Expert skills; just physical?

Sorry for the lack of posts. Life gets busy and it seems blogging gets pushed aside. I feel sort out of touch with you all. It will be good to sit down and see what you have been up to on your blogs. In the meantime, I just wanted to put up a quick note. Sort of a preview, so to speak.

In what little free time there seems to be, I've been concentrating on this photography thing. I've found a few books that deal with digital photography. Maybe I'm just primed for something new but I'm finding myself really drawn into this thing. Blame Steve Williams. There's something about his photographs that are more than just a picture of a moment. In a small way I've been trying to emulate that. I find myself looking at things in a different way. Exposure is kind of a tricky thing, yet makes such a huge difference.

For a few nights I've been doing some night time security work at a volunteer construction site. A new church is being built. Since I get by on little sleep, I've volunteered to hang out from 3 AM to 7 AM. With a laptop I can actually get some work done. It works out well since the factories I deal with are on the East coast, three hours ahead of us. Rounds have been made with the Nikon and a tripod along. I've had the chance to play with some stuff. Just for fun I'm including a few pictures. Nothing spectacular, just new ways of looking at ordinary things during the early morning hours under the parking lot lights. The photos have nothing to do with the post subject. Consider them farkles.

Meals are served to the volunteer workers. Here's some bananas waiting to be introduced to some hungry workers.

Anyway, to the point. I've written quite a bit about skills. You may remember me writing things like this:

Your skills will only stay sharp to whatever level you hone them to.

We don't rise to the occasion, we default to our level of training.

And here's one I'm adding:

Amateurs train until they get the drill right; professionals train until they can't get it wrong.



Most of the time we associate these principles with physical skills. Of course, a rider really needs physical skills to be at the highest level possible. There's more to riding a bike than just getting on and twisting the throttle, though. Consider our definition of an expert rider:

An expert rider is one who uses expert judgement to avoid using expert physical skills.

So while a rider should strive for expert physical skills, developing expert mental skills is even more critical.

A couple of weeks or so ago, there was a huge crash on Interstate 5 in Oregon involving 26 motorcycles. One of the rescue personnel described the bikes as "falling like dominoes". Despite some critical injuries, there were no fatalities that I am aware of. The incident bears looking at to see what we can learn from it. Stay tuned.

Miles and smiles,

Dan