I like where this discussion has gone. It also proved a helpful little seed in the back of my mind recently.
I've been riding for a pretty long time now. I'm old, experienced and capable of some occasional cocky behavior, leading some to believe that I am accomplished. But there is always something that will help you recall what scary feels like, how precarious two-wheeled travel really is. They are patching roads around here, and sometimes they decide they will fill a gap between old road surface and patch with a little strip of tar. NOW they have decided to dribble some coarse sand over the top of these lines of tar. This makes them look like the older hardened patches, but they are not. On a hot day they are little road traps waiting for motorcycles. I was on one of our local two-lane curves, laid over the appropriate amount and hit one of these lines. Like a banana peel, that crust on top of the tar slid right out from under my front tire. It catches you so very off-guard and shoots adrenaline everywhere. The normal response, in that split-second of panic, is to come off the throttle, come out of the turn/lean which will take you into oncoming traffic, or off the road, depending on which direction you are turning at the time. Fortunately there was no oncoming traffic, it was a curve right. It is right after this that I needed the reminder of this whole thread lurking in my mind. In the next split second, still in panic mode now because I am going into the other lane, I had to tell myself to stop reacting and continue to counter steer to re-align myself and get out of the path of oncoming. I am very confident with the application of, and even the mechanics explaining counter steering. However, I am not so experienced that I can handle all of those "hitting a banana peel" moments as though they are routine. I'm not sure I really want to get that experienced at it either. This thread is timeless. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Nighthawk Motorcycle Lovers!" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/nighthawk_lovers. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
