BEST OF JODY’S BOX: NASA SPENT MILLIONS ON A BALLPOINT PEN THAT WOULD WORK IN ZERO GRAVITY—THE RUSSIAN COSMONAUTS USED PENCILS

I’m have always been interested in how things work. As a kid I liked to take things apart and inspect their internals. I tried to grasp how each part related to the next. It should be noted that as good as I was at taking stuff apart—I wasn’t all that adept at putting them back together again. To me, the research into ripping into the underpinnings of my Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robot game was more philosophical than mechanical. Even as a child I knew that once I tore it down that I’d never get it back together again—but curiosity always won out over the enjoyment of a working toy, radio, clock, drill, bicycle or mom’s blender.

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The why’s of how something works are what’s important. I accept that it works…I just want to know the process the designers used to get plastic fists to fly. The philosophical aspect of science was brought home to me decades ago when I learned that NASA spent a million dollars developing a ballpoint pen that would write in the zero gravity atmosphere of a space capsule—while the Russian space program gave their cosmonauts pencils.

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I accept on face value that airplanes will fly, telephones will connect us to Karachi, my cocoa will be hot in 12 seconds, that the cop was correct when he said I was doing 70 in a 35 mph zone, that Auto-Tune can make anyone sound like Pink and that airport security isn’t making lewd comments behind the body scan machine.

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With this knowledge at hand I’m reasonably comfortable that when I walk over to my motorcycle on a Sunday morning that it will start. I have no fear. I’m not afraid of the fact that the piston is going up and down 200 times a second. I’m not afraid that when I flat-land a big jump that all of my weight, the motorcycle’s mass and what I had for lunch will be absorbed by three spindly 3mm thick spokes (you didn’t think that every spoke in the wheel took the load did you?). I’m not afraid of the two gallons of high-test fuel strapped between my legs—even though there is a 1200-degree exhaust pipe just one inch away from its plastic container. I’m not afraid of the ignition fritzing out on the face of a big jump and launching me to my unseemly death—even though the same people who designed that ignition probably helped develop the cell phones that works in my living room, but drops out in the backyard. I take a lot for granted. Perhaps life would be simpler if I didn’t know the germination point of the technology we use in motocross.

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Motocross bikes are all about science. Almost every part of a motocross bike is a lever. The handlebars use leverage to turn the front wheel. The transmission is full of gears, with larger gears exerting leverage on smaller gears. The crankshaft is uniquely capable of converting up-and-down motion into rotary power. The swingarm uses leverage to make the shock move. Even the wheels of a motorcycle are big levers (with the axles as the fulcrums).

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All of this mechanical mumbo jumbo has a point. America is a technocracy. As a people, we believe in science, even as we readily admit that we don’t understand it. We peck away at computers, talk on cell phones, let the fuel mixture in our cars be chosen by a microprocessor, cook food by deflecting the waves from a magnetron with a rotating fan, allow the police to check our speed by using LightAmplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation (better know as Laser), listen to music that is recorded by pitting the surface of a carbon disc and we walk through electromagnetic induction systems at the airport. We do all this ignorantly and gleefully.

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Thus, I embrace motorcycle technology with open arms. No matter how minimal your notion of motion, it is still rigidly defined by scientific laws. And what we think we know to be fact, is often in fact hearsay—which is not fact at all, but rumor, innuendo and outright lies. I trust in science, but I know for a fact that Daimler, Galileo, Newton and Bernoulli never got out of the Novice class at Chicken Licks Raceway. What do they really know about the world we live in? We are governed by the unseen order of science, but in our world the laws of physics and gravity are defied on a daily basis. Some scientific things we have to take on face value—but never underestimate the technical wizardry of a talented right wrist.