scuzeme

Welcome to the third installment of my thoughts and experiences in the club level racing scene in New Zealand.

I wanna touch on "helpfulness to the helpless" which sometimes makes the helpless much more helpless, but thanks for your helpfulness anyway even though it didnt benefit me, infact i am now more confused then ever.

The first thing you wanna do when you get into this sport is “Learn” and it seems that every meeting i go to there is something new to “Learn”, im not talking about being given "The Learn" on the track, in other words having your arse thoroughly beaten by a good 5 to 10 seconds or more, im talking about...well you know spring rate, rebound damping, compression damping, tyres, tyre pressure, bike geometry, all the good stuff that completely fries your brain because your too dumb to understand it.

As with all confused noobster types we ask questions most of them are dumb questions and some times the questions we ask are not even the right questions but if we are lucky the dumb question we asked may just steer us along the path to ultimately asking the right question.
Asking the right question can be a major helpfulness to the helpless, putting forth the right question and receiving the right answer for you is sometimes a minor miracle bestowed from above in the form of some type of devine intervention.

There are a lot of people who have a lot to say and there are a lot less people out there that wont say much, in either group you will be lucky to find a few that really know what they are actually talking about.
Yes if your lucky you may find the right person who can give you the right advice, but if your really lucky (and buy them a latte’) they may give you the time to listen to your question and if your really really super lucky (or they think you’re a nice person) they may even decide to give you and your machine the time required to give you the right answer…are you following?

Just listening to any old advice from any old body can be confusing and dangerous in the extreme, just because someones fast or seems to know what they are talking about does not necessarily mean just that, in fact you can be blindingly fast and still know nothing…accept how to go fast.
Even the most helpful can sometimes lead us astray that we become even more helpless than we already were..was..were.

Heres my advice:
Ask yourself the question first and if you can answer it that’s a good start don’t bother anyone else cause they usually too busy anyway.
Ask the same question many times to many people youl be amazed at how many different answers you get (yeeeeeep helpfulness).
If the person replies with an answer don’t listen to them (helplessness dished by the helpfulnesses to the helpless)
If the person replies to your question with a question chances are they know their stuff and will lead you along a line of enquiry to get the actual right question out of you. Listen to THAT person! because they will probably have the right answer!

Cheers see you at round #2 where I will still be asking heaps of questions remember to answer me with a question.