after you’ve already committed. There’s no version where you get the evidence first.

Stay Positive & Loosen Your Grip On The Bars