The Need for Speed: Life and Death in Sendai

We all have idiosyncratic behaviors. The idiosyncratic nature of these behaviors means that, best-case scenario, people think we are odd. At their very worst, they put us in harm’s way. I once had a person who was supposed to be trained in the art; read my palm. She asked, “have you had a lot of near-death experiences?” At first blush, I didn’t really think that I had. Upon deeper reflection, I had to admit that I had indeed had several experiences that could easily have resulted in death: I jumped off 100 foot cliffs into water.  While backing onto a road nearly got T boned but, instinctively put on the brake just as a car came speeding by at sixty plus miles per hour. I fell asleep at the wheel on the way home from Wendover and did a 180 on I-80. The Oldsmobile, Delta 88 (the bluesmobile) threw a rod after literally putting the petal to the metal and breaking the one-hundred mile per hour barrier on the way to the Van Halen concert. The Suzuki Samurai I was driving perched precariously on two wheels after attempting to climb a steep mountain slope. While riding a motorcycle at 90 miles per hour, the truck in front of me suddenly braked. I was admiring the river below the bridge I was on and had to swerve around him to avoid making an indelible impression on his tailgate, only to find a car coming right at me in the other direction. I split the difference between the two cars and continued on with at least one life securely in-tact. Add that to concussions from skiing and rugby, trying to stop a baseball with my face, numerous cuts, scrapes, bruises and sprains from being tackled, bucked off or from sliding into bases, jumping and crashing my bike or wrecking on skiis and I don’t think there is a cat that has anything on me.

The idiosyncratic behavior that I am talking about is the need for speed. Whether in a car, on a bike or on skiis, there is a rush that comes from going really fast. Do you think that I am compensating for something? Maybe. It might be compensating for the fact that I can’t run that fast. I am the guy that, when confronted by a hungry Grizzly Bear would save everyone else’s lives.

Another behavior that influences me is that I get so focused that I can’t stand interruptions that attempt to direct my attention anywhere than on the object or activity in which, I am involved. This may not seem dangerous, but you will soon see that it can be.

Bicycles are the main mode of transportation for missionaries in Japan. Upon mounting my bike, something would come over me; some switch is flipped and I became a young-man possessed to get from point A to point B as quickly and directly as possible. When green lights turned red and it became clear that I would have to stop, I would find an opening in traffic, dart across the road and head up the road against oncoming traffic. While I might be crazy, I’m not entirely stupid. I realized the danger of riding into oncoming traffic on Japan’s narrow streets. I solved this problem by hopping on the sidewalk and racing on to my destination.  

Despite being separated from on-coming traffic by a curb and a few parked automobiles, riding on the sidewalk presented a new set of challenges. In Japan, the buildings butt right up to the sidewalk.  If there is a narrow- side street that isn’t big enough to warrant a traffic light, cars hoping to turn onto the busy main road have to pull forward onto the sidewalk to check on-coming traffic. This would not be a problem if cyclists would keep to the road like they are supposed to. Or even if they were a far enough distance away that they could see the car pull onto the sidewalk. But what if they are less than twenty feet from the alley when the car pulls out? What then? The answer is simple. Think fast or die. The problem is, the human brain- when confronted with new information with which it is unfamiliar and in particular, when it is unfamiliar and potentially life threatening-freezes. Call it panic, call it shock, call it whatever you want but in the world of physics there is a very real change in brain wave-length from a Beta state to a Gamma state. The Beta state is the state of normal mental function. The wave lengths are not particularly long. In fact, if a thought corresponds with the length of a wave from peak to peak, they are actually quite short. You know this because in any ten second cycle you might think the following series of thoughts; “this story is interesting, my butt hurts, why is that woman wearing that ill-fitting dress, why doesn’t somebody who loves her help her to dress better, maybe nobody loves her, my butt hurts, I’m hungry, this story is interesting but where in the world is he going with it? What do brain wave lengths have to do with riding bicycles?”

I’ll tell you what brainwaves have to do with bicycles! When already short Beta waves turn to even shorter Gamma waves, the result is gridlock on the highway of thought. It starts with a flood of thoughts that begin with “I’m about to die!” and then gets jammed with a multitude of thoughts as the series of life events that flash before one’s eyes prohibit the thoughts that would actually be useful in getting out of this jam from coming to the fore. Not only does the overwhelming series of competing thoughts cause thinking problems, the tension in the body makes injury and death more likely. That is why drunk drivers often come away from an accident unscathed while the innocent victims die.

So, there I am riding hard to make the next light. The light turns yellow and it becomes obvious that I am not going to make it through the intersection before the light turned red.  Almost without thinking, I jet across the road, hop on the sidewalk and ride on the sidewalk. As I came within about twenty feet of a narrow side-street, a car pulled out from behind the wall and blocked the sidewalk. The shift was instant: Beta to Gama, panic and gridlock. Within the space of that extraordinarily long second, my life flashed before my life and I braced myself for imminent pain. I was brought out of my neurological coma with a thought that burst onto the scene like a superhero, “Wait a second here! You don’t have to die yet. You have skills!” You know what? I do have skills! I have had so much practice at doing one thing over and over that my muscle memory just took over and I can transcended the gamma state and entered the seeming nirvana of the alpha state. This is the state of intense focus; where everything slows down. This is the state of mind that athletes and musicians call “the zone,” Malcolm Gladwell calls “blink” and Mihay Cziczentmihay calls “flow.”

What was this skill that I had so much practice at? Falling down. All of the previous near death experiences provided me with practice in hitting the ground: bike wrecks, ski wrecks, getting bucked off horses, sliding into bases, getting tackled in football and rugby and just being an active boy honed this skill to the point that, like a cat, I am able to leave the ground, orient my body to objects around me and land in a way that my body does not crash directly into things but rolls off of them.

In that same split second of alpha thought, I evaluated my options. Option one, turn right. There is a wall there. Hitting a wall is probably worse than hitting a car. Option two, turn left. That would take me into on-coming traffic. I was no physicist but intuition tells me that two objects moving towards each other at a high rate of speed, one with much greater mass than the other results in the object of smaller mass getting squished.  On to option three, go under. I have seen movies where motorcycles avoid impending doom by sliding under large trucks. But this was no truck. Even if I could lay it down just right, I would not be able to slide all the way under and I would probably get run over. I was down to one last option. Go over. Yes! That was it! I could brace myself for the point of impact and use my momentum and leverage of pedals and handlebars to launch myself over the car. As it worked out, I had to fly through the open window, at which point I saw the drivers French fries; grabbed one, got thirsty, took a sip of his drink and flew out the other window onto the pavement on the other side. Ok,that part isn’t true. Just as the front tire of my bike hit the side of the car, I launched myself across the hood, tucked and upon contact with the concrete, rolled and ended up on my feet. Oh how I would love to have that on video tape. I would also love to see the expression on the driver’s face as he pulled out to the curb, looked left to check traffic and saw a grey blurr ( that was the color of my suit) smash into his car, while a projectile lifted gracefully off and flew right in front of the windshield and with all of the poise and dexterity of a gymnast, flipped, rolled and ended up on the other side of his car.

Once he recovered from his own gama state of mind. He got out and came over to ask me if I was alright. “Sure,” I said. “I do this all the time.” That was, in reality my third such accident to that point. I know, Einstein said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. I am pretty sure that based on everything that I have written so far, you have formed your own judgment of me even without Einstein. He probably just confirmed it. But wait. The story isn’t over yet. It gets even more bizarre.

After verifying that I was indeed, unscathed, we walked around the car to look at my bike. It did not share the same fate as its rider. It was a crumpled hunk of metal. The driver asked if there was anything he could do. I said no and thought to myself “I hit him, why would he do anything for me?” As I concluded this thought, the driver offered to take my bike to the bike shop to see if it were salvageable. I thought that was a nice gesture, especially from someone who could arguably be angry that this crazy American had disrupted his day. I directed him to the nearest bike shop and then set out in that direction.

As my companion and I were on foot, the driver of the car beat us to the bike shop by several minutes. As we walked in, the owner of the bike shop confirmed what I already knew. There was nothing he could do for my trusty old bike. He continued by saying that the driver had offered to buy a new bike for me. Now I really was in shock. I had no idea why he would do such a thing. I protested. “But I hit him. I am at fault.” My companion nudged me and whispered “shut up and take the bike.” Just as I was about to order him to “get behind me Satan,” the real Satan stepped in. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a beautiful black mountain bike. A wave of lust cascaded over me. I don’t know if you are familiar with lust but unlike the gama response that nearly trapped me earlier, it trapped me in a seemingly unending loop of desire. I became so focused that all reason and compunction left and the next thing I knew I was riding down the road on this new black beauty. At some point, I came to and realized what I had done. I turned around and headed back to the bike shop, my companion protesting all the while.

I told the bike shop owner that I could not keep the bike. He told me that he couldn’t do anything for me because the man had paid for the bike so he could not take it back. It is custom in Japan, upon meeting someone for the first time, to exchange business cards.  We had done so and when I returned to the church, I promptly called him and explained that I could not keep the bike. He told me that he would come to the church and we could talk about it. I said ok and hung up.

When he arrived, I was in a room on the upper floor of the church. I had my back to the door when he entered the room.  When I turned around, I was presented with a large box of oranges. These weren’t your average everyday oranges. These were Mikans. Mikans are like the Cuties that are sold at Costco. Only better. They are still sweet and super easy to peel but they are BIG! Once again, I was consumed by lust and did not respond immediately. “I wish he would quit doing this to me,” I thought. But he didn’t. He pulled out an envelope from his jacket and put it on top of the box of organges that I was still holding in my arms. I set the box down and looked in the envelope to see hundreds of dollars of cash. I was overwhelmed. “What is going on!” I wondered. Why does this man keep giving me things when was in the wrong. Is this some kind of reverse psychology for missionaries?” I had to end this and end it now. I accepted the bike and the oranges but I told the man to keep the money. With this disinclination towards monetary incentive, is it any wonder I became a teacher? I told the man that there was, however, just one more thing.  “We have here in this building,” I said, “a small swimming pool. We have these really nifty white swimsuits that we can use. You and I can go for a dip in our pool. I’ll say a few words and I’ll dunk you and splash around for a bit. What do say?” Ok, that didn’t actually happen either. But the rest is true.

It wasn’t until months later that I finally made sense of this event for which I had no point of reference in my vast twenty years of experience. There was an accident on the road. The two drivers got out and instead of screaming at or punching each other. One calmly removed his wallet, gave a handful of bills to the other man and they got back in their cars and drove away. In Japan the process of getting a driver’s license is very long and expensive. Prospective drivers not only have to pay thousands of dollars but they must also demonstrate their skill but also take intensive tests that include knowledge of the different parts of the automobile. Points are accrued for accidents just like in the States. Needless to say, once a license is lost, it is not easy to get back. So, to keep points off of their record, drivers do not involve the police in incidental matters. They quickly settle the matter and move on. In the event that an automobile is involved in an accident with a pedestrian or a cyclist, it is ALWAYS the driver’s fault. Once I learned this, I totally capitalized! I paid for the remainder of my mission and all of college through the proceeds of my various bicycle accidents. Given my proclivity for prevarication, I will leave it to you decide if that is true.