yet another stupid motorcyclist trick

 

Halfway through a very tight uphill hairpin in second gear
I realized that I was letting the RPMs drop too low and really
lugging the engine as the road curved upward.

I  tried to downshift from second to first, botched the shift,
wound up in neutral, revved the crap out of the engine
and wound up leaned way, way over on the inside edge
of the curve. Put a foot down to keep the bike up, got it
into first gear, got out of there feeling really, really stupid
and still have a moderately sore ankle as a memento. Lucky
it wasn't worse.

Putting a foot down to avoid a spill might not have been the
smartest move I ever made. Neither was the planning that
got me into the corner in too high a gear or the decision to
downshift while still leaned over hard.

I'm never 100% comfortable with low speed corners that turn
sharply uphill midway through the corner.  I suspect you
only find this kind of crap out in the boonies in places
where you never see serious amounts of ice or snow.

 


I tend to see the situation a little bit differently.

It takes some time to master motorcycle dynamics.

First, of course, one learns to stay mostly upright.

Then, you master stopping on curves and so on (I understand that a lot of
people forget to straighten up the bike as speed decays and just fall over
at zero speed).

Then, you master turns where you're accelerating (like "punching" out into
traffic).  Those are interesting because you'll overshoot your lane if you
haven't done it before -- you need hard countersteering to match the
acceleration -- the bike is trying to "fling" itself upright.

The scenario you mentioned (a turn with an upgrade) combined with rapidly
decaying speed (because of the botched shift) is just one more scenario.
What probably happened is that if there hadn't been an uphill grade you
would have done fine, because you've often coasted to a stop on a curve
before.

The speed probably decayed more rapidly than your "muscle memory" was ready
for.

I think if you did that maneuver every day (coasting to near a stop uphill
in a turn), you'd master it.

Essentially, you are poking the edges of the envelope.  It is something you
don't do often, so you weren't quite ready for it.  The muscle memory wasn't
there.

Datesfat.

 


Shit happens...bad planning happens. Get over it, because what you
learned will help in the future.

 


There's more than a few examples of this up in the Santa Monica Mountains.
Always an adventure.   ;-)

 


I used to live off Old Topanga near Big Rock ranch for
a number of years and agree completely. Crap roads
tumbling downhill into the sea, inhabited by goofy
Californians and their wandering animals and filled
with crazed motorcyclists. Could life get any better ?