Motorcycling as therapy

Riding a motorcycle as pain therapy? Sounds crazy, but well, when it really hurts, you’ll try anything to get relieve… A story from 2006.

Before you read, please note: this post was translated with the help of Deepl.
If you find any errors – please have fun first and then give me a hint.

Headache – one of those things that really nobody needs. My pain comes out of nowhere and ties me to nothingness. There is no therapy for cluster headache – yet; they don’t come out of the blue, but even if I can prepare for them, they always come at the wrong time.

Late October 2006. The cold smell of a homemade pizza, uneaten because of pain, wafted across my pillow and woke me up in the middle of the night with a tangy garlic note. Which prompted me to slip into the leather and take revenge on my surprisingly clear skull, despite copious amounts of painkillers swallowed the night before.

Revenge
 on my skull

I felt a bit awkward in the leather that hadn’t been worn in a while. For over a month it hung in the wardrobe unused, thanks to my special mate in the head. The gloves were stiff and clammy, a slightly weird spider lived in the boots. Well, lived.

Still in the night, I started the Desmo and, not a minute later, was pulling a mighty, twin-engine condensation plume behind me, heading south. The cracking of my rigid bones was drowned out by the rattling of the clutch; in the concert of discordant-sounding notes, the cold fork, the rusty swingarm axle and the dry chain rocked eagerly along. The sound of disintegrating rust on the brake discs was the last note in the cacophony of a cold motorbike, then the powerfully fed Desmo took over and accelerated me …

towards
 the Stelvio

It carried me through Prad onto the bitumen-painted road along the Suldenbach. The moisture settled on the visor, the cold made crystals out of it. In my mind I was on one of my first photo rides: in January to the Lake Resia, over snow and ice, for a picture of the Ducati in the snow … I was delighted with the freshly fitted front tyre – it made it easy for me to swing the 748, which was a bit more cumbersome than the Supermoto, through the meanders, one eye constantly searching for a dry path.

The first few kilometres have their own charm – and they are challenging. They are newly asphalted over long stretches and well developed. You can already ride yourself into a frenzy here or immediately realise that motorcycling is not going to work out that day. I felt good and alive this morning, despite little sleep. The cold didn’t find its way into my leathers yet, not even on the fast stretch to Gomagoi, where the Ducati was allowed to rev over 8,000 rpm for the first time to double the country road limit.

I passed Trafoi, the last village before the Stelvio. Here, too, the V2 broke the morning silence with its rattling and rumbling, and I spiralled up the hairpin bends through the forest to the “Weißer Knott“.

The road had dried in the meantime, a strong breeze blew the fallen needles of the trees into the corners, behind me the sun slowly rose into the sky. Within a few minutes, the trees changed colour, the asphalt became more contrasting – I got into a slight time crunch for my plan to experience the sunrise at 2,800 metres above sea level.

Again I searched for my line – this time through numerous stones that had fallen onto the road during the night. The eager building activity of the marmots forced me to do some light off-roading.

Shortly before “my” hairpin bend, where I have pursued my thoughts every now and then over so many years, I stopped once again. There is a sunrise somewhere almost every day – but this one was special. Special because of the mixture of black, grey, blue and white … Light has an incredible power – and in this moment, when the light pushed the night aside and bathed everything in its brightness, I thought I felt this power.

Light has
 an incredible power

This mixture of cold, new light, the smell of damp trees and the warming leather eased the dull throbbing behind my temples a little, it became quieter, slower. Motorcycling as therapy, that should be prescribed by the doctor.

After a few minutes of pause, I swung myself onto the crackling Ducati. I was already far above the tree line, my strength was weakening more and more in the thinning air – the strong painkillers of the previous night did the rest. I hadn’t been getting enough air through my nose for some time, and when I exhaled through my mouth, my visor and goggles suddenly fogged up.

So the visor had to stay open. The sub-zero temperatures of the incoming air hurt my nose and teeth, but still – the icy breeze was pleasant on my forehead and temples. Even though my eyes watered, the cold made me forget the pain of the previous night.

Motorcycling
 as therapy

Once again I steered the Ducati onto gravel and sat down on a wall. Turning my head, I could see the top of the pass – only a few more hairpin bends lay ahead. It was no longer easy to get going on the steep road – the cold had driven the feeling out of my clutch hand, and the circling around the snow-blown hairpin bends became an effort and concentration-sapping endeavour.

I finally found myself at the top. I turned the 748 towards the sunrise and freed myself from my helmet and balaclava. In the valley a sea of clouds spread out, above me the dark sky opened up and filled with an ice-cold steel blue.

The Ortler, to my right and still another 1,000 m higher than the Stelvio, hid its summit in a dark cloud – but the sun pushed relentlessly through the white enveloping the peak.

I watched the spectacle for a while – until the cold ate through the leather of my trouser bottoms. At some point, the hotel “Passo Stelvio” released the first skiers, who threw themselves and their boards into the cable car and disappeared onto the glacier.

Pleasant
 cold

I hid my hands inside my leather suit, warming them there. Only briefly, an icy wind blew fresh ice into my face – it stuck to my glasses and left filigree traces as it melted. The sun covered the landscape with ever brighter, ever warmer light.

A pain that was barely perceptible at the beginning slowly crept up my neck and sought a way through the back of my head. My special therapy diminished in its effect as the temperature rose. Light waves of dull pain burrowed past my inner ear and nestled behind my left eye – as they have so often in recent days. Welcome back, my greatest enemy …

I swallowed another pain pill and rolled back into the valley, into the drug-fogged nothingness.

Perfectly matching