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SliderWV

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Everything posted by SliderWV

  1. is living like there is no tomorrow

  2. Certainly the change in profile is responsible for the change. But more specifically why does the flattened profile cause the wheel to turn in with the slightest bit of lean, whereas when the tire is round you feel the tendency for it to countersteer? Seems it would work the other way around but it doesn't.
  3. I've noticed over the years that when my tires are really wearing down and getting flat across the bottom the bike starts to handle in a totally different way, particularly at slow speeds. What I notice is that the bike seems to steer all by itself when you lean the slightest bit. At slow speeds I feel it most - the wheel wrenches the bars in the direction of the turn. At higher speeds it seems the bike wants to remain more upright and if I am lazy with my body I have to hold bar pressure throughout the turn. Why exactly is this? What is happening, in the sense of physics?
  4. I really dig the way you think. Perfectly logical to me. You WILL see me at one of your Cornering Schools one of these days. Saving up the bucks.
  5. DUH! Sorry, guess all I needed was a little time to experiment on the bike. The bike seems to fit me perfectly now. In the process of simply becoming more active on the bike everything settled into place naturally. I submitted a long post on it in another thread... "sliding off the seat". I realize I'm ignorant about everything at this point but I do have to admit the early stages of the learning curve are usually the most exciting. Thanks for putting up with my posts.
  6. I don't know if I'm developing a bad habit or not. My instincts have always guided me well in my mechanical experiments in other sports, even at times when I was at odds with a contemporary "conventional wisdom" which eventually proved to be faulty or archaic. In the end things always came around to my way of thinking. So I trust my experiments. But still it is good to see how others relate. I recently purchased a ZX-6R which at first felt really strange after learning to ride on a comfortable EX-500. After two days on the bike I was worried about the ergonomics and posted a thread about the ergonomics of my 636. I thought my arms were too short. DUUUUH!!! Sometimes it is terribly humiliating to be a newbie. But then again it's the part of learning a sport that is the most rewarding...everything is utterly amazing. Two weeks later and a lot of riding the 636 hard on our twisty turny WV mountain highways and I have a very different idea about this 636. Every ride results in a new revalation and things have jumped to a whole new level. What made the difference? Simply being more active on the bike. Being more active on the bike lead me to start recentering differently and eventually an entirely different riding position. At first I tried just pivoting in the saddle to aim my spine towards exit point of the turn. As I began to do this I started to drop my shoulder and slip off the saddle with almost no effort. Soon I found that I could slide completely off one side and over to the other while keeping the bike on a straight-line path. I practiced keeping the tires on the yellow line (obviously no traffic was coming) while doing this. Things started to come together after that. If I could keep the bike going straight while moving that far off to the side I could drop over and stabilize as I approached my turn in point. Then when I did turn in there was a dynamic and elastic connection between my own center and that of the bike. It started to feel as though I was floating ahead of the bike, leading and guiding it alongside of me. And if the bike felt like it was going too wide all I had to do was press a little more on the inside bar and the bike would catch up to me. Even though it was available to me I did not have the sensation of applying a heavy cantilevering force to "hang off" the bike. Holy ######...suddenly I found I could glide lightly around turns with a huge margin of comfort at 65 or 70 mph that only a week ago induced sphincter pucker at seepds of no more than 50mph. The bike felt as if it wasn't tilting over at all and as if I was rounding the curve at even slower than 50. But I glanced down at the speedometer....70....yikes. This is sick. Perception is a wierd thing. Wait a minute...what happened to the numb hands, neck and lower back strain....its gone..completely. I can ride for hours and I feel great. Thinking back I realize formerly I had kept my pelvic block upright on the saddle and achieved my basic tucked position by bending forward from my lower back, in the lumbar region. This really just parked me on the bike as a passenger. But with the new position I was straightening my back from the tailbone to the neck (neither arched nor humched). My back was "flat". I found that I naturally began to hinge forward from from the hip sockets and and laterally around the axis of my lower leg. The trick was in how I gripped with my knees during the movement off the bike but the was able to relaz this grip once I was hanging off the bike. I suppose the oddest thing is comparing the sensation of hanging off the bike in this manner with what I see in pictures. The pictures looked like the riders were really cantilevering hard off their bikes. But now I think this is not what was really happening with those high level riders. From years of analyzing still pictures of snowboarding and skiing I realize the same truths...still images of dynamic events are a lie. The element of time provides the magic. Things don't always feel as they seem they would. In fact, they rarely do. Perhaps my new understanding will continue to evolve into something different (hopefully). But for now that is where I am and its taken my riding to a new level. Probably to many of you this stage is something you passed through a long time ago and this all seems like much ado about nothing. But some of us just find incredible beauty and elegance in understanging the simple mechanics of motion sports such as snowboarding a motorcycling. To me it is magic that allows me (at least for a brief instance) to defy gravity. So is this completely off? Or is this what it feels like to some of you who can do it well? I gotta get to Superbike school.
  7. After purchasing a Kawasaki Ninja 500 and putting about 8,000 miles on it since last August I decided to step up to the plate and get ready for Superbike School as soon as I can afford it. So I looked around and bought a second hand 2006 ZX-6R with a slip on Ackropovic. So far I've put over 1000 miles on the 636 since I bought it a month ago. Wow, its a totally different bike than the 500. One thing for certain, the thing like to turn. But there is a small problem. I have really short arms and legs for a 5'8" guy. I just don't fit the bike like I do the 500. In addition to the neck and back strain after more than a half an hour of riding I don't seem to have the leverage on the bars as I should. When steering in anything higher than a half-crouch, especially at very slow speeds (ie parking lots) I feel as though I'm pushing more down on the bars than forward which makes requires much greater effort and seems to compromise accuracy and ultimately makes balancing the bike much harder. I've tried sliding back in the saddle but that doesn't seem to help as my arms are still much more extended than I think they ought to be. I really like the bike and was really hoping to be able to be relatively comfortable on it. Isn't this the bike you use in the School? Would it be wise to try to modify the handlebars with something like Clip-ons, Convertibars or Helibars, or would it be smarter for to find a bike that fits me better? Too bad these things don't come in different sizes.
  8. I work in the snowboarding instruction industry, conducting certification exams and training events for all levels of snowboard instructors and coaches. I see this same kind of tunnel vision about the topic of "thinking" while performing a physical skill in an environment where speed and precision is paramount. To me it seems utterly ludicrous that anyone would suggest that such kind of physical activity is possible without "thinking". But I believe the real problem here is that many often incorrectly assume that thinking is a process limited to a process where the brain is running "word script". Thinking goes far beyond that. Howard Gardner, an education psychology theorist suggests that we have multiple intelligences. Linguistic intelligence (processing language code) is only one of a growing list of Gardner's Multiple Intelligences> Some of the others are: visual-spatial (visual processing), mathmatical logical (analytical processing), musical (sound processing), kinesthetic (processing physical sensations), environmental (processing one's relationships to things in ones environment), intrapersonal intelligence (dealing with one's own motivations, fears, etc. ) and interpersonal intelligence (understanding the behaviors of others). It doesn't take long to realize that anyone out on the race track or up on the slopes is simultaneously processing all of these elements. To reduce it all to a word script...utterly ridiculous. Thinking is much more than words. Seeing a line is nothing more than seeing a shape, anticipating what it will feel like, anticipating what sounds you will hear from the wind, engine, transmission, tires, etc. Add human elements to the mix and you've got your hands full. The trick in performing any physical skill is to inegrate this information appropriately without allowing one to overwhelm the others. You can't let the words get in the way of seeing. You can't let your visual fixations lock up the processing of physical sensations. You can't let the physical sensations paralyze your logic. From what I have read...this is exactly at the center of what Keith Code's methodology is all about. Now...about those words.....
  9. Was hoping for helmet cam shots. Those would'nt lean with the bike and would show more what this kind of riding looks like through the eyes of the rider. Any suggestions here?
  10. I'm saving up for superbike school. But in the meantime I have a problem. I live in the middle of WV...great places to ride up here in the mountains but hardly anyone out here even knows what a sportbike is, let alone knows how to ride one. I ride alone. I have no models. I need to watch good riders on video. Some of the track footage on this website is cool but it shows the perspective of the motorcycle (hardmounted on the bike...when the bike tips so does the camera). But I need to see things from other persoectives. I want to watch riding from a the perspective of a non leaning camera, perhaps from a car following the rider. I also want to see the perspective from in front of the rider looking backwards (rider is following cam)also from a similar non-leaning perspective. How about a helmet cam view so I can see what the rider is seeing. Would be nice to have a split screen view on these so I would be able to see the speedometer/tach and audio so I could hear the sounds and I get a good idea what is happening with the throttle. Sorry, this may be common knowledge to some, but is there any product out there like this? Or am I asking for the world here?
  11. Something else occurred to me today, on a long 270 degree turn (Yes we have these on West Virginia highways..especially near rivers and in the mountains). The turn radius in question was consistant throughout the 270 degree arc. I realized that ROLLING ON THE GAS and STEADILY INCREASING THE GAS are two different things. Or at least so it would seem. I decellerated to my "tip in reference point" (did it with the throttle and downshifting in this case), I tipped er in, then I simply brough the power on then MAINTAINED THE SAME GAS (rpm) until I was ready to exit then I INCREASED GAS to bring myself out of the turn. Worked great. Had I instead INCREASED GAS from the moment my arc was established I would have eventually exceeded the limits of lateral cohesion and slid right out of the turn (or so it would seem). Is this right?
  12. Awesome pic....but one has to remember...a picture of an action frozen in time is a lie. My guess is that these men are probably in motion and have not yet reached the end of their travel across the saddle...unless they are relying on friction under their thigh created by centripetal force and balancing on both pegs.
  13. In one breath I laugh at the mathmatical model but in the next I understand it fully from the perspective both as a pilot and snowboard coach. I have found what JeF4y said to be exactly true, lay it over, then stabilize. That brings me to a somewhat generalized question. What research has been done to measure the lateral coefficient of friction at various lean angles, assuming some standard has been set for the quality of asphalt, level surface, tire material and pressure, temperature, combined mass of bike/rider. Is there a "range" beyond which lateral coefficient is exceeded due to lean angle? From the many pictures I have examined it would appear that under even the most ideal conditions, riders do not exceed approximately 65 degrees of tilt between their point of contact on the pavement and the composite bike/rider CM without having the bike going out from under them. Has this "breakaway point" been researched? I would love to see the data if it has. If you apply the math you see that your apparent weight is exactly doubled at exactly 60 degrees. For example a combined theoretical weight of 500 pounds straight down at vertical would become 1000 pounds when tilted to 60 degrees (most of that force being directed laterally ACROSS the pavement and less than half of it straight down into the earth). What is interesting is that the numbers follow an alogrithmic increase. It take you 60 degrees to double the apparent force, only 10 more degrees to hit the tripling point (at approximately 70 degrees) and only 5 more to hit the quadrupling point (75 degrees). In case anyone is wondering "what the heck???", my reasons for understanding this go a little beyond my own personal riding education. I will simply say that in many sports that involve similar tipping for turning, this 65 degree limit seems to hold true. I think I know why. I am curious what others may think about this.
  14. From what I've read in books, one of several reasons we roll on the power (aside from suspension considerations) is to help the tires increase rpm as they roll onto a smaller radius. If this is so, it would seem that one would begin rolling on the power DURING the tipping/leaning action rather than waiting until the action is completed and the turning has been established. Can someone explain whether or not this line of reasoning is correct? Forgive my ignorance. Motorcycle theory is new to me and I find it incredibly amazing. Gotta figure out how to save away the bucks for the two-day camp.
  15. You pilot guys: I spent a lot of years wringing out some good aerobatic airplanes and one thing I learned: in reality the airplanes ailerons are not exactly turned completely back to neutral nor are the rudders and obviously not the elevator. Adverse yaw causes the airplane to behave very similarly to a motorcycle. After the banking you return the alieron and rudders to ALMOST to neutral, but the outside wing is still taking a slightly faster path than the inside, especially above 30 degrees of bank. Get em up about 75 degrees of bank and some other interesting things start to happen as well, again similar to what a motorcycle could be expected to do from what I have read. Try some "blind" hood work a with partial panel - block off your Turn Coordinator and Artificial Horizon and you will find out the truth about airplanes as well.
  16. I coach high level snowboarders for a living (wish I got paid as much as Keith....LOL...maybe not). Anyway, one day I was watching a 6 year old in my Snowboarding Competition series that made National Champ in his age division three years in a row hurl himself repeatedly over this huge pile of snow, bigger than my house, no kidding. When you ride up the 30 foot approach ramp to the lip at full speed to sail 60 feet over this "table-top jump" all you see is sky. You certainly cannot see the landing at all as it is WELL below the horizon. I asked Blake what thoughts were in his little head as he was going up that thing and was figuring that it surely must seem like a three-story hotel to him (he is only 3 1/2 feet tall). I honestly didnt expect the answer I got from this amazing 6 year-old. He calmly looked at me without skipping a beat and said, "I see myself landing the jump and riding away happy". WOW! Don't ever question the power of pre-visualization. I don't care how gay you think it sounds..IT WORKS!
  17. I had the same problem at first. I probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about but here is what I discovered. 1. I was TIPPING TOO MUCH for the amount of speed I had coming into the turns. I found that projecting my torso and shoulders more forward and into the turn enabled me to make turns with much less bike lean. 2. I was LATE ON THE GAS. I found I could stop the tipping by getting on the gas as soon as the tipping action was completed. In a sense it began to feel as if as if I could "catch myself" from falling in any further with the throttle. 3. I was TIPPING TOO SOON and TOO SLOWLY. The fix was simple, REFERENCE POINTS. Wait longer to tip then DO it quickly. It WORKS! If you haven't read Keith's Book "Twist of the Wrist II" do it. Its a GREAT book!
  18. I'm am wondering if there are any advantages to the way in which a rider moves off the seat just prior to tipping the bike into the turn. WHere it seems to me it would be particularly critical is when one is linking a series of quick turns. <p> I have seen some riders make an obvious "hop off-hop on" or "up and over" movement while other seem to slide their butts laterally across the seat which appears to me a smoother and less disruptive movement. Can anyone enlighten me here?
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