JUST HOW IS IT WE'RE SUPPOSED TO DO THIS THING, ANYWAY?
By:   John Rice

We ride because we like it. Each of us does it slightly differently from any of the rest of us and each of us wonders if the other one knows something about it that we don't.

We start out knowing nothing and if we start young enough, very soon progress to thinking we know everything. Then something comes along to tell us we don't and if we're very lucky, that thing doesn't kill us or worse.

I've been through all of those stages and have come full circle, back to the realization that I don't know much about this thing I've been doing in one form or another for about 3/4 of my life.

In 1987 I went down, on a straight and level road, in the infamous greenish "unknown substance" (a story I wouldn't believe either if I didn't have a corroborating companion) and thereafter lost much if not nearly all of my confidence in the fragile friction between rubber and asphalt upon which we all depend. Then, in 1988, just as I was slowly regaining some respect for my tires, I went down again, this time the result of stupidity and lack of attention.

The cumulative result of these two incidents was that for the next several years I rode as if on ice, tentative, like a person on a first date, never quite sure of how much commitment to make to any situation. My cornering, once a source of some (probably undeserved) pride, was abysmal. Panic often replaced planning and my "lines" were more like surgery attempted with chain saws.

This couldn't go on. I had already taken the MSF course. I ordered every self-help source I could find, Keith Code's "Twist of the Wrist", Steve Baker's "Canyon Racer's Guide", a British teaching video (which had to be converted to American specs--it first played like modern art narrated by chipmunks on amphetamines), numerous articles in magazines (both foreign and domestic) and two shots at the Pridmore CLASS course. None of these things held "the answer" but they all added something to the mix.

Exploring one's ignorance is like excavating a pit over a cavern--one digs in it for a bit, it feels like you're getting somewhere and then suddenly it becomes all too clear that the bottom has dropped out and the depth is far beyond expectation and comprehension. What I've learned is that this activity I've loved so long is much, much deeper than I ever knew, sort of like suddenly discovering that one's spouse was an atomic scientist, a blockade runner and a circus acrobat before taking that job behind the soda fountain where you met him/her. It has more layers than the Federal bureaucracy and is more complex than the tax code--and I have just about as much chance of really understanding those things as this one.

But neither the fact that I'm not an expert nor the realization that so many of you are much better at it than I am, will keep me from telling you what little I have learned.

There is no one "right " way to do any of it but there are definitely some very wrong ways. Each of the teaching methods and sources has its own approach and what they teach is sometimes contradictory. At the risk of sounding like "Everything I Need to Know, I Learned From My Pet Gerbil", I thought I'd take a stab at distilling some of what seems to work. There's a caveat: One's own skill level and tolerance for risk must be considered. Some people, and I think I'm one, won't ever be able to do more than occasionally peak over the horizon that separates the merely competent from the really good--to see what's over there perhaps, but never be there myself. Don't go closer to the edge than you can handle and be realistic in your assessment. Some of you don't have to listen to the "rules" because you are already over that horizon and can craft your own. I read once that a journalist/racer who rode with some of the best drivers in the world back in the days of the old public road races in Europe, was quoted as saying something to the effect that up to about 150 mph, there wasn't much different about any of them--above that," there was magic to be seen." For those of you who are in that company, this will be entirely superfluous. Many others of you will probably read this and think, "he hasn't got a clue about any of this," and you're quite possibly right.

But for the rest of us, here 'tis.

1) It's an old cliche, but like many, too true. Look where you want to go. The Brit's put a finer gloss on it, saying to look for the "vanishing point" in a curve, that place where the edges converge and the road disappears from sight. If it's coming at you, slow down because the curve's tightening. If it's opening up, so's the curve. (This one is hard for me, since I have virtually no depth perception and very poor distance vision--it's difficult to tell how far away anything is except by relative size. Still, thinking of corners this way seems to help.)

2) Use other cues to tell you where the road goes. Look for the line of trees or phone poles, or through the trees to see the road on the other side. If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up someplace else.

3) The "line" in a street situation probably isn't the "racing line" shown in the sport bike magazines and go-fast articles. That line. the swoopy outside-to-apex-to-outside line, is fast, looks good and will get you killed on the road. Stay to the outside of the curve,in your lane, away from obstacles like the 63 Fairlane with it's fender over the centerline until you can see the exit of the turn--then commit to your lean angle and go for it because now, and only now, do you know where you're going.

4) If you don't know where the curve goes (and ergo, what's on its surface), don't commit much to it.

5) Use your front brake. It's just about everything you've got.

6) Trust your tires. Absent some foreign substance on the pavement, they will give you more traction than you can really imagine. I came of age in the era of the old-style tires, the high-profile Dunlops and Pirellis that were hard and slippery with tread only a short way over on the side--and that was farther than you'd ever use if you had any respect for unbroken skin. Today's tires have made quantum leaps in compound technology and carcass design. They will stick. But the key phrase in the first part of this paragraph is the one about the foreign substance. It doesn't take much, a bit of water, a little sand, some gravel, oil (one of the best riders I know went down rather ingloriously after encountering a small spill of chocolate milk) to break that adhesion and the consequences get all too exciting very quickly. Watch for the stuff and if you don't know what's there or when you see it, what it is, don't go there too quickly.

7) That said, let me point out that for the most part, it won't be the fast sweeper that gets you. The dangerous curves are the ones at low speeds.  At high speeds (and I'm talking reasonable street speeds here, not Ricky Racer stuff) there's a dynamic tension between the contact adhesion of the rubber against pavement, the centrifugal force pushing the bike to the outside of the turn, the lean angle of the bike and the gyroscopic effect of the wheels. There are so many forces in balance that when any one of them is upset, there are enough others in play to offset the effect and maintain some equilibrium. In other words, if you lose a bit of traction, if you push it just a little too far, you have some room to maneuver and some forces left in the mix to spend in saving it (assuming you haven't entered the corner so close to the edge that you have nowhere to go--except for the grille of that Fairlane) . But in a slow curve, the tension is not there, the total capital of forces is not so high and the balance is easily upset. A small loss of traction in a slow corner will have you down before you know it if you've committed too much to any one of the forces.

8) Act before you need to. This is the easiest one to say and the hardest--for myself and perhaps for many of us, impossible--one to do. Keith Code says that the difference between the really quick ones and the rest of the crowd is not WHAT they do but WHEN they do it. When I was a trials rider many years ago I'd watch the good ones, trying desperately to figure out what they did that I didn't. It seemed to be exactly that. They moved their bodies to the place where their weight needed to be before the thing happened that would require it to be there. They acted while I reacted. One can get pretty good at reacting, but will always bump up against that ceiling, that level beyond which REACTION won't get it. When I took my "E-ticket" ride with Jason Pridmore at CLASS, I could see that same smoothness, that same unhurried grace in control even though things were happening at a speed that I couldn't believe. Reaction is a panic response, you're doing it because you have to and you have a very limited time in which to get it accomplished and you've already used part of that time figuring out to what it is you're reacting. If you already know what needs to be done and when and where you're going to do it, you have all the time in the world. That's why the good ones, in any field, make it look so easy. This is another piece of advice I offer in this article that I can't follow myself--I just don't have what it takes to do that. So do what I say, not what I do.

9) Keep your RPM up. Bikes work best in the fat part of the power band where there's power to use to accelerate and engine braking on the other side.

10) Slow down. Pure speed isn't where it's at, especially on the public streets. Fifty mph carried smoothly down a winding road, away from the congested areas is much more exciting than twice that on an interstate--and much less likely to attract attention from the police and irate fellow motorists. I always remember Boone's admonition about going too fast--the BEST thing that can happen is that you get there 5 minutes sooner. The WORST...well, you don't want to think about it. The object of the game is the feeling, not the arrival time.

11) Ride your own pace. No matter who you are, there's always someone who wants to and can go faster than you and there are always others out there who think you are going too fast. It doesn't matter.

12) And above all, enjoy yourself. If it's not fun, why bother?