Ah, my last perfect ride. The cloudless azure sky stretched forever overhead as the morning sun splashed its warmth upon my shoulders. The highway twisted around the scenic drumlins left eons ago by the movement of mammoth glaciers. Hitting every one of my marks with precision, I effortlessly glided through the curves like poetry in motion.

My engine barely changed its note as my gear changes were as smooth as silk and almost imperceptible. I only wished I had my video camera with me so I could document the perfection of this ride for training future riders. Then I woke up from my dream.

Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a perfect ride. Those who say they have had a perfect ride longer than their driveway have been dreaming like I was. There are things that happen every time we ride our motorcycles that prevent us from experiencing that elusive perfect ride

Normally these are minor incidents that have minimal impact on our excursion. It might have been a corner we took that wasn’t as smooth as we expect of ourselves. We made it through without any problems, but it just felt a little awkward. Maybe we didn’t see that car approaching from the right until we were entering the intersection. Luckily they saw us and stopped just before crossing our path of travel..

While neither of these was detrimental to the overall enjoyment of our outing, they trend to represent lapses in our mental skills when we slipped into auto mode. The problem is that any time our mind takes a mini vacation we could miss something that might quickly become a crisis.

Accepting the fact that we may never experience perfection throughout a complete ride, we can use these opportunities to become ever closer to a complete rider. By learning from every ride, we can keep getting better for future rides. If we weren’t ready for something that could have been disastrous but luckily wasn’t, what can we do differently next time so we don’t get caught off guard?

What distracted us from our riding tasks that caused us to misjudge that bend in the road? By analyzing the circumstances, we may be able to avoid a future unnerving curve. What will we do differently next time after cresting a hill and finding a tractor moving slowly down the road? This time we had enough time to stop, but what if the farmer had been closer to the top?

The mental lapses we’ve experienced may not have brought our ride to an unexpected end, but they might have. Frequently one little change in the scenario could have resulted in a totally different outcome. The line between getting away with something and getting caught is very fine.

The perfect ride may be an elusive dream, but we can reduce the frequency of events that hold it at bay. The less often our attention wonders from our riding, the fewer difficult situations we’re likely to encounter making our upcoming rides even more enjoyable.

Ride Smart! Ride Safe!