03/15/2024
Pilot's and Riders,
You’ve got your bike, old or new, fashion of your choice and it’s time for the ride home. After a couple of false starts in the parking lot to get used to the clutch and you’re underway. After realizing you have to raise your foot onto the peg to shift, you feel you are really getting the hang of this. Next stop sign you try to remember if you shift up or down to get back to first gear as you wobble to a stop. Not bad for a first ride in a long time or possibly even ever. With any luck that first ride went well and had a couple of scary moments to get your attention and keep you focused on staying on it after a couple of poor decisions in traffic. After all, motorcycles are dangerous machines that demand skill and respect. Both of these have to be earned through time in motion on a motorcycle. Notice that time alone with a motorcycle will not give you these. When I’m watching someone work their way into the parking lot to have dry rotted tires replaced, the rider and myself know he is working at the peak of his abilities piloting his machine into a parking place. If not technically a new rider, this rider will profess decades of riding, maybe a couple of cross state rides with a group of friends who get together twice a summer to go to a rally and idle on a main street together. If the truth be told, this rider is not much better as a pilot now than that their first year up on two wheels.
I’d like to make a point that we all should practice better riding skills no matter what you're on. As a rider of a few different types of motorcycles, I catch myself riding below my abilities on one machine and slightly beyond them on another. The beauty of today’s motorcycles is they are wildly beyond the capabilities of some riders and sadly beneath the riding abilities of others, but these rarely coincide. It seems the most novice greenhorn in flip-flops and a Suomy wants the latest hottest sporting unit, no matter their abilities. On the other side of the showroom there’s a S.O.A. fan who wants the swagger of a chain wallet that is excited by the least capable barge they can hoist off of the stand.
If you ride a barge on wheels that tows another barge on more wheels that’s no excuse to ride it like it has no wheels at all. If you ride a hyper sports bike that barely stays on its wheels, that’s no excuse for not keeping it on them. A rider that never asks anything more from their machine and themselves than simply remaining upright has limited their abilities as a pilot and their chances of making the right choices when demanded. Just because it’s slow and lazy or hyper ready for hooliganism doesn’t mean that you are captive to the machines stance. If you only ride in a parade of machines going way too fast or their setting or way too slow, you will never improve your skills as a pilot of a motorcycle.
Yes Virginia, it’s a motorcycle and it must be piloted by a competent rider. Call it any silly hashtag you like but it’s still a motorcycle. It requires some conviction of ability and a disregard for eminent danger. Sooner or later the two intersect. Hopefully it’s not the more dramatic version of the realization that a spool front hub and a drum rear brake isn’t the path to happy motoring. Maybe the only thing more frightening than a new rider with sport bike, is a new rider on a sportbike that has learned to countersteer but not when to use it. Witnessing a ferocious highside should put the fear of physics into them, I hope it’s not their own in traffic.
Recently I was following a line of riders into a motorcycle rally. All of the local clubs are represented with their most prestigious patches and their bikes festooned with the requisite flags and stuffed animals or trophy girl depending on their plans or budget. One after another stomp the rear brake and big wheel their machines into the corner, frustrating even the chase team. They’ve got the trailer loaded with a wi-fi hotspot, turkey fryer and tattoo parlor, so as to properly complete the experience once they get their spot for the weekend, smooth motoring is important to them.
It’s long about here I pull off to catch up on some NPR and check out my scoots running gear for a five minute break. It’s maddening that these riders older than my own bike couldn’t ride a bus on the express route and arrive in efficient control. I try to consider, what’s the need for them to ride better, when is competence and control demanded of them? Then I think of the truckloads of new bigtwins and ‘busa’s falling over onto each other at the stop lights at a big rally. There is never a need for them to ride better. It may be their first or one hundredth ride, but there has never been a call to sense and ability for them. Worse yet is that had there been, they would not be able answer it with some earned grace.
The biggest deterrent I see to riders improving their piloting abilities seems to be their own ego. If you can’t be completely honest around other riders and people watching you, ride more alone. It’s that simple. If you feel wobbly when you are slowing down, don’t blame the bike, you own it, learn to ride it well. You may need to relax your grip, get smoother on the throttle, and understand the difference in handling when you use the front or rear brake alone or in tandem. If you can’t answer these questions to yourself, you are still a novice rider and need to put some safe miles under you.
In the prime of the “self shot” age, it’s easy to strike the pose and wear the outfit. Make sure you earn that stance since everything else can be bought. Folks getting tattoo’s for quick credibility is safe and easy, distress clothing is hip, when you take it out of the bathroom mirror and put it on a motorcycle, it can be far more serious. Learning to ride better every time we get on our machines is what we need to focus on, not the hip instragram shot in the mirror of someone else riding as poorly as you are.
You’ve got your bike, old or new, fashion of your choice and it’s time for the ride home. After a couple of false starts in the parking lot to get used to the clutch and you’re underway. After realizing you have to raise your foot onto the peg to shift, you feel you are really getting the hang of this. Next stop sign you try to remember if you shift up or down to get back to first gear as you wobble to a stop. Not bad for a first ride in a long time or possibly even ever. With any luck that first ride went well and had a couple of scary moments to get your attention and keep you focused on staying on it after a couple of poor decisions in traffic. After all, motorcycles are dangerous machines that demand skill and respect. Both of these have to be earned through time in motion on a new motorcycle. Notice that time alone with a motorcycle will not give you these. When I’m watching someone work their way into the parking lot to have dry rotted tires replaced, the rider and myself know he is working at the peak of his abilities piloting his machine into a parking place. If not technically a new rider, this rider will profess decades of riding, maybe a couple of cross state rides with a group of friends who get together twice a summer to go to a rally and idle on a main street together. If the truth be told, this rider is not much better as a pilot now than that their first year up on two wheels.
I’d like to make a point that we all should practice better riding skills no matter what you're on. As a rider of a few different types of motorcycles, I catch myself riding below my abilities on one machine and slightly beyond them on another. The beauty of today’s motorcycles is they are wildly beyond the capabilities of some riders and sadly beneath the riding abilities of others, but these rarely coincide. It seems the most novice greenhorn in flip-flops and a Suomy wants the latest hottest sporting unit, no matter their abilities. On the other side of the showroom there’s a S.O.A. fan who wants the swagger of a chain wallet that is excited by the least capable barge they can hoist off of the stand.
If you ride a barge on wheels that tows another barge on more wheels that’s no excuse to ride it like it has no wheels at all. If you ride a hyper sports bike that barely stays on its wheels, that’s no excuse for not keeping it on them. A rider that never asks anything more from their machine and themselves than simply remaining upright has limited their abilities as a pilot and their chances of making the right choices when demanded. Just because it’s slow and lazy or hyper ready for hooliganism doesn’t mean that you are captive to the machines stance. If you only ride in a parade of machines going way too fast or their setting or way too slow, you will never improve your skills as a pilot of a motorcycle.
Yes Virginia, or club name A.K.A Princess Thunderheart, it’s a motorcycle and it must be piloted by a competent rider. Call it any silly hashtag you like but it’s still a motorcycle. It requires some conviction of ability and a disregard for eminent danger. Sooner or later the two intersect. Hopefully it’s not the more dramatic version of the realization that a spool front hub and a drum rear brake isn’t the path to happy motoring. Maybe the only thing more frightening than a new rider with sport bike, is a new rider on a sportbike that has learned to countersteer but not when to use it. Witnessing a ferocious highside should put the fear of physics into them, I hope it’s not their own in traffic.
Recently I was following a line of riders into a motorcycle rally. All of the local clubs are represented with their most prestigious patches and their bikes festooned with the requisite flags and stuffed animals or trophy girl depending on their plans or budget. One after another stomp the rear brake and big wheel their machines into the corner, frustrating even the chase team. They’ve got the trailer loaded with a wi-fi hotspot, turkey fryer and tattoo parlor, so as to properly complete the experience once they get their spot for the weekend, smooth motoring is important to them.
It’s long about here I pull off to catch up on some NPR and check out my scoots running gear for a five minute break. It’s maddening that these riders older than my own bike couldn’t ride a bus on the express route and arrive in efficient control. I try to consider, what’s the need for them to ride better, when is competence and control demanded of them? Then I think of the truckloads of new bigtwins and ‘busa’s falling over onto each other at the stop lights at a big rally. There is never a need for them to ride better. It may be their first or one hundredth ride, but there has never been a call to sense and ability for them. Worse yet is that had there been, they would not be able answer it with some earned grace.
The biggest deterrent I see to riders improving their piloting abilities seems to be their own ego. If you can’t be completely honest around other riders and people watching you, ride more alone. It’s that simple. If you feel wobbly when you are slowing down, don’t blame the bike, you own it, learn to ride it well. You may need to relax your grip, get smoother on the throttle, and understand the difference in handling when you use the front or rear brake alone or in tandem. If you can’t answer these questions to yourself, you are still a novice rider and need to put some safe miles under you.
In the prime of the “self shot” age, it’s easy to strike the pose and wear the outfit. Make sure you earn that stance since everything else can be bought. Folks getting tattoo’s for quick credibility is safe and easy, distress clothing is hip, when you take it out of the bathroom mirror and put it on a motorcycle, it can be far more serious. Learning to ride better every time we get on our machines is what we need to focus on, not the hip instragram shot in the mirror of someone else riding as poorly as you are.
