Re: [ST] Re: Paint, Western Rallye, Ken's interesting comments...

[Thomas Emberson <thomas@xxxxxxx>]

On Sat, 2 Jun 2001, David Earl wrote:

> "I've taken the positionthat on what are essentially one-and-a-half lane
> roads (like the one wewere riding), that I want to be riding around
> blind corners along the righthand edge of the road, and adjust my speed
> appropriately (i.e. slow theheck down)."
> 
> I follow your logic but Ithink it's flawed. Going around a right hander
> on the right side of the road allows you the least  view of the road
> ahead and requires the tightest turning radius/greatest lean angle. It
> doesn't matter how slow you're going, if you come around only to realize
> it's a decreasing radius with any kind of surface problems (sand,ice,
> parked car) you're screwed.

Funny, I would then go around the courner slower. I guess it depends
on exactly how blind and how tight the corner is. It is simply
amazing how much a modern day bike can slow down going from the
inside tire track to the outer.

Frankly, is the street the track. NO!

When I am on the street I ride for lean, so whether I am on the
inside tire track or outside tire track I am going for the same
lean, who gives a damn if you are going around the corner 3 mph
slower? As said, you 'aint on the track. That is the same reason
why I don't hold WFO between corners either.

As well I might suggest that if the corner is so blind that riding
a righty on the inside track causes you to hit foleage because of
the lean, you are going way to fast (hope we agree here :-)

Anyway, many moon ago, I was giving a friend a ride on my old '98
zx6e, coming around a nice 80 or so mph sweaper to find a 6 foot
wide section accross of road had turned into gravel over the last
4 days since I was on the road. went from yellow line to yellow
line, looks like they put in a new drainage pipe accross the road.
I simply applied the brakes, the bike stood up as it should, dropped
from ~80 down to probably close to 40 going from the left tire
track to the right, got back into lean as I progressive reduce
braking, and went over the gravel at a much safer speed. The extra
5-10 ft of warning I would have had riding in the outer lane would
not have done us anything. We would have been going for a short
off road excursion before we hit the trees. Either that or a low/high
side caused by the pavement-gravel-pavement trasitions/sliding.

Now with that said, you can never really say either approach is
always better than the other anyway. Depends on the rider, speed,
road conditions, corner, weather, sun position, and anything else you
can think of.

> 
> Took Freddie Spencer's High Performance school last year and for the
> most part it was just a different slant on the same stuff (don't mention
> counter-steering!) as CSS. The most notable exception was Freddies
> emphasis on trail braking. The point being why do you want to commit to
> a corner speed before you can see the exit. From what I understand from
> your explanation of the accident, trail braking or at least covering the
> brake with two fingers might possibly have made the difference. Another
> Freddie drill was softly sqeezing the brake to load the front suspension
> before applying full braking force. It's a valuable lesson to learn as
> the bike is infinetly more controllable.

That reminds me of a night ride on the zx9r where I was almost a
victom of my own stupidity. Going down a road, leaving the saturday
night edition of squidfest. New road, going a bit too fast for it
being as dark as it was. And all of a sudden I notice the the road
has a curv/jog in it. What I though was the road going straight
was not! Anyway, got on the brakes and started to turn, back wheel
slid out about 1-2 feet, went to a neutral throttle (from what I
could tell) or more to say I gave it a small bit of gas and slowly
got off the rear brake. The rear tire came into line slowly as I
achieved the lean angle required to make the turn. Kinda fun, but
at the same time I damn near had to rush home and change my shorts
before I stained the seat.

> I wish for a speedy recovery for both of you, as well as all the other
> dawgs that have gone down lately. For me, low siding and breaking my arm
> last year was a great impetus for learning. While I had already
> scheduled the schools, it really made me pay attention, I believe it
> also helped with the trepidation about riding in general. All in all,
> the crash and the schools have made me a 5x better rider.

Ditto!!!!


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