BEST OF JODY’S BOX: HOW COME NOBODY EVER TOLD ME ABOUT THAT?

By Jody Weisel

Nobody ever tells you the things you need to know. Okay, they do tell you, but you don’t listen.

When I was in college, an 18-year-old could be drafted into the army. To decide who went and who didn’t, they came up with a draft lottery with numbers from 1 to 365. If you got a low number, you would soon be in uniform, and soon after that you’d have some foreign guy shooting at you—because he was angry at you for forcing his country to draft him. My lottery number was 82, and I was immediately informed that I must report to Dallas for my pre-induction physical. When I got to the last sergeant in line, he said in a speech, very reminiscent of the one in Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant” song, “Kid, you are not fit to serve in the U.S. Army. You flunked the hearing test. Kid, why would a strapping young man like yourself be hard of hearing?” I told him about my twin-cylinder Suzuki road racer that shrieked at 130 decibels and didn’t have mufflers. He stared at me for a second and then stamped my paperwork “4-F.” To this day, “Lovely Louella” yells at me to turn the TV volume down and I reply, “What?”

Nobody told me that casing every double I ever jumped on the first try would make me 1 inch shorter today than I was back on day one. My doctor explained to me that every time I landed from a jump and felt my spine trying to escape out through the top of the helmet that I was compressing my vertebrae a micron. By his calculation, I had cased 25,400 jumps to become 1 inch shorter. I was pretty sure that he didn’t realized how good a rider I was and that the number was closer to 12,500.

JEFF SPENCER SAID, “IF YOU HAVE IT OPERATED ON, YOU WILL BE TRADING THE PAIN OF YOUR INJURY FOR THE PAIN OF THE OPERATION. IF YOU DON’T HAVE IT OPERATED ON, IT WILL HEAL BY ITSELF IN A COUPLE OF MONTHS, BUT THE PAIN WILL COME BACK AT REGULAR INTERVALS.”

Two years ago, I got vertigo. Vertigo exhibits itself as loss of balance, unsteadiness or dizziness. It is typically brought on by changes in the angle of your head. It is thought to be caused by microscopic carbon crystals in your inner ear, whose only job is to send signals to your brain, which interprets the signals from each ear to keep you balanced. When you have vertigo, your inner ear looks like a snow globe with the crystals swirling around inside. My doctor says that it could have been caused by a crash, by flying my aerobatic airplane or from something as benign as tossing and turning in bed. Unfortunately, I race at Glen Helen, which has some of the biggest and steepest hills in the sport, each one dramatically changing the angle of my head. When I get dizzy, it is like tunnel vision. I think I know where I’m going, but my brain doesn’t. Jimmy Mac asked, “How is that different from the way you have always raced?”

I tore my medial collateral ligament, the one on the inside of my left knee, without even crashing. I never felt any pain, until an hour later when I was walking across the pits. Famous trainer Jeff Spencer said that I could have it operated on, or I could wait it out. I asked what the difference was. He said, “If you have it operated on, you will be trading the pain of your injury for the pain of the operation. If you don’t have it operated on, it will heal by itself in a couple of months, but the pain will come back at regular intervals. And you will be trading the pain of your injury for the pain of wearing knee braces.” I didn’t have it operated on, and I never stuck my foot straight out again in a berm.

NOBODY TELLS YOU THAT WHEN YOUR BOOT HITS A ROCK AT 30 MPH, YOUR BOOT GOES FROM 30 TO 0 MPH IN A SPLIT SECOND. UNFORTUNATELY, YOUR TOES DON’T GET THE MESSAGE UNTIL THEY SLAM INTO THE FRONT OF YOUR BOOT.

Nobody needs to tell you that when your boot is sliding across the ground at 30 mph, your foot inside the boot is also going 30 mph; however, nobody tells you that when your boot hits a rock at 30 mph, your boot goes from 30 to 0 mph in a split second. Unfortunately, your toes don’t get the message until they slam into the front of your boot. Better known as “tennis toe,” the repeated slamming of your toes into the boot’s toe box will cause a “subungual hematoma.” The cure? A search for comfy shoes.

Have you ever heard of “coal miner’s lung?” It is known as “black lung disease” and is caused by long-term exposure to coal dust. It is a progressively debilitating disease that often leads to cancer. Luckily, I have never raced in a coal mine, but I have inhaled more than my fair share of dust, smog and flying dirt clods over the years. It was not uncommon to come in from a Saddleback moto back in the 1970s and cough for a half hour. Now, when I cough after a moto, everybody around me steps back thinking I have COVID-19.

Nobody told me that the biggest pains of being a lifelong motocross racer would have nothing to do with crashes or even broken bones. When you break something, it is a visible injury (thanks to an X-ray), and it is fixable. Every crash that causes a scar is just an irritating delay in getting back to racing. But, why does my shoulder pop when I extend it? I never had a shoulder injury. How come nobody ever told me about that?