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10 March 2010
Corners, Cows & Dogs

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Finally the weather is breaking and it's starting to look a little more like spring. The warmer weather, clear skies and abundance of sunshine is bringing more and more motorcyclists out. Everyone is coming out of hibernation and dusting off those dormant riding skills.

If you've been listening to Motorcycle Mania you heard us talk about single motorcycle off road accidents are on the rise. We weren't talking about off road riding; we're talking about missing corners and going off the road.

With many people entering or coming back to motorcycling and taking MSF's Basic Rider Course, it's exciting to see our sport grow. Unfortunately considering the very basic level of rider education gained at Basic Rider Course, many of the graduates miss the part about continuing their education and practicing.

Learning to get the maximum effect from the brakes, develop throttle and clutch control on a motorcycle takes a lot longer than most riders think. Within a few weeks most riders think they have it down pat. But it's just that their familiar with the controls and not really as proficient as they think.

It takes a lot of deliberate practice to get good at controlling a motorcycle. The Basic Rider Course doesn't have time to teach you how to read corners and navigate them safely at speeds higher than a parking lot maneuvering speed.

Learning to corner a motorcycle is rather easy, but then why do so many riders get caught by surprise and find themselves running wide into the opposite lane or worse off the road completely. It's because they never take the opportunity to learn, or they figure they know it when in fact they don't.

There are several great books out there which have excellent discussions about cornering. Now you're thinking hey, I'm just a cruiser guy and all of that cornering stuff is for racers and sport bike guys…. Well you're wrong. Click here for a reading list of books which can help improve your riding skills and knowledge.

No matter which kind of motorcycle you own learning to safely corner a motorcycle is the same. The science is the same for sport bikes, cruisers, touring bikes and scooters too.

The easiest method is the vanishing point method; explained here.

You do have to keep your eyes on the exit of the corner and then shift it to the horizon as you exit the corner. Head up, eyes looking ahead, are two of the most important things you can do on a motorcycle. Even on the brakes, you should keep your head up and eyes front looking ahead, not down on the road in front of you. What a lot of riders forget is that motorcycles go where you look.

Saturday morning I mounted the first set of tires for the season. I spooned on a nice set of Michelins 2CTs on rims for one of my shipyard friends. He brought over his rims and in an hour we had his old tires off and the new ones on and balanced. I didn't realize how easy it was just to dismount and mount tires with out having to pull them off the bike.

By the time I finished mounting and balanceing the tires the garage had warmed up and was more than comfortalbe to be in. But for some reason I went back into the house to get something to eat and wound up taking a nap… The whole day was then lost… I will have to make up for it Sunday.

Sunday after we completed our one hour Motorcycle Mania show (we were pre-empted by NASCAR once again, this time the Kobalt Tools 500 at Atlanta) I headed home to hook up with Kat and some friends; we were going to check out the conditions on our favorite back roads.

It seemed that the road surfaces weathered the winter snows pretty well, most of the corners are clear and the road surface conditions were good to excellent. All of our favorite corners were free of sand and chuck holes. there were some places were the sand had washed up on the roads but mostly in places we would be looking for it anyway.

We didn't get to run on all of my favorite roads, but then there's always next weekend.

We did this run rather slowly and relaxed; although it's a warm day for March, the deer are still moving around early in the afternoon. We didn't see any deer or for that matter any wildlife at all; just cows and dogs.

The one thing I did find out today was how rusty my skills are, it could also be that I still haven't ridden the MV enough to get comfortable with it. The throttle on the MV is a tad more sensitive to inputs than the "Beast's"; and you get alot more response for those little inputs. It will take a little more time to get comfortable with it.

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