2Wheeltips

I had an interesting experience this week that I'd like to share. It's not necessarily motorcycle related but could be. It has do to with educated people making really stupid decisions. We all make poor decisions from time to time, part of living and learning. But what possess someone to make a decision like I'm about to describe? We flew in a candidate this week from the West Coast to interview for a sales position. An experienced guy, very successful, 52 years of age. I took him to dinner at a very nice restaurant on Thursday night where we had a few drinks and a glass of wine over a 3 hour dinner. We left the restaurant a little before 9PM and he was to return to our facility the next morning to complete the interview. I drove home and I offered to have this candidate follow me and I would make sure he would have no problem getting back to his hotel aout 10 minute drive from the restaurant. He declined as he had a GPS and assured me he would be fine. The next morning our candidate did not show-up. We called his room at the hotel and got no answer. My 2 assumptions were he either became very ill and went to a hospital or he got arrested. I checked the Ames, IA arrest log and sure enough he was arrested for operating under the infulence "OWI" at 11:45PM that night. So, this brilliant decision cost our candidate this job opportunity, thousands of dollars in fines, suspended driving license, attorneys fees, and travel expenses back to Iowa to go to court. For what???? I share this with you as an example of how perfectly intelligent and rational person can make a tragic decisions they will regret for the rest of their lives. When you are out riding please reflect on the decisions you are making. We all have the ability to do something really stupid if we allow ourselves the opportunity.

Many of you are well aware of the “Hurt Report”, a study done in 1981 by the late-Professor Harry H. Hurt. That study has provided much of the information used to educate riders of where they are at greatest risk of being involved in an accident. Unfortunately, that information is now severely dated and driving habits have changed dramatically over the last 30 years since that study was done. Motorcycling fatalities have continued to increase for the last decade until 2009 where they declined for the first time dropping to 4,462 (2009) versus 5,312 in (2008). The only “good” news here, if you can call it that, is that these tragic statistics have finally caught lawmaker’s attention and a number of new studies are in the works to update crash-causation research. The Federal government as launched a $3 million study into the causes of motorcycle crashes thru the Oklahoma Transportation Center and being conducted by Oklahoma State University. This study sends teams of researchers to the scenes of motorcycle crashes that police are actively investigating to gather data. Each investigation includes a detailed inspection of the motorcycle and its components, rider and passenger impact points, interviews with riders who crashed as well as riders who travel the same route who haven’t crashed, examination of medical records and a lot more. Each crash analysis is expected to require as many as 60 hours of on-scene work and follow-up analysis and investigation. This study will look at 300 crashes and is expected to take until 10/2013 to complete. Other studies underway include Maryland where researchers are studying whether rider safety training really saves lives, or whether just gaining experience by riding plays a more important role in avoiding a crash. In Oregon, researchers are studying where riders look when they ride, and whether visual scanning skills can be learned and if so what is gained from them. A research group in Ohio is looking at different groups of motorcyclist such as cruiser riders, sport bike riders, touring riders etc, do determine if a given group have behaviors common to the group that put them more at risk of crashing than the other groups. Lastly, in Virginia a study by the MSF will use video cameras and data gathering devices to capture rider behavior in an attempt to see what riders do to avoid crashes and what they do wrong when they crash. These studies will be critically important to develop more timely analytical data for us to better understand what causes motorcyclist to be involved in crashes. Here are some recent statistics you might find interesting: •Motorcycle deaths increased by 78% from 2000 to 2007 •Motorcycles only represent 3% of all registered vehicles but accounted for 13% of fatalities in 2007 •The fatality rate for motorcyclist and their passenger is 5.5 times higher than car occupants •50% of all fatal motorcycle crashes involved collisions with another type of motor vehicle. Of those 78% were struck from the front and only 5% struck from the rear •25% of fatal motorcycle crashes involved crashing into a fixed object like a telephone pole or concrete abutment •Speeding was a factor in 36% of fatal motorcycle crashes in 2007 •Florida (530), California (495) and Texas (375) had the highest number of fatalities in 2007 •The NHSTA estimates that helmets saved 1,784 motorcyclist from death in 2007 and if all motorcyclist had worn helmets, an additional 800 more lives could have been saved. Much of the information contained in this article came from the American Motorcyclist article “Safety In Numbers” by Bill Kresnak 11/2010 and Rider Education article by Gene Knutson. If you are not currently a member of the AMA I would strongly encourage you to join. The AMA is to the sport of motorcycling what the NRA is to hunting and sports using firearms as well as our 2nd Amendment rights.

As I look back on this year's riding season, for the most part, I feel pretty good about how things went. I had fewer close calls than previous seasons caused by "cager" errors, with one exception which I'll mention later. Riding a touring bike this season versus the cruiser I rode for the last 4 years provided some great benefits but, also, created a challenge I had not properly prepared for. Lastly, dealing with unexpected road closures and detours caused some problems that we will need to better plan for in the future. Let me run through these in more detail and I would encourage all of you to take a look back over your riding season and do a similar critique.
We were riding North from Dubuque, IA along the "great river road" on the Illinois side of the Mississippi. It was about 9AM on a beautiful Saturday morning and we were riding the speed limit or slower and taking in the beautiful scenery. The road would change from 2 lanes to 3 lanes to allow for passing on one side and we had just gotten that extra lane on our side going up a hill. I had an RV behind me and he seemed to be in no hurry either but I put my right turn signal on to move over to the right lane to allow him to pass me if he wanted too. I started to pull into the right lane and checked my mirror one more time when a car comes flying aroung the RV passing him on the right going about twice the speed limit. I pulled back into the left lane as he flew by me. If I had not taken a second look, he would have creamed me!! It turned out to be a non-event and my wife didn't even notice that we had narrowly avoided a tragic incident, but it sure rattled me for a while. I was not expecting this and it caught me "off guard". I will never forget to take that second look as it saved us from a very bad day!!
Going from a cruiser to a Honda Goldwing has allowed us to take longer trips in comfort. In previous seasons, we would ride 3,000 to 4,000 miles. This season, with our Goldwing, we rode 8,500 miles. This is great but what I did not adequately consider was the fatigue factor. Riding 3 to 4 hours on the cruiser was about all we could do before our hind ends were saying "enough already!!" On the Goldwing, we could ride all day with very little discomfort. On 3 occasions,  we rode all day and were on our way home or back to our hotel and encountered either traffic delays or detours that were not expected. These added extra miles and time that was not planned for and I was already tired. I was able to get back OK but I was pushing myself beyond my endurance limits and was not comfortable. The added frustration of having to deal with a closed road with no detour route posted along with my GPS not being very helpful after being on the road for 8 hours, was more than challenging. Lesson learned; allow a safety factor for the unexpected!! When we travel, we try to stay off the expressways and take the secondary roads. This has its pros and cons. The biggest is time, and if we are going to take some very long trips we are going to have to take the Interstate in the interest of saving time to and from. The other con is road closures, detours, roads not on the GPS and ever changing names of roads. This has become a challenge as the road names listed on a map and or GPS don't always match-up with the road signs. This is a particular problem here in Iowa and makes it difficult to be sure you are going on the route you had planned. We will spend more time planning our routes next year and looking at more detailed maps to make sure we have all the possible names. Taking alternate routes is not necessarily a bad thing but it usually adds time and messes up the continuity of the trip. Those are my "learnings" from 2010 and I would love to hear yours.

Well, we may still have a couple of decent months left in this years riding season before the weather turns ugly here in Iowa. Typically, come Thanksgiving, any good riding days left are few and far between. By mid December, “forget-about-it”!! Trust me, I’ll take advantage of every good day we’ve got left but I’m already planning and preparing for next season.

Having lived in the South for almost 15 years before moving back north, I must admit I am very envious of you Southerners who can ride 80 to 90 percent of the year. Here in Iowa, I had to come up with other ways to stay in touch with motorcycling thru those very long and dreary winter months. Here are some of things I do to stay connected when I can’t ride for our four plus months of winter:

• I do a very deep cleaning of my bike and detail it so it is pristine come spring. I remove all the side covers and try to clean out all those little nooks and crannies that dirt loves hide in. I give it a fresh coat of wax and polish all the chrome and aluminum wheels.
• I try to get my maintenance done if it’s relatively close to being due. The GoldWing I have was just serviced in July and won’t be due again until late spring early summer so that’s not going to work this year. The Kawasaki cruiser I had happen to need its scheduled maintenance at the end of the season. This worked out great because my local dealer would come over with an enclosed trailer, pick-up the bike, do the maintenance and any other work I wanted done, then deliver it back for only about $15 extra bucks. I love it because I didn’t have to worry about riding in crap weather to get the service done and they love it because this was their slow time and they were always looking for work during the off season. You Northerners might want to explore that kind of arrangement with the shop that services your bike. It minimizes loosing precious riding days to have your bike serviced during prime riding season.
• I have on hand or on order all the “stuff” I’m going to install on my bike in preparation for next season: (two DC power outlets, a fuse panel for accessories, a passenger volume control for the bikes intercom/audio system and some additional front marker lights). This gives me something to do when cabin fever begins setting in and allows me to become more intimate with my bike, in a “wrenching” sort of way. No snide comments please!!
• The big project I have planned this winter is to have my stock seat, which is not all that comfortable for a touring bike, completely redone and customized to fit me and my wife’s specific size and shape. I’m having this done by Russell Cycle Products in Shasta Lake, CA. We are calling this a Christmas present to our “butts”!! Ho Ho Ho!! This is going to take 3 to 4 weeks as I have to ship the stock seat to them and they completely redo it and send it back. I’m very excited about feeling the results of this investment and will let you know how it turns out.
• The other thing I like doing when I can’t ride in the winter is read. I enjoy re-reading all of my motorcycle riding skills books and I usually buy a couple to three new ones to keep things interesting and add to my collection. It keeps thinking about the sport so I don’t feel so rusty come spring and needing a refresher course to remember how to start the thing.
• The season's end is a perfect time to re-evaluate the type of riding you did and what you might want to do differently next season. For me, riding the same roads repeatedly gets monotonous. We continue to ride further and explore areas outside of our typical 150 mile radius from home. For us, the upgrade we made late last year from our cruiser to our touring bike worked out great. It could be that it works the other way where you get tired of taking the long trips and want to take shorter “joy rides” closer to home. In that case you might want to consider that your current bike may no longer be the best choice for the new style of riding you are planning and consider making a change in equipment. Doing this during the off season gives you plenty of time to familiarize yourself with the new bike and have everything ready to go come spring. My experience changing bikes at the end of the season has been very good. Dealers are anxious to get what they have on their floor gone and more than eager to make deals. Being the buyer you are in no hurry to purchase so you definitely have the time advantage working in your favor. In any event, spending time kicking tires on bikes and negotiating with sales people is a wonderful winter passtime for me even if I decide to maintain status quo.

That’s about it for my list. If anyone has any other ideas on what you do to get through the dreaded off season I’d love to hear them!! Oh, yes and I do drink quite a bit more to pass the time during the winter months but that’s probably not something I’d recommend and please don’t tell my Doctor!!

DuPont has been an industry leader in promoting safety in the workplace and a company that truly “walks the talk” when it comes to safety. DuPont developed a safety management program called “STOP” (safety training observation program) that has been adopted by 100’s if not 1000’s of companies world wide due to it’s effectiveness in reducing/eliminating workplace injuries.

My Company has been using the "STOP" program for the last 7 years and we have found it so effective that it’s become the cornerstone of our safety program!! Not all of the components of the “STOP” program are transferable to motorcycle safety, but most are. I would like to share those with you and see if you might find them useful.

The key principle of the “STOP” program is the belief that all “incidents” are preventable. The word incident is used instead of “accident” to purposely avoid the perception that “accidents do happen no matter what”.

I personally believe that all accidents are preventable in the workplace and even in the home. I don’t, however, believe this is remotely possible on the roads due to the number of poorly trained, irresponsible, distracted, drunk and or reckless drivers that can cause an accident no matter how safe and cautious we might be. We can not control the other guy’s behavior and that will always be the “wild card”.

What “STOP” teaches is when preparing to do a job (and this can be any job: painting the house, woodworking, hanging Christmas lights, trimming shrubbery), you need to do five things first:

1. DECIDE: Decide to make safety the first priority when doing this job. This applies directly to motorcycling. Decide before getting on the bike that you will keep your safety and that of your passenger in the forefront of your mind during the entire ride.
2. STOP: Stop and take a moment to give your full attention to the entire job. Applying this to riding and our bike this would include what we’re going to wear, the weather conditions, where are we going to ride and the possible hazards associated with that route, what will we be carrying. This is the time to clear your mind and totally focus on the task of riding safely.
3. OBSERVE: Observe your bike and gear for possible unsafe conditions. This is when you would perform your T-CLOCKS and look over everything to insure its “good to go”.
4. THINK: As you think about what you just observed consider how your safety will be affected by using a questioning mind. Ask yourself things like: •
   1. What unexpected things could happen that I might not be prepared for?
   2. How could I be injured if the unexpected happens?
   3. My tires are fair but, if it rains, will they proivde sufficient traction?
   4. What other precautions could I take that would make this ride safer?
5. ACT:  Finally, act, applying good judgment to take whatever action is needed to eliminate both unsafe acts and unsafe conditions.

It’s that simple!! As I’ve said in previous articles, it’s all about attitude. 99% of this process is mental preparation and focusing on safety principles before you act or ride, in our case, and taking the time to ensure the safe condition of you, your bike and your gear.

These principles have a proven record of saving 100s of lives and preventing 1000s of injuries in the workplace. They work if you believe in them and use them. Of course, many don’t, and many will think this is all just too much bother. Unfortunately, that is why our Emergency Rooms do such a great business. You make the choice.
Ride safe, be safe, live long, and prosper.

From the time we’re born until the time we die, our life is a series of learning experiences. In our youth we learn a lot in a very short period of time. As we age, the pace of learning slows but never entirely stops. (Hence the old adage: “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks”!!)

The same is true of overcoming fears. Think back to your childhood and remember all the things that scared you until you either simply outgrew or overcame that fear. Some that come to mind would be jumping off the 5’ diving board for the first time, climbing to the very top of my Dad’s extension latter, learning to water ski. The reason I bring this up is that I’ve known a number of people who are excited about the idea of riding a motorcycle, take the class, get their license, buy a motorcycle and then discover; “hey I’m not real comfortable on the street riding this thing, in fact I’m really scared sh…less!!"

Then what inevitably happens is they begin making excuses as to why they aren’t riding, it’s too hot, it’s too cold, looks like it might rain, and I’m just too busy this week. Then after about 2 or 3 seasons of making excuses as to why they aren’t riding their dusty motorcycle, they decide to sell it. Well, why have a few thousand dollars just sitting in the garage? It was a mistake to buy it in the first place because (insert the reason of your choice) and I never used it.

The root problem was they never made the effort to overcome the initial fear many of us have in our early days of riding, and ran away from it rather than confronting it and getting over it. I think it’s important to get this fact out in the open so all you new riders aren’t thinking something’s wrong with you because you’re not dancing out to your bike with a big grin on your face and zooming off to motorcycle nirvana with every ride. That’s sure not what happened to me!!  I’m coming out of the closet on this and will bare my soul to all of you 2Wheeltips members; I rode scared!! And I rode scared for almost 2 seasons before getting comfortable and relaxed on my bike.

In the first 2 seasons, I was not comfortable in traffic, I was not comfortable going over 50 MPH, I was not comfortable in windy conditions and I did not like riding in the city with all the traffic lights, STOP signs and tight turns. But I have done other stuff that has scared me, did it anyway and lived to tell about it, so I believed if I worked at this fear of riding a motorcycle, I could get past it and by golly I was right!!

I had just started a new job, bought a new house, did a long distance move from North Carolina to Iowa and the first thing I bought was not new furniture, but a Kawasaki 1600. Trust me, I had so much going on in my life at that point in time I didn’t have to work very hard to come up with excuses not to go riding. I saw me going down that “today’s excuse not to ride” road and got so angry at myself I made a weekly riding schedule. I scheduled myself to ride a minimum of 4 hours per week, unless some catastrophic weather condition prevented it, but then I had to make-up any lost hours the following week so I would average 8 hours of riding over a 2 week period.

I’ll be honest and tell you the entire first season from June – October I rode scared. My 2nd season started off the same but, by late July, I was getting more comfortable and actually started looking forward to getting out. By the end of my second season, I was feeling really good about riding and started to thoroughly enjoy my bike, and was riding every chance I could. If you’re a new rider, you may be having similar apprehensions and might consider calling it quits. I would challenge you to stick with it, confront your fear and work to overcome it like you have with so many other fears you have successfully overcome. The secret for me was like that old Nike commercial “Just Do It!!” I assure you the fear will go away and you’ll begin enjoying a wonderful experience that compares to nothing else. One other note:  I’m an “old dog” and was very excited to add motorcycling to my list of tricks!!

In Industry, we pay a great deal of attention to safety for many reasons. Companies that truly care about their employees want them to go home in the same condition as they started the day. It makes good business sense and it’s simply the right thing to do. For that reason, it’s important to understand safety statistics, measure and track them, analyze trends, and take corrective action when things are going the wrong way. What’s this have to do with motorcycle safety you maybe thinking, well actually a lot!!

Near misses and or close calls are a warning that you are on the path of a serious if not fatal incident. OSHA statistics say:

• for every 600 near misses, there are 30 accidents involving property damage.
  

• for every 30 accidents involving property damage there are 10 minor injuries (first-aid cases).

• for every 10 minor injuries there is one serious or fatal injury. So, if we are having many near misses, it gets our attention in a hurry because we are on a path that will eventually result in someone being seriously hurt or killed. What this means to you is, if you find yourself having near misses and or close calls on your bike, then you need to take serious stock of your riding skills, the environment you’re riding in, and or the decisions you’re making while riding, and take corrective actions before you become a statistic!

Let’s talk about “near misses” for a moment. A near miss is an incident when something goes wrong and something bad happens, but just because of chance, nobody gets hurt. In my work environment, let’s say a fork truck driver picks up a load on a broken pallet. He lifts the pallet to put it in a rack space 20 feet off the floor. The pallet breaks, the 1,500 lb. load falls, and, by chance, no one was close enough to be injured or killed by the falling load. A riding example might be, you pull up to a stop sign, you don’t feel like coming to a full stop as traffic is light, and the road looks clear, so you roll through the STOP sign and make your right hand turn but go wide into oncoming traffic. A car coming towards you (that was actually closer than you thought) luckily sees you in his lane and he slows down to let you get back into your right lane avoiding a head-on collision. In either incident, once the load falls or once you’re in the wrong lane, it’s simply a matter of chance what the outcome will be!! You’re no longer the master of your destiny, chance and happenstance are!! In other words, “do you feel lucky today?”

The same is true of dropping your bike. How you drop it, how fast you’re going, where you drop it, do you fall and how you fall all become a matter of chance because you no longer have control. Chance takes over and will ultimately determine the outcome.

For you new and learning riders, a great tool to help you track your performance and progress is to critique yourself on every ride. I can remember almost every one of my close calls; when I went wide, when I target fixated, when I lost my balance and struggled to keep the bike from falling etc., etc. I started keeping a log and I listed the things I thought I did well and also, the things that didn’t go so well. Following each ride, I tracked if things were improving or not. I know this sounds really anal, and maybe it is, but we’re not talking about a bad round of golf here and a few lost balls. We’re talking about making mistakes that at the wrong time and wrong place can seriously impact your life.

What I did was take an index card and logged the date, where I rode, how many hours and miles, and the positives and negatives in bullet points. (You could do this on a spread sheet on your computer if you prefer.) When the positives were exceeding the negatives, I felt I was making progress. When it was the other way around (and it was a lot in the early months), I would go back to the parking lot and practice or to a place where traffic was at a minimum (quiet suburban streets very early on Sunday mornings) and work at fixing the mistakes. This critique took all of maybe 10 minutes following each ride, certainly not a huge investment of time or effort, but extremely helpful in keeping a scorecard of my performance.

Thanks for taking the time to read my article and I hope you got something worthwhile out of it.

Ride safe, be safe, live long and prosper.

 

As I begin writing this article I have four books and a magazine article open and lying on the floor in front of me:  

• “Corner Vision” an article by Ken Condon
• “Total Control” by Lee Parks
• “Riding In The Zone” by Ken Condon
• “More Proficient Motorcycling” by David Hough
• "Twist of the Wrist III" by Keith Code

The above books and articles are written by well respected authors and professional riders with a wealth of experience and expertise. All of the above authors have devoted at least one chapter of their books to the importance of vision skills and seeing “the big picture” while riding. I would strongly encourage you to read one or all of them as they are extremely well written, to the point and give you tips and information that is invaluable in improving your riding skills.

My objective in this article is to discuss some of the concepts and skills the above mentioned “experts” describe that will help you avoid mistakes like “target fixation” that is so prevalent with new riders. Let me share with you some quotes:

• “Spotlight versus Floodlight: What you are able to see is based on not only the amount of light available, but also on the types of things you choose to concentrate. Some people choose to illuminate the world with a spotlight. Others view their surroundings with a floodlight…. Using your vision as a floodlight slows down your sense of speed and allows you to be aware of more potential hazards and opportunities.” Lee Parks

• “How far ahead a rider scans is one measure of proficiency. Most new riders struggle to look more than a few second ahead. It’s natural to look down at the road when we are anxious. Unfortunately, focusing in the near distance exacerbates anxiety, which can develop into a vicious cycle of escalating fear”. Ken Condon

• “When riding, every decision you make is governed by the amount of space you have, think you have, feel you have or believe you have. The two basic functions (speed and direction change) of a motorcycle are totally dependent on the amount of space you have to do either of them. All riding “survival reaction triggers” (more on this a little later) have not enough space as their common denominator”. Keith Code (This is my favorite quote!! Read it about half a dozen times and the genius of it starts to sink in, which is why having good vision skills is so important.)
  

• “It’s not enough to simply look ahead. You must practice visual attentiveness and actively search for hazards by keeping your eyes moving, never fixating on a single object for more than a couple seconds. By scanning continually your mind can assess multiple hazards in a short amount of time.” Ken Condon

• “Imagine riding an urban street where sight distance changes from moment to moment. When riding a long straight boulevard it may appear that you have unlimited sight distance, but remember that vehicles can appear suddenly from side streets, alleys and entrances to parking lots. So, your sight distance must also include the possibility of intruders who haven’t appeared yet.” David Hough (What awesome insight!!)

• “We should all be aware of common vision quirks as well as specific vision problems we might have. One important quirk is speed related tunnel vision. As speed increases, the eyes focus farther and farther out in front, and the brain blurs out the dizzying view towards the sides. That’s why it’s important to mentally keep track of surrounding traffic while motorcycling down the super slab.” David Hough 

If you find the above excerpts to be valuable information I would encourage you to spend a few bucks and buy the books. It might not be as cool as that new leather riding jacket but they are every bit as valuable, in a different sort of way, and far less expensive.

So let’s talk about the consistent theme here, the “big picture” as it were. I love Keith Code’s “Twist of the Wrist III” and his discussion about “survival reactions” and how they are usually exactly the wrong thing to do when you panic. I’m going to digress here a bit but I think it’s worth it to touch on Keith’s teachings. Keith uses the example that you have only so much attention to work with. He gives you a maximum of $10.00 worth of attention. If you spend all $10 bucks of that attention on a wet spot up ahead in your lane and fail to see that car pulling out of a parking place into your lane you just spent all of your attention on the wrong thing. Though Keith’s book is primarily focused on racing and improving your riding skills to go faster, it applies equally well to street riding and avoiding doing the wrong thing because you allow your “survival reactions” to take over when you’re scared and in panic mode. The following are some of the “survival reactions” Keith discusses:

• “Roll of the gas: more problems are caused by cutting the gas then staying on the gas and keeping the weight balance between front and rear in that 40% front / 60% rear than not.”

• “Target fixation: steering in the direction of what you’re fixated on, freezing and not steering at all.” VTXRon just covered this in his recent article.

• “Braking errors: both over and under braking.”

Let’s get back to vision skills and I’ll continue with more of Keith’s teachings on this. He proposes that you practice keeping your vision out wide. Rather than moving you eyes around, open your field of vision as wide as you can then let your brain decide what it wants to concentrate on as compared to moving your eyes around from one target to another. Widening your field of vision reduces stress, opens up space, slows things down and allows you to make better decisions. I highly recommend this book for anyone wanting to improve their vision/riding skills. The whole concept of “survival reactions” I found fascinating and by understanding how these work against have really improved my riding skills.

To conclude I’ll share with you what Ken Condon writes in his article “Corner Vision”:

“Visual information is abundant but you need to be selective which bits of data are most important and which should be given less attention….. The wider your visual field, the more likely you are to identify a potential problem. You won’t get a clear look at objects in your periphery because periphery vision is not sensitive to color and detail, however, periphery vision will alert you to movements that could indicate a possible hazard. Rapidly scanning between potential hazards within your wide field of view allows you to observe individual objects while keeping track of the whole environment to better prepare you to manage multiple hazards.”

Remember to:

• Look well ahead, 5 to 6 seconds is good.
• Look in the direction you want to go.
• Look at the solution not the problem.
• Keep you vision wide and your eyes moving.

Hoping you found this information thought provoking and useful. Again thanks to the wonderful authors I’ve used to pull this information from for their valuable insight and knowledge.

Ride safe, be safe, live long and prosper.

 

I wanted to alert all of you to a very customer unfriendly web retailer:   Cycle Shop USA. The short version is don't go there and don't buy there. I had bought some things from them a few years ago and had no issues, but this month the experience was drastically different and not in a good way.

I bought some riding pants on 8/10/10 and they charged my credit card on 8/11/10. I keep checking my account to see when they are going to ship the pants they allegedly had in stock and no information is available. They still show my order as "processing" after 7 days.  So I called the customer service number where the web site says I will be connected to a friendly and helpful CSR. Well...due to call volume they are no longer accepting calls so they tell you to e-mail them at: [email protected] or you can leave a voicemail message and they will call you ASAP. I've left about a dozen voicemails and have not rec'd a call back. I have e-mailed the "webmaster" about 6 times now and my e-mail is returned as "undeliverable" because the mailbox is full.

I did get an e-mail fron their Customer Service Manger who told me they would advise me when they had a tracking number for my order but didn't mention if that would be in my lifetime or not. I tried to e-mail him back to cancel my order but my e-mail came back as undeliverable as his mailbox was also "Full".  I guess he and the webmaster are real busy right now ignoring customers and losing orders.

The only positive I can put on this experience is I used my Americacn Express card to charge this order. They have an awesome customer dispute system where they intervene on behalf of the customer and credit you back for your purchase immediately until the dispute is resolved. I have used this service several times and have been delighted with the results!! Yeah American Express. Boooo Cycle Shop USA.

Please stay away from this Company and spread the word to your riding friends and on any of the other motorcycle web sites you frequent, to spare fellow riders the pain and aggravation they will experience by placing an order with Cycle Shop USA.

It's been a real downer of a week here in the middle of Iowa. We had torrential rains and thunderstorms last Sunday night, Monday night and then again on Tuesday night on top of already saturated ground. The results have been devastating with loss to crops, homes, vehicles and endless detours to get anywhere you might need to go. Three people died when they tried to cross a flooded road and were swept away in the flood waters. Not a good week!! Flood waters have receded now and my wife and I went out for a ride this morning down around the Des Moines river towards the South East and it wasn't pretty. Anyway, that is just info to give you an idea of where my heads is at for this ride today. So, we get out and the temps are great, a bit overcast which is, also, great because it's been so hot here and we have a very enjoyable ride and are on our way home. Here is where the real story begins!! I've been taking all back roads since about 9AM this morning. We stopped for lunch in Oskaloosa, IA about Noon and it's now 1PM and I decide to jump on I-80 for the last 30 miles as I'm getting tired and the heat is now in the high 80's and the Interstate will get us home in about 15 minutes. We get on the Interstate and after about a whole 2 minutes we come to a screaching hault and into a slow moving back-up that looks to go on forever. Being the type "double AA" personality that I am with an extra helping of "hurry-up" syndrome, I am not happy with this situation!! In fact I'm furious!! What a bone head decision to ruin a perfectly wonderful ride by getting on the expressway. We endure this for about 30 minutes and then we can start seeing the flashing lights and their are a lot of them. I tell my wife this is really bad. It was all of that and more. We see that traffic going East on I-80 has been completely stopped. We see a vehicle that looks like it exploded. We see 5 bodies laying in the road covered with blankets and towels. How could this happen on a perfectly lovely day on a two lane interstate with no entry or exit ramps even close?? We get home and go on-line and learn that a van crossed the median at a very high rate of speed and hit a car going east bound head-on. Five were dead and the 6th was air lifted to a Des Moines hospital in critical condition. I-80 was shortly closed in both directions and still is as I write this, for Police to try and determine what happened and clean-up the mess. My inconvenience became infinitesimal to the poor victims of this tragedy. My delay was miniscule to the delay of those motorist going eastbound, they would be there for hours. This was not the ending I had hoped for when we started our ride this morning. This was not the ending I had hoped for after a very trying week full of stories from our friends and co-workers about losing everything in the flood waters. I had nothing to complain about. I shut my mouth, rode home and said a prayer.