It’s a great mountain road, big curves and beautiful
scenery. Everything is just right, the motor is purring and the road is grabbing
you and pulling you forward. You see a yellow
sign and you decel just a bit preparing for another big sweeping curve. You enter the curve and you can’t see where
the road continues and you realize this is a little sharper curve than most you’ve seen this day. It’s not a nice
ninety degree curve; it’s an S-curve.
You rise up in the seat a little more, you decelerate just a touch and you lay
your hands across the controls. You push down a little more on the handlebar,
holding your line in the road by a hair. You pull it all back together and find
your line again and now you’re back in control.
You just went from a Pucker Factor 2 to Pucker Factor 8 in less than a
second.
Yes, your butthole just puckered up into an airtight orifice
that wouldn’t have allowed even the smallest amount of gastronomical extract to
escape. You’ve entered the world of The
Pucker Factor. We’ve all been
there. It can be a certain road that
never lets you really relax or a car that looks like it’s going to pull out of
the driveway just in front of you. Maybe
it’s that big dog in the yard up ahead and you’re wondering if it’s going to
chase after you. It may be the gang of turkeys grazing just off the side of the
road ahead. It can be any one of many different situations that we experience
while we’re riding. But the same thing
always happens and there’s nothing we can do about or do we really even know
it’s happening at all.
When I’m talking about Pucker Factors, it’s not just moments
in time. I grade roads themselves based
on the Pucker Factor. I would give the
Dragon’s Tail on the Tennessee/North Carolina border overall a PF8 just because
of the whole experience. A straight line
desert highway in New Mexico would probably be about a PF3, until the coyote
bolts across the road. Usually this will
make a PF rating rise just for a moment and then you’ll settle back into the
PF3. An interstate highway changes all the time, from a PF2 in the long rides
between towns and cities, to at least a PF5 once you hit traffic. And if you hit a major city during rush hour,
you don’t need to worry much about gastronomical extractions until you leave
the city. Every other car has a nut
driving it, so if you’re anything less than PF7 in heavy rush hour traffic
you’re just asking for trouble.
The amount of Pucker is proportional to the perceived danger
in the road ahead. Unless you have a
medical condition, everyone starts off at PF1.
Hell, you have PF1 if you’re sitting in your favorite chair at home,
unless that chair is porcelain and you use it for reading a lot, but that’s
another story. When riding your bike the
Pucker factor changes sometimes every other mile or so. A nice big country road with long sweeping
curves may run you about a PF2 or three.
You should always have some sort of pucker going on when you’re riding,
just to know that you’re paying attention.
But when conditions a head change quickly and you need to come out of
your riding coma, the Pucker Factor usually rises to the level of the potential
danger ahead. It’s easy to go from a PF3
to a PF8 in just a second, but it takes time to go from a PF8 to a PF2. And if you reach PF9 or ten and you’re still
on the road you should probably pull over at your earliest convenience, if not
to calm down, at least to see if a change of clothing may be needed.
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