gpounce32768

Perhaps in the sense of exaggerated and/or abrupt changes in posture to try to make something happen, or prevent it?

IIRC somewhere I saw reference to a "streetfighter" goldwing with knobby tires etc.. a pretty wild rig and a formidable power curve for dirt no doubt. For my part I'm late 50's but don't mind a crotch-rocket. On my old R6 though even in reasonable shape once at 4hrs or in the saddle, core fatigue starts being a difficulty and at 6hrs its a real problem. I do long touring rides so it became a constraint, the cumulative aspect of it particularly so on multiple day rides. I find a standard posture bike leaves me in better shape day-to-day, even on long days 8+ hrs riding. So being a Suzuki guy, I ride a '22 gsx-s1000f. The ~140hp is pretty ridiculous though I do appreciate the torque particularly when going slow. That said, no matter what the bike I do insist on a reasonable if not good suspension; harsh & overdamped makes the ride fatiguing, too soft leaves the bike feeling vague and unstable. The OEM suspension on the gsxs was nearly unrideable, getting decent aftermarket parts in and tuned was job #1 after riding it home from the dealership.

Pushed up in the sense of the inside leg levering the torso inwards so the bike tends to stand up, sure... I guess it depends on how much fiddling around you want to do at turn entry. But using the pivot steer and 2 step to get out of the habit of that sort of thing is part of the benefit of the methods. Since the weather is finally getting civilized I rode to work today, very rusty having only a few good days for the last several months. I noticed a tendency for kinds of random body and leg stuff instead of a clean clamp off the outside peg w/ a slight torso lean in and no pressure on the bars other than the steering motion- so back to the drills. But its not all bad, I had pretty good corner speed on various test corners and my "hot" sweeper up to the highway. OTOH it looks like a reasonable stretch of good weather coming so I should be sharpened up a bit when you all come out to NJ 😀

Generally the pegs are too far forward for much in the way of of pressure by the legs. Some of the point of the pivot steering is to push against the peg, which is far enough back, so there is a more direct line of force from peg through the torso and shoulders. With pegs forward, the feet are not conveniently located- sort of like trying to stand up out of a chair vs standing up out of a crouch. But I would offer that the technique is relevant on any bike in that it gives the outside leg something specific to do relative to the torso, while the bike is being steered. Otherwise, as I found as a newbie rider, the legs and balance can be doing any old random stuff on this turn vs the last; sometimes pushing the bike up with the inside knee for instance, sometimes leaning, sometimes hauling on the bars to change the lean. Even if pressure on the peg isn't especially relevant wrt bike stability, doing well-defined things with the legs and torso makes cornering methodical, which certainly speaks to it.

Push down on the outside peg to anchor the foot along with calf and knee against the outside of the bike, which acts to secure and support the torso so, it, with the shoulder and inside hand, work together more strongly to initiate the steering. The additional low outside weight offsets some high inside weight which reduces the net rotational force in play while the turn-in happens. It also promotes projection of the body weight towards the inside of the turn, so the bike/rider center-of-mass can move inside slightly which reduces the bike's lean. The amount of the push down on the peg is fairly low, perhaps a strong flex of the outside leg's quad muscles, not enough to substantially reduce seat weight. Though I'm not personally interested in knee down and so on, I imagine having a securely planted outside foot & leg makes it easier to do other things with the inside leg since it is not as involved with holding onto the bike. I found the technique more relevant on the R6 than on my old Bandit and current GSXS1k but useful on those also in that it promotes a systematic approach to seating and control inputs in a corner. Even on those latter two bikes its possible to push down on the outside peg a bit and use the secure footing to lean the torso slightly without needing the bars for leverage.

Maybe. He sometimes strikes me as a snowflake, going on about issues relating to other riders... but boy howdy those slowmo videos of him cornering are something else. OTOH I watch motoamerica every year, those guys and gals are having a great time. Perhaps they are not as ultimate as GP but they are pushing their bikes and their skills to the limits. I find them more relatable to be honest.

IIRC just as predicted in Twist 1, I had my copy pilfered by a rider friend- he's a Ninja rider, so to be expected 😄

Twist2 dvd content is substantially different than audiobook but the track footage on it is great.

A timely question- its been a while since I've last gone into Twist2. I bought it on cd, so listen to it as an audiobook during the commute, so am disadvantaged wrt looking up the lists. I re-listened to it this week during the drive. I've always thought the last few SR's were not itemized as clearly as the first ones, so remain somewhat unclear once past the list of 7 I just looked up 1. Rolling off the gas 2. Tightening on the bars 3. Narrowed and frantically hunting field of view 4. Fixed attention (on something) 5. Steering in the direction of the fixed attention 6. No steering (frozen) or ineffective (not quick enough or too early) steering 7. Braking errors (both over and under braking). OTOH late in Twist2 KC does mention physical and mental fatigue as important issues, though perhaps more as contributing to SR's instead of actually being one. OTOH I wonder if frustration leading the rider to force speed/corners might be something like an SR- in the sense of leading to riding errors.

I've had fuel hoses in a couple chainsaws/weedwackers made brittle & crumble from ethanol mix. The combination of the ethanol fuel and sitting is also tends to make the pump diaphragms rigid. Sometimes new hoses and soft stuff will bring the carbs back to life, other times replacing the whole carb seems to be the only fix. I work on a friend's '92 Nighthawk. When I first dug into it the carbs had a substantial accumulation of fairly hard greenish sludge of dried out hydrolized ethanol fuel in the bowl which apparently also somewhat eroded the jets, that likely the source of the green. Its a 4 cylinder 750cc engine- a nice power curve and a fun bike to ride, a good bit of grunt but quite tractable. So all 4 carbs needed to be fully stripped, new gaskets and o-rings- also an opportunity to shim the needles to make the top end a bit less lean. That green sludge had to be scraped out and the bowl surfaces wire-wheeled to clean them up. The jets were salvageable, though the rubber tips of the float valve needles had gone hard and leaky, so they needed replaced also. To be fair some of the issues with the soft stuff is due to age, but when running engines on E0 you can let the bowls evaporate dry and there is no storage issue. He doesn't ride a lot so those carbs did a lot of sitting with the bike indifferently stored which surely didn't help. The small engines run better and start easier on E0. I maintain a couple mowers for friends, one of whom is quite fussy about hers- she insists on new spark plugs and oil change every year. She's older and not up for much pulling on the cord so likes anything to make it start easier, and thus so do I since that means she only comes by for a refill from my can of ethanol free. A couple years ago I suckered myself into buying a '82 Yamaha XS400 and have been chasing various gremlins in it since. Since it can sit for months here and there I use E0 on it because I like not being concerned about problems of moisture accumulating in the carb bowls while the fuel evaporates; the bowls and the fiendishly small starting circuit fuel passages end up dry and clean. The pic below is the state of the brake master when I opened it up. Not an ethanol issue as such, but brake fluid is also hygroscopic- so this is the direction the carbs are headed when ethanol sits in there.

I took the MSF course to get my motorcycle license, during the classroom work they put a lot of emphasis on the "distance is time" idea. The theory is the rider should be looking at whats happening in the next 2 secs, next 8 secs, next 12 secs. 12 secs up the road might be the all the brake lights coming on. 8 secs is the pothole/roadkill that just came into view, 2 secs is the car that just started swerving into your lane position. This dynamically open perception being in contrast to the commute-style grind where the focus is the bumper of the car in front of you. So being aware of events in these temporal ranges, the rider can choose to create distance to gain time; brake well in advance of the 12 sec hazard so as to pick a path around the 2x4's that everyone is braking for, and at the last second swerve onto the shoulder while braking harder to avoid the car. Accordingly, lane position becomes a strategy to maybe provide an additional moment to see something happening. IIRC KC wrote about recruiting cars around you as cover when passing potential left-turners; they're more likely to see the cars and if they do go anyway, then hopefully they hit the car between you and them instead. From a ToTW perspective, the win is you are not surprised with survival reactions freezing you on the controls. Concur with jaybird- if there is a collision its likely traceable to inattention or surprise on the part of the rider. I'll go for something like; generally in the moment you get the responses you practice not necessarily the ones you prefer.

Same.. no ethanol-free around here either. I pay the swingeing premium on 10 gal cans- happily- because it goes into all the lawnmowers and whatnot I service for folks. I <<hate>> fixing up carbs and lines destroyed by ethanol gas. I service bikes for a couple folks too- always put ethanol free in for testing and overhaul. Up in Vermont almost every station offers E0, so painless. A fair number of gas stations in NH and in NY up around the Adirondacks have it also.

I took the MSF Advanced Rider course in 2022. It was a good experience- led by a state highway mounted cop; it was pretty funny having a cop yell at me to go faster. But there was an older guy in the class, he mentioned that he takes the class every couple years to test his riding fitness; if he couldn't pass the class then its time to consider not riding- balance issues, focus, mental and visual acuity or even just interest would all play into it. I think I'll do the same. I know a guy in his early 80's, he gave up his Harley because of balance issues, and I think strength also, though he'd never admit it. But he never lost the passion to ride, so just a couple weeks ago he bought a can-am spyder, much to his wife's vexation. His mood is a lot better, now he can go ride with his club again.. but if riding stops being exciting and interesting, if the passion disappears then maybe it is time to quit before making a mistake. I think ToTW1 captures it well; preoccupation with other matters gets in the way of riding. All those visual drills to free the mind from thinking and stay in the moment are critical. Riding is much like meditation in many respects. I commute by motorcycle as much as possible in the DC/Baltimore metro area. Distracted driving seems much the same as it ever was- prevalent, dangerous and a PITA. I've been able to watch movies thru the back windows of cars in the gridlock, whiff the skunk being smoked, watch the ladies putting on makeup, facebook posts being fiddled with; on and on. My favorite is when someone decides to merge right into where I am with no warning... always have to stay frosty, have a plan B, and never stay side-by-side with a cage.

Actually 150k- just looked at the odo today. Mm old Bandit 1200 liked a periodic seafoam treatment until I jetted and balanced the carbs. I generally don't go for snake oil, but I <think> the lean and unbalanced factory tune tended towards somewhat messy combustion. The seafoam evened out the idle for a couple tanks or so. After the rejet, valve adjust, ignition advance, balance and A/F adjust the engine was sweet and didn't noticeably benefit from the stuff. That work made a big difference, smooth at all thru the rev range and got the bike up to 43mpg or so, depending on how much fun I was having. The R6 didn't care a bit about fuel conditioning, a set of new plugs and it was happy, which was fortunate because the '99 carb adjustments are theoretically possible but formidably difficult to do and the aftermarket ignition advanced rotor is unobtanium. Both bikes really liked ethanol-free gas which was another significant but perhaps not huge improvement in mpg. My current bike '22 GSXS-1000 gets a solid 5mpg improvement from E0- love the New England states for having it at many pumps.

Never tried any of the oil additives on any of my vehicles. Oil consumption in my '12 F150 125k miles is mostly due to a worn rear main seal, and the gasket under one of the valve cover bolts- so more of a leak than a consumption sort of loss. RTV and various measures help with the valve cover bolt until thermal cycling breaks the seal again. Higher viscosity oil helps a little bit with the rear main. I get 18 to 20mpg depending on terrain and speed. Thankfully the motorcycle doesn't consume or lose any oil. IIRC on a small engine (below 1000cc) oil flow is up into the valve train by the time the crank has gone around a couple times.