2Wheeltips

Well it finally happened.  I knew it would eventually - statistics rarely lie, and I am a new rider after all.  I dropped my bike.  Nothing damaged but my pride, thank goodness.  It happened at a stop during my commute home yesterday, and it was the highlight of what turned out to be a really bad ride.

The drop happened when I came to a stop at an intersection on a left-curving road.  In hindsight, I was way too casual about braking smoothly, and I underestimated how much the left-leaning camber of the road would affect my balance and left foot plant.  By the time I realized it, the bike was down.  I got it back up pretty quickly, and a nice guy even pulled his car over and got out to see if I was OK (a fellow rider, perhaps?). 

But like I said, that was only the highlight.  The entire ride seemed riddled with mistakes - rolling on and off the throttle too abruptly, jerking the handlebars around instead of using smooth counter-steering, braking erratically, and those are only the ones I'm not too embarrassed to mention!  Now I've had my bike for several months, and I've put over 1,000 miles on it in practice sessions, pleasure rides, and commuting to work.  I've never even come close to dropping it before yesterday.  I thought I was getting the hang of this - how could I have such a bad ride?

The answer (I think) is that I've hit the first of many plateaus in my motorcycling career, and that may have brought on a touch of complacency.  Lately I've been feeling very confident with basic riding techniques, and more comfortable at higher speeds (I don't mean going fast, I mean actually getting up to the speed limit).  I'm past the super-newbie stage and ready for the next step, but that will require finer honing of the basic skills, and learning new ones as well.  It will also require a renewed commitment to concentration, or to SEE, as the MSF basic course taught me.

So my recovery from this bad ride will begin as my motorcycling career did, in an empty parking lot at low speeds, further honing the basic skills that make the bike go and stop exactly where and how I want it to.  Or as David Hough calls it, "doing my homework".  And the next time I come to that intersection on the left-curving road, I'll be keeping the shiny parts up.

Ride Safe!

Doug