A Question About Fear And Joy

Ron 0:12

He says there's no sensation to compare with this suspended animation, a state of bliss. Yeah, that's Pink Floyd doing learning to fly. We'll be talking about that today, but for now, a question for you. How is it that we can experience a sensation that terrifies us in one setting and brings us absolute joy in another? I'm your host, Ron Francis in Loveland, Colorado, and today we're unpacking what we'll call the turbulence paradox, a powerful look at fear, control, and radical presence. We'll explore how loosening your grip, leaning into instability, and shifting from a helpless passenger into an active participant. We'll talk about all that and how that can instantly transform your anxiety into beasts, both on the motorcycle and into life. Yikes, that sounds deep, doesn't it? Yes, it is. Yes, it is. Thank you for joining me today. Stay tuned. Recorded in beautiful, lovely Colorado. Welcome to Peace Love Moto, the podcast for motorcyclists seeking that peaceful, easy feeling as we cruise through this life together. Are you ready? Let's go. Here's

The Flight Through Brutal Turbulence

Ron 2:01

mine. It had been another long week working in Dallas, Texas, and I was ready to get back home to Colorado to enjoy the weekend. I got on my Southwest Airlines flight as usual, same flight number, same time, and same day of the week that I always flew home. Before we took off, the captain announced that there may be turbulence on our approach into Denver. Okay. Yeah, there's usually turbulence because it's where the planes meet the mountains, and I'm used to that. No big deal. Right. Yep. An hour or so into the two hour flight, we hit it. Or it hit us. Massive winds that shook the plane like a ping pong ball in a dryer. Did I mention that I sometimes get motion sickness? Oh yes I do. Oh, and this was horrible. But at least it should end soon, I told myself, because we were getting close to Denver. Bouncing in every direction, the pilot took a very steep descent to reach the runway, and then just as sharply, the plane pulled back up. What? He announced that the winds blew us off course, so we were gonna have to go around and try to land again. Okay, now I'm not doing well. I am not doing well. The dramamine that I took post flight was no longer doing its job to keep me from getting motion sick or from panicking for that matter. I remember closing my eyes and just saying, Just kill me now, Lord. I can't take much more of this. I remember it's it was bouncing so bad that I couldn't see my watch when I tried to look at the time. I remember hearing other passengers gasping and even screaming when we hit some of the bigger bumps. So yeah, we fly out of the storm briefly, turn around and try to land again. The key word here is try. Same steep descent, same bouncing all over the place again. And again, another sharp pull up. You've got to be kidding me. The pilot came on the intercom again and said that we hit wind cheer this time. Yeah, I guess that could have crashed us. So he said we'll be flying back out of the storm and we'll land for a while in Amarillo, Texas, which is halfway back to Dallas. So we fly out of the storm and we land in Amarillo, Texas. And by this time, I want to get off the plane. No, I need to get off that plane. That's the way I felt. We taxied up to the terminal and I called my wife. I told her that I may rent a car from here in Amarillo and just drive home. But right then there was another announcement. We are flying back to Dallas now.

unknown 5:00

What?

Ron 5:02

No getting out of our seats, no going to the restroom, and my head and my stomach was having they were having a very, very bad day. I'll just leave it at that. So I relayed that update to my wife and we took off once more. Yep, within 40 minutes we were bouncing in the storm near Denver again. But this time I had just given up my soul, asking the Lord to just kill me now so I could get some relief. It was just awful. Again, the bouncing, the steep descent. Oh, and we landed. I remember too what the airline attendant said on the intercom when we landed. She said, on behalf of Southwest Airlines and your terrified crew, welcome to Denver. Yeah, that was a good one. A week later, Southwest Airlines sent me, and I assume all of the passengers, a nice email and a hundred dollar credit for our next flight. Which I was flying the next week, of course, so I used it. By now, you're probably saying, Ron, what's the point of all this? Isn't this a podcast about motorcycling? Well, yes, yes, it is.

Why Bumpy Dirt Roads Feel Like Bliss

Ron 6:20

But here's the thing: you know what I did the very next morning after that flight from hell? I got on my motorcycle. I headed out to my favorite, very hilly, very bouncy dirt roads way up in the mountains, and I climbed and I descended and I bounced all day. This time with a huge smile on my face. No motion sickness, no dread of getting sick or getting killed for that matter, just pure bliss.

SPEAKER_01 6:53

Hmm.

Ron 6:54

Same idea of frantic motion, but a totally different experience. What's that all about?

Riding Technique For Rough Terrain

Ron 7:14

Well, let's take that same physical experience and move it down to Earth, back down to our motorcycles. Picture yourself on your bike. You're out on a super fun and challenging ride today. Well, hey, let me give you a specific example. So last Saturday I rode at a very high-altitude uh BMW rally. It was the 100,000-foot challenge ride. If you listened to that last week's episode with my interview with uh Mike Bobbitt, we talked about that. And I did get a chance to ride with Mike and his friends. It was wonderful. So, as I mentioned in that interview, um, it was just such a great day of riding with him and his friends. Uh, we're all in dual sport bikes, and uh we were able to jump into the more challenging dirt roads, um, one of which was extremely bumpy that I remember. It pulled my arms out of his joints practically. Extremely high altitude up there. It was around Vale Pass, if you're familiar with that on Highway 70 here in Colorado. You talk about bouncing around a lot. We even found a guy's wallet in the middle of the dirt road. The wallet must have bounced out of his gear or out of his pocket, I guess, and we were able to return it to the owner at the end of the day. But yeah, that was a really, really rough road. But did we love it? Oh yeah, absolutely we did. Did we get motion sick? Absolutely not. Well, why is that? Well, here's the technique, right? You're standing on the foot pegs most of the time, knees slightly bent, perfectly balanced with your head looking forward, looking far down that old dirt road, and your grips on the handlebars are loose and relaxed. It's choppy and sandy in places, but you've learned that rather than slowing down and fighting it, you roll onto the throttle a little bit. In situations like that, 30-35 miles an hour that actually smooth things out and it gives you a little bit better stability, actually, more control, actually, more comfort too. The bike is bouncing beneath you, of course. G forces are shifting instantly from left to right as your tires bounce off the rocks going down the road. That road anyway. You ride through some really unexpected dips uh that test you and your suspension. No need to react too quickly. You let the bike move underneath you. That's what you learn after a while riding the dirt, letting it slide a little bit when it needs to, and making minor corrections only as you need to. The rear tire tosses and tosses from left to right, loses traction here and there just for a split second or so, and then it catches and throws up more dirt and settles right back into line. But here's the thing: the physics is doing much the same thing to your body as it did in the airline cabin. Your stomach is really experiencing pretty much the same turbulence, I might say. But on the bike, you don't feel sick. Your heart doesn't race with dread, you're not terrified. In fact, you're completely calm. You're having a ball. Those unexpected movements, they make you say, woo! With a big smile on your face instead of screaming, you're locked in a state of absolute effortless flow. Strangely, you're totally fine with this experience on two wheels. Is there more risk of an accident here on the bike than on this really rough road going at speeds we probably shouldn't be going and bouncing around? Yeah, there's a whole lot more risk than bouncing around in an airliner, for sure. Of course. So, what's the difference? Well,

The Turbulence Paradox Explained

Ron 10:54

let's call it the turbulence paradox. The bump itself was never the thing that scared us. You see, because physics was never the problem. The fear on the plane was born the moment you felt like a helpless passenger in your own life at that moment. The moment you surrendered controls to someone or something else, fearing all that time that something terrible could happen. You feel like you're being threatened, right? When you're controlling your motorcycle through the handlebars and your feet and you're shifting your weight, every drop, every bump, and every sudden shift in terrain isn't a threat at all. It's just data, it's feedback. It's real-time information telling you how to lean and how to roll under the throttle and where to look. Realizing that you aren't in control of the terrain, but accepting your role at the controls. It's what brings total peace in the middle of chaos. And like a lot of people who struggle with motion sickness, I tried to control every single variable I could to keep the anxiety at bay. I had my specific aisle seat near the front that I tried to grab every time, my noise canceling earbuds, and my flight music playlist downloaded and cued on Spotify. For over 80 flights, I lost count after a while, but I think it was around 80 or so. I played Pink Floyd's Learning to Fly as soon as the plane started rolling for takeoff. You may know that song. I played a little bit of it earlier, but it goes into the distance. A ribbon of black stretched to a point of no turning back. I knew every chord and every word of that song. But looking back, I was trying to manufacture a feeling of control in an environment where I really had none. Off the bike, in our daily lives, I think we're trying to do the same thing. If you turn on the news or scroll through your phone for more than five minutes, you feel like a passenger full of anxiety on a flight from hell. You feel it creeping in, right? I've heard the term false evidence appearing real. Fear. F-E-A-R. It's when we lack agency or information and our minds just fill in this empty canvas with catastrophic scenarios. How's that? On a motorcycle, you learn real fast

When Fear Creates The Real Danger

Ron 14:05

how dangerous false evidence appearing real can be. For example, if you enter in a corner a little bit faster than you planned and your mind panics, your mind is saying, I'm going too fast, I can't control this. Well, what happens? Bad things happen, your body tenses up, preparing for the impact because it thinks that there's no other thing that's going to happen other than a crash. Your arms lock stiff, your focus up from your eyes are straight toward that guardrail, and suddenly you are target fixated on the exact thing that you're afraid of hitting. You're aiming right at it. That manufactured fear created the actual hazard itself. Look it up on YouTube and you'll see proof. Same scenario over and over again, and it it just never pays to panic. And I know that's really, really hard to overcome. It's like the dude in the video just totally gives up on making the tight turn and trusting his tires. Just heads straight into the ditch or into the guardrail. And as you watch that video, you say, turn, turn, turn, turn, but no, it's straight into the ditch. And that's why they're on YouTube, I guess. But rather, with the calm confidence, that dude could have probably banked that bike on over, avoided panic breaking, and trusted his tires and his machine and himself, and he would have come off of that turn scared to death, but safe. So let's stretch this a little bit. Off the bike in our day-to-day life, admitted, we do this panic thing all the time, don't we? Way too often. We anticipate catastrophic failures in our careers, our relationships, our finances, and we let this hypothetical scenario keep us from leaning into the corner at all. Sometimes it's panic, sometimes it's anger. And it's always destructive. So what do we do? What can we do?

The Control Paradox And Mindfulness

Ron 16:48

It's the belief that being safe, happy, and in control means controlling everything. We think that if we check the weather report ten times and buy the top-tier gear and carefully map out every single mile, we can eliminate uncertainty. But any rider who has spent real time on the open road knows the truth. The road doesn't care about your plan. The sudden gust of a crosswind at 70 miles per hour, the slick patch of oil at an intersection, the sudden downpour that wasn't in the forecast. Yeah, if your definition of peace requires total control, you will live in a constant state of white-knuckled anxiety. Holding on to the airplane armrests of life as tightly as you can, as if that makes things better. As if that's some way of gaining control. Just holding on so tight. This is the control paradox, they say. The tighter that you try to grasp complete control over some external events, the less control you'll have over your internal state. And that's not good. True control was never about stopping the wind from blowing or flattening every bump on the trail. It was about your position of your body when the wind hits. It's accepting that while you cannot control the weather, the road service, or other drivers around you, you possess absolute authority over your own inputs, your breath, your focus, your grip, and your reactions. You see, when you surrender the need to control the entire environment and instead master your response or responses to that environment, something remarkable happens. The anxiety melts away. You stop fighting the ride and start responding to it. You move from the illusion of control to the mastery of presence. And that's what mindfulness is all about.

Reframing The Storm With Awe

Ron 19:38

Those winds, the wind shear, oh, that experience. But here's the thing. I could just about guarantee you that back on the ground during that storm from some distance away, someone was looking at those massive clouds and thinking, wow, isn't that beautiful? Maybe they even saw a rainbow. Maybe they recognized the power of God, the power of Mother Nature. What if even while on that plane? What if I could have relaxed somehow and thought about that storm and what it might have looked like from a distance? What if I had appreciated the power of Mother Nature while I was so close to that calamity? As we were flying into that storm, it was around sunset, and I'll bet you that there was the most beautiful rainbow out there that you could see from a distance. I was just too terrified to overcome with fear to even think about it.

Challenge, Takeaways, And Closing

Ron 21:10

So as we wrap up this episode and head back into our day, I want to leave you with this challenge. Try to stop controlling the weather and trying to smooth out every mile in your life. Stop being worried about tomorrow. It may be great or it may not. Who knows? But one thing's for sure, the next time you jump on your bike and you head out to wherever you're heading, it's highly likely it's gonna be another really fun ride. It's very likely you'll experience joy out there, and if you're really lucky, you might just find peace of mind. Hey, if this message resonated with you today, do me a favor and share the episode with a friend or a writing buddy or someone who might be navigating some rough roads right now. And if you have a minute, leave a review out on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It really helps us to reach more writers in this community of ours. Once again, I want to thank my friends at Viking Bags for their product support of this podcast. And if you too would like to support us, that'd be awesome. I'd appreciate that. Just check the show notes for some options there. So until we visit again, write easy. Stay present and I hope to see you out there.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

Peace out, you can't do it.