{"id":8090,"date":"2017-03-27T11:27:04","date_gmt":"2017-03-27T17:27:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/?p=8090"},"modified":"2017-03-09T10:27:58","modified_gmt":"2017-03-09T17:27:58","slug":"scaring-myself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/scaring-myself\/","title":{"rendered":"Scaring Myself"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Motorcycle<\/a>

Turns can be fun–or they can scare you silly.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll knock on wood and say that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never gone down on my motorcycle except in the mildest circumstances possible. That includes a 2 mph tip-over in mud and wiping out on gravel at about 5 mph when a dog walked out in front of me from between two cars. But that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come close a few times. And there were plenty of other times when in truth I probably wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t all that close to disaster but managed to scare myself pretty badly just the same.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m happy to be able to say that most of these incidents were a good many years ago, when I was nowhere near as experienced or as good a rider as I am now. That fact testifies to the folly of someone thinking they can get on a motorcycle and ride it just fine without any sort of formal training. Like me. Managing to not go down and being a good rider are not at all the same thing. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m a good rider today because I have by now had a great deal of experience AND I have taken the Motorcycle Safety Foundation\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Beginning Rider Course (twice) and their Experienced Rider Course. Plus a couple other classes.<\/p>\n

Almost without exception, the situations where I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been scared have been when I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been in a turn and either found myself going too fast or seen loose gravel on the road. You know as well as I do that there is nothing that will get your adrenaline pumping more than being leaned over in a turn and feeling that rear tire let go when it hits gravel or a patch of water. At that point there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s nothing you can do but ride through it and count on your tire to hook up again once you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve cleared the hazard. Fortunately, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s usually what happens.<\/p>\n

Get a Grip<\/h3>\n

Going too fast is different. Most importantly, you can learn better riding skills that will help you avoid the situation in the first place or how to cope with it if you failed to avoid it.<\/p>\n

The crucial factor in a sharp curve is traction. Leaning and braking both consume traction. If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going straight down the road at 90 degrees vertical you have maximum braking traction. Leaning into a curve it can be very dangerous to use the brakes because the farther you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re leaning the less traction you have left to brake with. Thus, the best way to enter a curve is to do your braking coming into the curve, before you initiate your lean.<\/p>\n

Rider coaches will tell you not to touch your brake while in a curve, except very, very gently as a last resort. I have actually violated this rule from the very beginning because I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand the physics of it. Suffice it to say that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve gotten away with it because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always been very gentle on the brake, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve known instinctively that it was a risk and there were a lot of times when I was very scared. Now that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned more I do this a lot less, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m actually fairly confident in my ability to do it because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been doing it successfully for so long.<\/p>\n

The other factor in finding yourself too fast in a curve is taking a huge leap of faith and trusting in the bike, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a mighty scary thing to do, too. The fact is, motorcycles and motorcycle tires are very good these days, and they have abilities that exceed those of most riders. That is, you can safely lean most bikes over farther than the rider has the courage to lean.<\/p>\n

When it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a do or die situation, though, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to be a whole lot better off scaring yourself silly by leaning even further, than if you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t try it and just accept that you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to crash. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to find that courage but seriously, what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the worst that can happen if the only other alternative is crashing for sure? I make a point sometimes of leaning way off the bike, keeping it as upright as possible, even on easy turns. I figure I want it to be muscle memory coming into play if I ever desperately need to make that move.<\/p>\n

In the end, I think what has saved me all these times was fear. I have been more afraid of crashing than I have been of pushing beyond my comfort zone. But fear is no fun, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve worked to become a better rider and these days I just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find myself in these situations much anymore. It makes for a much more pleasant ride.<\/p>\n

Biker Quote for Today<\/h3>\n

200mph, no hands. Damn that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be cool\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 right up to the part where you die.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll knock on wood and say that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never gone down on my motorcycle except in the mildest circumstances possible. That includes a 2 mph tip-over in mud and wiping out on gravel at about 5 mph when a dog walked out in front of me from between two cars. But that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[740],"class_list":["post-8090","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-safety","tag-motorcycle-skills"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8090","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8090"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8090\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8092,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8090\/revisions\/8092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8090"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8090"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/motorcyclecolorado.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8090"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}