Some times it is a small thing!

Eyesight. We all take it for granted.

Morning comes… If you are like me, your alarm goes off and you open your eyes. The first thing I usually see is a dog looking at me, wondering if I am going to get him up and take him outside. All of that while the little one sleeps away dreaming of chasing rabbits down holes or something like that. Hunter that she is…  Anyway, we all kinda take for granted whatever it is we see when we first wake up.  It is just the sort of thing that is there, you know it just is.  (Although in my case, I do not really know why that dog is always staring at me when I wake up… kinda creepy.)

I am old. That will surprise you, I know. But in my case I like to think of it as really well “traveled”. Regardless, my eyesight is not as good as it has been in the past.  I know that surprises you,  but basically I can see everything closely around me just fine. I just cannot see very well at a distance anymore – at all. Seriously, do not ask me to read a sign on the road or anything like that when I do not have my glasses on.  You will be surprised at the results if you try.

Of course impaired eyesight is not anything new, and I am not the only person that has suffered from it. But, mine has come on slowly overtime, and has snuck up on me. So here is my story.

Eyesight certainly deteriorates over time for most people. Mine is no different. But that deterioration happens slowly, you don’t really notice it too much for a long time.  I suppose you squint and force yourself to decipher what your brain is only getting partially from your eyes.  It works, for a while. The last time I had to go and get a drivers license, probably 10 years ago, I did not need glasses to see “line 3”. I had glasses, but that was mostly because I was having some trouble seeing road signs at night – night vision I called it. My prescription was really light. I was always able to read “line 3” without the glasses. Then I showed up this past year to get my drivers license renewed, and could not read line 3. “You must be kidding me, no one can read line 3 – that is Chinese characters on line 3.”  She was not kidding, and was not amused. I failed.  (A friend said, you should always/never be sassy with the person working at the DMV.)

So, I got my prescription updated and went back to take the test (passed) but WOW! I could see. I did not realize that there was so much detail off in the distance. It was like I had all of a sudden gained eyesight. I was so excited I ordered new glasses – new glasses for driving, new sunglasses for driving, new glasses for every day, new sunglasses for bike riding. I was completely taken with my new found eyesight. I loved being able to see so much that I am never without them now.  I almost always wear my corrective glasses.

The problem is that, I think you start to rely on having fantastic sight. So much so that when you are without them, you REALLY cannot see. On the motorcycle, I did not have any vision assistance. And, at speed on the motorcycle is when you really want to have sight. Not having good eyesight made it so that everything came upon me really really fast. I could not anticipate, could not pick lines and could not flow through the woods like normal and … It was bad.

Of course, it meant that I tried even harder. I pressed harder on the bike, then would find myself overshooting turns and bouncing off trees. I started fiddling with my bike set up and that started making things worse. As not only could I not see anything, but my bike was not the bike that I was comfortable with and confident in. That made things even worse. I was spiraling down and down. Getting slower and getting worse. Struggling I was.

Then while in the funk of trying to figure out what was going on, I went for a mountain bike ride and sweated out my corrective glasses, so I took them off and finished the ride without glasses. All of a sudden there I was, mid MTB ride and could not ride anymore. Ding Ding Ding! That is when it dawned on me. It is my eyesight, stupid!

So I had had an old goggle insert made to the old prescription years before. I had not used them much, because back in the day when I really did not need the assistance I did not really notice any real difference while using them.  They were just another look through surface that collected dirt and dust and was prone to fogging up.  So they are virtually new and unused in my goggle box.  I cleaned them up, anti-fogged the lenses and I gave them a try this past Sunday.

!HOLY CRAP!  Unbelievable.  All of a sudden I could see.  What I found, looking back is that without the inserts I could not see anything out in the distance so I probably was looking right down in front of the fender.  You cannot ride fast when you cannot look out in front.

With the inserts I could see the holes, I could see the ruts, I could see the turns and lines in and out way in advance.  Fortunately I had documented my original settings that worked so well last year.  I took the motorcycle back to the original set up and BANG – speed.

1st in +40 class, 8th overall. I’ll now be ringing up Drew @RXGoggles to debate him on who is tougher, MX’ers or off-roaders (he is wrong btw), and order up some new anti fog coated inserts with my new prescription.

Feels good to have speed again. Pete has gained a ton of speed, but I knew deep down inside, there was something basic that I was missing.

I am back.  Whew.  It was close.

Joe

Good to put the #303 back up on top again.

 

1st annual Adams County Harescrambles – yipp!

This past Sunday we got back to racing here locally. Finally, right? It is getting a bit absurd as to why we all live here. I mean, how much non summer can a person take? I suppose an Eskimo would think that our summer was glorious. To me, I am not too keen on living in the icebox. It’s a bit like Monty Python in the holy grail, “I don’t think he would be too keen, as he has already got one!”. I mean, how can a rabbit bite someone’s head off anyway? Bruce Willis would never do that.

So Bob Kau ran the Adams county race on his property up there. I don’t know what Bob does, but he seems to have property everywhere. I guess being a crotchety old guy with a beer in hand equals property baron. Maybe I should try that. I used to think that Bob was just that, a crotchety old guy with a beer in his hand, now that I have gotten to know him better, I know him as a crotchety old guy with a beer in his hand that has a hard and crusty outside but on the inside he is really a nice guy. He always has good things to say, he points out what he likes when you see him and what he doesn’t like. He is quick to point out when you look good on your bike, and when you do not look good. I kinda like him. I guess you do sometimes get what yo see.

My problem is that I have seldom looked good on my bike this year. I just am not riding that well this year. People have been telling me that I look just fine, but I am going backwards. I used to be able to match John’s pace, but this year he seems to be a gear faster than me. I have some work to do.

Here is a video of the 1st lap from my helmet cam this past weekend.

My race was not a disaster. I still ended up 3rd, with a huge margin over 4th. A new guy named Jay got in between John and I.

There was this almost endless sandy section. It was a GP course through an old cranberry farm. It was fun, but amazingly hard. I will put it together, as Pete is going to work with me to try to figure out what I am doing. We will see.

Other stuff
– there were 15 riders on the +40 line, I think 14 on the AA line. That is cool. Big fields are better than not.
– my suspension was set up really well for the sand, but was way too stiff for the tight stuff. That got really rough. I needed to strike a better balance for my settings, Factory Connection does great work, but still requires that the rider do his part choosing settings for the day. My bad.
– thanks a ton to Pete and everyone at the Madison Motorcycle club for putting the race on.

My bike was great. It ran like a champ. The new bars were great (thanks Easton). The Sand Mad rear and Southwick front were perfect in the sand and worked like a champ (thanks a ton Kenda), as always Moose gear is impossible to beat. Me new EVS braces are the bomb.

From here, I am looking forward to the last couple of weeks of preparation for the 24hour race.

Out for now. Working with Pete days come up next week when I return. Thanks Bob!

Joe