Habits

I have a hole in my right shoe.  It is right in the arch between the ball of my foot and my heel.  As a matter of fact, I have a hole in the exact same spot in most of my shoes.  It's not because I walk funny, although I do have this mix of western and Asian strolling going on nowadays.  I have a hole there because of the way that I ride motorcycles.

I got my first dirt bike when I was 10 years old.  It was a 1978 Honda XR 75.  It was a few years old when I got it, but it shined that first day.  I learned how to ride in cow pastures, on dirt roads, and the lake bottoms.  I graduated to a XR 200 when I was 14 (that's when I started breaking bones, too many to count).  Then to a KDX 200 my senior year of high school.  Since then I have had a variety of mopeds, dirt bikes, and street bikes in the United States and Asia.  I love to ride.  It is my primary source of transportation in Cambodia.  In our first five years of living here, I put 20,000 miles on a dirt bike.  That's a lot of miles riding primarily on semi-paved roads, dirt roads, and, on occasion, through rice paddies.

Because I have ridden for so long, I have ingrained habits.  Because I used to race a little and ride the lake bottoms a lot, I sit a certain way on a motorcycle.  I hold the clutch with two fingers, always.  When things are getting a little hairy, I slide up on the seat, never worry about the back wheel, just focus on the front, I pull my elbows up, and play the throttle according to the situation.  I rarely use my back brake, except to slow for certain kinds of corners.  So, I always put my right foot on the edge of the peg and it wears a hole in my shoe.

My riding style is a habit.  When things get really sticky, I have 32 years worth of habit to lean on to get me out of it.  My other habits, ones far more important, are prayer and Bible reading.  So, when life gets a little sticky, I have something that automatically kicks in and I can lean on and trust to get me out of the situation.