• There has been a recent cluster of spammers accessing BARFer accounts and posting spam. To safeguard your account, please consider changing your password. It would be even better to take the additional step of enabling 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) on your BARF account. Read more here.

What's Luck Go To Do With It?

I had a what would be consider a minor low side at very slow speed. It felt as if I only had the wind knocked out of me.

Road the bike home, some 45 minutes away. By the time I got home, I knew something was not right and went to the hospital where I had emergency surgery due to a spleen close to rupturing.

Pure luck it did not. It was so close to doing so, that I was paralysisd before I was under. I felt the first 6 inches of the cut to open me up but could not move or speak or nothing. Quite a experience. There were 38 staples removed when I left the hospital.

Since then, there are times I wonder why I made it, when others that have gone down did not.

So, when you think luck doesn't come into your life, well I just hope you are lucky enough not to find out different.
 
Last edited:
Continued from earlier this morning...


The “Jedi stuff”. I like this term because it is an easy half joking way ease into the following realm of knowledge. To get to my point of luck I need to provide some basic knowledges. And yes this gets a bit "heady".



Basic Knowledges:

There are two types of karma, seen and unseen. Unseen is 70%ish of what we experience. What gender you were born, good looking, ugly, smart, dumb, in a wealthy part of the world or poor, being 18 years old at the start of WWII or not, etc. You basically have no choice and can do nothing about unseen karma. Seen karma (about 30% of life) is mostly what we can deal with and my favorite example is you hear the big-rig horn, look at it, and jump out of the way. Many situations have almost no karmic baring on us. You see a bird fly by or see 10 Ferrari's drive down the road. That's it, no other interaction, no karmic involvement.

It's difficult to understand, but at this very moment we have music, knowledge, video, etc, zooming around us, through us, and with the correct device we can receive those things and even influence and change them. It's called wireless technology.

Now the hard thing to understand. Suppose our human bodies don't generate consciousness but receive consciousness? Much like a cell phone. Only your cell receives your calls and does not receive other calls...Suppose your consciousness can sense others consciousness, just a basic sense that it is there (like blue tooth)? Suppose your consciousness can influence someone elses consciousness (like blue tooth asking if you want to connect)? This influence might just put the other person/animal on a slightly elevated state of awareness for just a moment – that moment all we need to change the course of events. For example, ever sat across the room and stared at the back of someones head and after a few seconds go by the swing around to look directly at you? (Fun thing to try). We all do this “sensing” and “influencing” already. When you are aware of when it happens the “rules of the game are modified” but you don't really do anything, and that is the whole trick.



My point about luck:

Now, how does this consciousness sensing relate to luck (and yes it's slightly convoluted) and what do we do with it.

Luck is simply a slight change in a situation. Good luck is being handed a 100 pound rock of gold. Bad luck is having that same rock dropped on your head.

The dark Jedi knowledge about motorcycling is having “good luck” to ACTUALLY EXPERIENCE “close calls”, and not crash. This “good luck” of “close calls” prepares you for those “really close calls”. Those past “close calls” have provided you the time to develop situational awareness, develop knowledge of what skills to us with what situations, and provided you with the time to practice those skills.

Like many have said, avoidance of potential situations is most important. Avoidance starts with awareness of the situation and knowledge of what to do and practice of it's implementation.

Protection is also important. You avoid a situation but are now riding over gravel and drop the motorcycle. Your leathers just help. Your helmet helps if you hit hard. Your back protect helps if you have bad luck and have the motorcycle bounce on top of you.

Good luck is not being presented with a situation in the first place. Can it be achieved and how is this achieved? It all starts before you even get on the motorcycle. Choosing the road, day, time, and protection gear, before you even start the motorcycle complemented with reading, practicing skills, etc.. The you can ad yet another layer to avoid situations by giving a moments thought to your own consciousness. This can make you aware of other consciousnesses nearby and not just humans (i.e. animals particularly deer and turkeys). Those others might have a slight increase in their own awareness helping them to be aware of you and avoid you. I've seen this on group ride videos where just before an accident occurs there is a slight decrease in speed before any visible dangers are seen. We all do this naturally. A simple way to achieve this is when you notice yourself flinch, change speed, have a “gut feeling” and you don't see anything, that is when you need to purposefully slow, increase your awareness, and change position; about 40% of the time you will come across some yet to be seen danger. So the practice of this is simply body awareness, not necessarily meditation or “psychic” training. Just be aware of your body.

On a more advanced level; This awareness can be progressed on from consciousness to consciousness to include include awareness of environment, like gravel in the next corner (but this is a challenging progression) and requires meditation or other trainings.

And this whole topic is not just about YOU. When this awareness of consciousness is done, your fellow riders around you benefit by default. Their consciousnesses get slightly influenced and causes them to slightly increase their awareness, much like staring across the room at the back of someones head.

Good luck is not being presented with a situation. Bad luck is being presented with a situation. The outcome can be altered with skills, training, leathers, etc. And when it can't be altered enough it will require medical insurance and or life insurance.
 
And Kurt, highly skilled is only one aspect of avoidance. And I too have lost friends who were far better riders then me, and I'm sorry for all of our losses. I do gain some comfort from being aware that death is likely not the end. The Bible says we are brought back. This Hindus say we get reincarnated. The Buddhist say we get reincarnated but the Buddha never taught this one way or the other. And the American Indians say there is a continuation where our ancestors can provide us wisdom. If an event has happened one time, then statistically given enough time it should happen again.

That event is us.
 
For sure. All of the above are important. We can mitigate circumstances to reduce potential danger, and to a large degree. Jeff Lee, who makes A&G sliders, has ridden maybe 750k miles with zero crashes. And he's a fast rider. He is meticulous. Never lane splits and is super careful on freeways. He treats freeways like combat zones.

Don't understand the "never lane splits" part....

For me, being beteen the lanes, is what I can handle.
Reading the drivers (in their mirrors), and their tires path, and the gaps, is all do-able for me...

Being between the bumpers Staying in a lane is off the chart risky, to me.
 
Don't understand the "never lane splits" part....

For me, being beteen the lanes, is what I can handle.
Reading the drivers (in their mirrors), and their tires path, and the gaps, is all do-able for me...

Being between the bumpers Staying in a lane is off the chart risky, to me.

You are also fortunate enough to live somewhere with very little traffic. Of that I am envious. It's a beautiful place. :thumbup
 
  1. I would not confuse GaryJ with Lavelle
  2. Last I knew, Lavelle was still alive

Last I heard about owns9 was that he'd crashed, and just stopped posting. Some said he was killed.
The concept is the same though; he crashed badly a third time, doing something he'd done many times before. If you push the envelope of risk by riding at a racetrack pace on public roads, you'd better hope that you have the right kind of luck with you, cause you're increasing your risk of crashing considerably.
I probably shouldn't have brought GaryJ into this, I don't know if he regularly pushed the envelope or not.
 

I rode with both Lavelle and GaryJ for many years and there wasn't that much difference as many here like to think between the two.
In BARF culture one is mythicised as the ultimate bad example and the other is hold as a hero who made a fatal mistake.
I'm not saying this in any way to disparage Gary. I loved riding with him and I've always looked up to him.
He earned a reputation for "fast and safe" street riding because it was a subject he often discussed, wrote books on it and rode a 250cc sportbike in his later years to keep his speeds "down"
But I've seen him with my own eyes more times than a few push it on the street to where luck made the only difference.
Both Gary and Scott where very passionate about the sport and absolutely loved riding. Neither is a hero or a vilain. Both paid an unfortunate price for their passion.
 
I rode with both Lavelle and GaryJ for many years and there wasn't that much difference as many here like to think between the two.
In BARF culture one is mythicised as the ultimate bad example and the other is hold as a hero who made a fatal mistake.
I'm not saying this in any way to disparage Gary. I loved riding with him and I've always looked up to him.
He earned a reputation for "fast and safe" street riding because it was a subject he often discussed, wrote books on it and rode a 250cc sportbike in his later years to keep his speeds "down"
But I've seen him with my own eyes more times than a few push it on the street to where luck made the only difference.
Both Gary and Scott where very passionate about the sport and absolutely loved riding. Neither is a hero or a vilain. Both paid an unfortunate price for their passion.

well said, m8
 
You are also fortunate enough to live somewhere with very little traffic. Of that I am envious. It's a beautiful place. :thumbup

:thumbup I do, and thank you

When I'm talkin splitting lanes, though...
I'm Talkin Bay area, I used to live in Hayward. And.. split lanes when the Bay Area went into gridlock,
after the Loma Prieta Quake took a bridge and overpasses out of commission.
 
This can make you aware of other consciousnesses nearby and not just humans (i.e. animals particularly deer and turkeys).
Not sure what Jedi seminar you attended city boy but you should try and get your money back.
 
I've been called lucky more than once. I've felt lucky more times than I can count.

Lucky in riding, lucky in life.

I do believe that we make our own luck in the sense that luck, good luck anyway, is being prepared to take advantage of a situation when it presents itself. I would even say it's possible to increase the likelihood that a situation you can take advantage of, will present itself when you are prepared to take advantage of it. That is the limit I see on my ability to make my own luck. It's all probability and preparation.

Bad luck is the same thing in reverse. We can decrease the likelihood of being in an unfavorable situation with training, risk mitigation, etcetera. And we can prepare to mitigate the consequences of "bad luck catching up to us" with gear and what not.

I also think the goodness or badness of luck is totally in perception and dependent on your frame of reference and how long it has been since the luck event happened.

When I broke my arm the third time was it the bad luck of the misdiagnosis of the Flight doc that delayed my treatment and got me kicked out of the Air Force, or was it the good luck that forced me into the civilian world where I met my wife?

Was my last crash bad luck for catching that rut at just the right speed to kick the back end out, or good luck that it prevented me from continuing down the road faster than I should have where other corners were littered with many things less forgiving to crash into than sand?
 
Canyon rat - have you been reading Napoleon Hill or his followers? Also see Quantum Mechanics.
 
His thetan count is ridiculously high, I bet. Metechlorions, too.
 
Wow, people read my post?! It's weird for certain, but once you see it and once you use it, it seems a little less weird.

And luck is better in reverse, preparation before incident makes the biggest difference. And no one can stop or prepare for the truck falling off an overpass (that falls out side of luck).
 
Wow, people read my post?! It's weird for certain, but once you see it and once you use it, it seems a little less weird.

And luck is better in reverse, preparation before incident makes the biggest difference. And no one can stop or prepare for the truck falling off an overpass (that falls out side of luck).

I can see how a driver of a car (with a roof), wouldn't see that breaking though the overpass sidewall... And that driver having no open space to dodge/swerve into... But.. I bet I would of seen it start, and Not get dropped on.
 
But.. I bet I would of seen it start, and Not get dropped on.

True, but personally I would've seen it, and wheelied to a stop to let my bike catch the falling truck, holding it up just long enough for me to jump off. I'd then run back and signal traffic behind me to stop.

But that's just me... :thumbup
 
Wow, people read my post?! It's weird for certain, but once you see it and once you use it, it seems a little less weird.

And luck is better in reverse, preparation before incident makes the biggest difference. And no one can stop or prepare for the truck falling off an overpass (that falls out side of luck).
It was pretty near perfect for my perspective of riding/living. Great post! :applause :thumbup
 
Back
Top