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Things I am not doing as well as I should on my bike:
Countersteering on tight turns: I've run into this a couple time but it scared me yesterday when I was riding in traffic and in the outside of a pair of dedicated turn lanes at a light that's been green for a while (oak knoll turning left onto NB 183 access). You have to take it at speed or the bastards will run over you, and you have to be careful for the natural tendancy of the people in the inside lane to swing wide into you and watch for the other bastard coming the other way to merge into you from right so there is a LOT of shit going on at that intersection. Plus, they're building a new office park there so there's gravel and crap on the edge of the road. I leaned the bike over until something scraped but it still wasn't cutting a sharp enough curve and Euclid said I was headed for a curb & traffic light pole. It took a real act of will to push with my left hand and tighten the turn enough that my the time I went through the gravel on the outside edge of the lane at the end of the turn I was more or less upright.
Being in gear when going into a turn: so I'm riding along and come up to a turn, I down shift and brake for the turn but my speed falls faster than I expect (or I just need to slow even more) so I need to down shift again and I hadn't been de-clutching between shifts and when I do let the clutch all the way out the engine gotten slow enough that with the lower gear it makes the rear tire squeal. If that happens before the turn proper it just makes me feel stupid, if I am actually in the turn it means makes my rear tire all mushy and squirrely.
Awareness of the road surface: actually it's more responding to awareness of the road surface, I need to be more active in swerving around the crap in the road like manhole covers, water main covers, asphalt voids (there's a nasty one on the inside north lane of Mcneil just north of oak knoll that's just big enough to eat my front tire), and crap in the road (there have been broken bottles near the entrance to our parking garage twice in last week). It's more about training the non-conscious reaction, if I think about it I do it fine, but if I think about it I also tend to get sucked into staring at whatever the hell it is I am trying to avoid which makes it that much harder to avoid so on the whole I spend most of my time with my head up trying to figure out who's going to try to kill me first and suck up the bumps and stuff with my butt.
I'm really a pretty safe driver usually (I've been told more than once that I "drive like a grandma") and if anything I need to be a bit more aggressive because things like leaving too much space in front of me can invite pudknockers to change lanes into me and going slower than the flow of traffic engrages the testosterone poisoned ones and makes them pass me too close.
Countersteering on tight turns: I've run into this a couple time but it scared me yesterday when I was riding in traffic and in the outside of a pair of dedicated turn lanes at a light that's been green for a while (oak knoll turning left onto NB 183 access). You have to take it at speed or the bastards will run over you, and you have to be careful for the natural tendancy of the people in the inside lane to swing wide into you and watch for the other bastard coming the other way to merge into you from right so there is a LOT of shit going on at that intersection. Plus, they're building a new office park there so there's gravel and crap on the edge of the road. I leaned the bike over until something scraped but it still wasn't cutting a sharp enough curve and Euclid said I was headed for a curb & traffic light pole. It took a real act of will to push with my left hand and tighten the turn enough that my the time I went through the gravel on the outside edge of the lane at the end of the turn I was more or less upright.
Being in gear when going into a turn: so I'm riding along and come up to a turn, I down shift and brake for the turn but my speed falls faster than I expect (or I just need to slow even more) so I need to down shift again and I hadn't been de-clutching between shifts and when I do let the clutch all the way out the engine gotten slow enough that with the lower gear it makes the rear tire squeal. If that happens before the turn proper it just makes me feel stupid, if I am actually in the turn it means makes my rear tire all mushy and squirrely.
Awareness of the road surface: actually it's more responding to awareness of the road surface, I need to be more active in swerving around the crap in the road like manhole covers, water main covers, asphalt voids (there's a nasty one on the inside north lane of Mcneil just north of oak knoll that's just big enough to eat my front tire), and crap in the road (there have been broken bottles near the entrance to our parking garage twice in last week). It's more about training the non-conscious reaction, if I think about it I do it fine, but if I think about it I also tend to get sucked into staring at whatever the hell it is I am trying to avoid which makes it that much harder to avoid so on the whole I spend most of my time with my head up trying to figure out who's going to try to kill me first and suck up the bumps and stuff with my butt.
I'm really a pretty safe driver usually (I've been told more than once that I "drive like a grandma") and if anything I need to be a bit more aggressive because things like leaving too much space in front of me can invite pudknockers to change lanes into me and going slower than the flow of traffic engrages the testosterone poisoned ones and makes them pass me too close.
