Heavy crosswinds

[Patti Beadles <pattib@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Friday, I rode from Bakersfield, CA through Death Valley to Las
Vegas.  It was a good ride in a lot of ways, but the winds were 
absolutely hellacious.  I did multiple hours of leaning the bike down
perfectly straight roads... not fun at all, although it felt far more
stable above about 90MPH.  :-)

Here's the weird thing... although I was leaning into the wind, I
found myself constantly exerting pressure on the other bar.  Does
that make sense?  If the wind was coming from the right, the bike
would be leaned to the right, but I was pressing on the left bar.

This makes no sense to me.  On my other bike, a fully faired EX500,
I would have been constantly pressing on the right bar if the wind
was coming from the right.  It wasn't intentional, and I don't think
it was my brain saying, "want to go straight, must stand bike up" or
anything silly like that... gusts notwithstanding, it felt like what 
I had to do in order to go in a straight line.

I did have all three bags on the bike, and I'm sure that didn't do
anything to help the handling.  I was mostly tucked down behind the
windscreen, although sitting up didn't change this any.

Can anyone explain this to me?  Did I just get too much secondhand
smoke from the Harley riders in the hotel room next to mine the night
before, and hallucinate the whole thing?

- -Patti

P.S.  Other than that, the bike was a dream.  It wants to go fast,
though... on straight desert roads, I kept finding myself creeping up
to anywhere between 95 and 110, and I wasn't even trying.

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