The Cloud Of Control

“There is safety; ” Pablo said. “Within the danger there is the safety of knowing what chances to take. It is like the bullfighter who knowing what he is doing, takes no chances and is safe. ”

“Until he is gored, ” the woman said bitterly.

-FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Wearing an airbag, like the Alpinestars Tech-Air 5, is an acknowledgment of the world beyond our control. For some motorcyclists, taking such a precaution can feel like a betrayal of self-belief. That’s because for better and for worse, motorcyclists are control freaks.

Relishing our command from apex to apex, we feel invincible as nature submits to the will of our wrists.

The suction of warm tires. The bite of asphalt-wrinkling brakes. Insubordinate electronic aids that call us masters in spite of knowing better. When we ride, it’s as though we’re in a cloud of control.

The cloud is our confidence, our skill, our experience. With our minds bent to a single purpose, we become enveloped in it. Riding well demands a focus that shrinks the world. But our focus becomes our myopia, for the cloud obscures that which is truly beyond: that which lurks behind blind corners and in hidden places.

In the time it takes for a deer to leap from a hedge or a car to cross a double yellow line, the cloud of control evaporates and the motorcyclist’s delusions are laid bare. We’ve always known it: We were never fully in control. Not really.

It’s a reality I know too well.

My father died in a motorcycle accident my senior year of college. He was breaking in his brand-new Ducati 1098, keeping the revs low and basking in the pleasure of riding such a motorcycle on a beautiful spring day. He was lost forever in a single moment outside his control.

The loss of my father severed the narrative of my life and the future I’d expected. There was no plane of existence left unmarred. Riding, which had always been a kind of refuge for me, became fraught. Here was the thing I loved doing most and it betrayed me. Before, in years of riding, nothing bad ever happened:

I felt in control because I had no experience to the contrary. Afterward, riding felt different. I felt vulnerable, scared even.

“Trauma challenges our global meaning system,” psychologist Stephen Joseph says in his book What Doesn’t Kill Us. “It confronts us with existential truths about life that clash with this system. The more we try to hold on to our assumptive world, the more mired we are in denial of such truths.”

“Impact absorption while wearing the airbag results in a decrease of the impact force by up to 95 percent compared to a passive protector. ”

In order to make motorcycling a part of my future without living in denial of the danger of it, I had to integrate the loss of my father into my love of it. It was a process that didn’t happen overnight, and 15 years later, I still carry his loss and a sense of my own vulnerability on every motorcycle ride.

The consciousness of one’s own mortality doesn’t exactly make for the best of pillions, however. So I’ve made peace with the inherent risks by enrolling in rider training programs and wearing the best protective gear I can get: rider training to gain better control over what I can, and gear for what I can’t.

In recent years, airbags have become instrumental in giving me peace of mind. It may sound extreme, but I have four different jackets and a race suit each equipped with its own airbag. Now, with the addition of Alpinestars’ Tech-Air 5 to the collection, I can wear an airbag under almost every other jacket I own. As a stand-alone vest, it takes up a little more space than a typical CE Level 1 back protector, but according to Alpinestars, provides the same level of impact protection as 18 of them. When inflated, the airbag extends from the back, across the shoulders, to the ribs, and around the chest—the largest coverage area of any system available with the exception of Alpinestars’ Tech-Air 10 race system.

The Tech-Air 5 uses three gyroscopes and three accelerometers to gather data. Alpinestars’ proprietary algorithm, developed with millions of road and racing miles and thousands of crashes, determines what constitutes a crash before deploying. The company claims: “impact absorption while wearing the airbag results in a decrease of the impact force by up to 95 percent compared to a passive protector.”

Seeing the Tech-Air’s indicator lights illuminate as I activate the system has become a crucial part of the ritual of gearing up. The ritual carries me from the safety of a stationary world to an uncertain world of speed. The reassurance of those lights helps me inhabit an assumptive world that leaves room for assuming the worst. On every ride, I acknowledge the unknowable beyond the cloud and I go anyway. In that way, motorcycling has become an act of faith.

The Tech-Air 5 system is an exhortation where faith is weak. It’s the safety within the danger, giving a sense of control beyond the cloud. I wear it because, after all, I’m still a control freak.