I was at a Yamaha shop near my house to buy some rear brake pads. He was out of stock and we chatted for a bit about the boat licensing story I wrote in here…and about how having a license for something doesn’t mean you can actually use it.
Then just when I started riding home from the shop I see a big bike approaching at a mild speed. I had my dogs running behind me so I watched with a smile as he passed me.
Then I see him do one of the most un-cool things I’ve ever seen done by someone on a nice bike. He does a half a lane change (moves from the right of the one lane to the left side of it) by throwing his body weight to the side so that his back was at a 90 degree angle to the bike.
You get that?
The bike was totally upright…and he heaved his body to the left in a quick jerky motion…just to move a few feet over. The guy had absofuckinglutley no clue on how to ride his bike.
I’d like to restate that their are many people out there who have been riding bikes their whole lives and don’t have a clue as to what counter steering is (and if you don’t either then do a search for it in this forum).
so far… of the hundreds upon hundreds of local big bike riders I’ve seen/met, I can count on two hands the number that “have a clue”… The rest have had varying degrees and combinations of “gung-ho” “misinformed” “ignorant” “dangerous” “arrogant” “naive” “unskilled” “over confident” “inexperienced” and “suicidal”…
My single biggest concern when on any of the roads frequented by “big bike teams” [shudder] is some idiot team coming the opposite way doing their blind suicide sweep “follow the leader” moves, blind overtakes, running wide into the oncoming lane, 5mm following distance and ignorant “we is tough biker team” showboat antics… oh and did I mentioned that I loathe big bike teams?.. oh and I wish they’d stop calling themselves ‘teams’, it’s just so gay…
I once saw a group of bikers pulling into a parking lot, there was a 2-3cm high edge you had to drive up to get into the parking lot…some of them couldn’t get over it. HAHAHAHHAHAHHA!!!
“Teams”? Do they have, like, team showers afterwards?
The scooter monkeys do indeed do this pointless veering from side to side all the time. I ride home the entire length of Fu Hsing every day, which is a big long straight road with fairly quick traffic and they’re all at it. Their other speciality is to pass you leaving about six inches of space on an empty four lane road. :loco:
Oh this isn’t about me. That man should not be on a big bike…period. He had no idea how to even move over in the same lane.[/quote]
Maybe he WANTED to do it that way. Maybe he wanted to see what would happen. Maybe he had an itchy arse.
well i ride in “teams” some of them even have foriegners in them
and i enjoy it.
I also ride alone, which i also enjoy.
Yes there are many people out there who shouldn’t have a bike licence or a car licence, both in this country and abroad “the first world as i have seen it been refered to”
I am not an expert rider and i hope people will give me a break when i do something that isn’t up to the “Rossi” standard
I have a question for you Mordeth, with no sarcasm intended. You, like many of us here, spent many years piddling around on the local bikes…How long did it take you to get back into (feel comfortable with the size and displacement) the saddle once you re-entered the “big bike” scene?
Counter-steering is a great topic for teaching adult classes. Nobody believes you when you ask them which way will the bike turn when you push on the left side of the handlebars. Even when they are all engineering students, it can take a while for them to believe you.
The worst problem I see is the short guys on the big bikes trying to keep balanced at the stoplight on their tiptoes.
I have a question for you Mordeth, with no sarcasm intended. You, like many of us here, spent many years piddling around on the local bikes…How long did it take you to get back into (feel comfortable with the size and displacement) the saddle once you re-entered the “big bike” scene?
Am genuinely curious… [/quote]
With no exageration. On my first motorcycle…11 years ago. It took me about 10 minutes to figure out how to steer it. About an hour later I had one mishap where I turned right into a parking lot then tried to make a quick left…couldn’t go from right to left so quick so I instead had to do a complete circle before getting the direction I wanted.
So if you include the mishap it took me an hour to get the hang of it…having never ridden a bike before (no dirt bikes or anything). And a week later I was taking ramps and standing up on the seat with no hands (young and dumb).
When I bought the CBR it was the first time in my life riding a sports bike. And it had been roughly 7 years since I’d ridden a large displacement bike. I had to ride the bike back from Taichung…I got it up over 220 on the way home. I forced myself to “take it easy” and sharp corners at high speeds needed some definite work, but I felt pretty much at home from the start.
But I never had a problem moving the bike over two feet to miss a pot hole .
I think many of you are missing the point…or mayhaps you just like taking the counter to whatever I post. The guy couldn’t move the bike over two feet while going straight at casual speeds. He had no idea…NO IDEA…how to control the bike. I was a better rider than him back when I had only 10 minutes of riding experience under my belt. The very first time a car pulls out from a side street expecting the biker to go around them…he’s going to plow into their side. Simple as that.
I considered chasing him down and trying to explain to him how to counter steer…but I highly doubted he would have listened to me.
Wrote a load of blather about counter-steering in relation to knee-down cornering at high speed but I misunderstood what you meant (in terms of going relatively slowly - crash avoidance). Oops.
A good way to see counter-steering is still shots of racers cornering. Notice the way the front wheel is pointing. Neat eh?
God cornering:
That was Barry Sheene, by the way, for those of you who didn’t spend the late seventies asking Santa for a Heron Suzuki GP500.
These guys’ front wheels are NOT pointing into the corner. If they did point them into the corner the bike would try and stand up and they would either go head over heels or straight off wide into they hay bales.
The easiest way I think to understand it is that bikes turn by leaning over, and when you turn the wheel in a certain direction, the bike falls over in the other. It is that falling over which gives you your turning ability. If some moron pulls out in front of you you can turn the bars into him, and your bike will lean away from you. This instant lean away will make the bike turn away from the car. Don’t forget to correct straight away or you will fall over, or overdo the turn and end up meeting yourself coming back. But it’s better to fall over than hit a Volvo.
Counter-steering is actually intuitive at speed. It only needs to be taught for low-speed safety maneouooevers where a lean off the bike (moving your body weight alone) will not be quick enough.
Er, sorry Mordeth, have you covered this before? I just remembered. Sorry. OK guys just ignore me. I didn’t get enough coffee this morning.
(If anyone wants to lend me a Japanese sportsbike I can demonstrate, heh heh! )
lol, it’s cool Hexuan, you can never have too much talk about counter steering. The main counter steering thread is here: forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?p=473092 . If you ask me it should be stickied because there isn’t much that’s more important to one’s control and therefore one’s saftey than counter steering.
oh and I wish they’d stop calling themselves ‘teams’, it’s just so gay…
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