"Not a natural biker"- question about brakes

[SomersetWolf]

And these were the words that I left the CBT centre with still ringing in my ears having taken THREE (yes THREE) attempts to finish and even then I ended up doing the road part on a twist and go. The instructor was happy to see me go, giving me the brake lever of the shiny new XBR that I'd dropped at about 9.20 that morning.

But I'm no quitter and today have taken ownership of a shiny black 08 XL 125 Varadero (or as my darling boyfriend says - you know the type, been riding bikes since the age of 7 - a varadildo) which I have thus far just spent money on rather than ridden! Taxed, insured, L-plated up. We're ready to go.

So I've read lots and lots on here about nervous new bikers and I think I'm pretty much up there with the best of them. But I also want to go for a ride around the UK at some point this year on a charity mission so I've kind of got to pull my big girl pants right up and just crack on. Oooh pants and crack in my first post - whoops

I live on a fairly quiet road so I'm building myself up to switch on the ignition, press the start key and get going. But I'm wavering. I think I'd like someone to be here for the first time I venture out just in case I drop it (when I drop it) because it's quite blooming heavy.

Just in case you're all now quickly working out how to avoid Somerset for the next few months in case you bump into me, I have spent about six hours on geared bikes, it was just I had a massive mental block about the U turn, so much so that I actually found myself completely rigidly unable to turn at all every time they asked me to do it. Hence moving to the scooter.

My road sense is fine (I'm old) and I understand the principles of gears. So I'm going to take it steady, do lots of practice in car parks and enjoy. Oh and relax.

My question is this! Brakes. I understand that it's 70% front, 30% back but I'm not sure when to use one and when to use the other? And if anyone has any ideas how to break my massive black dog about U turns, I'd be very appreciative.

Thanks in advance for all the brilliant advice and thoughts, and guidance, and ribbing.

[mrmistoffelee...]

From what I was taught last year,

You don't use your front brake below 10mph as the bike will want to go down...

On U-turns, when are you going to do those ?

[hedgehugger]

On U-turns, just find a wide space and practice.
Use a couple of stones or coke cans to mark your width, or parking bays (think quiet carpark) and practice until you can do them without thinking. Try wide to start, you'll get tighter with practice, ooeerr missus!

Slow riding is almost exclusively back brake, I use the front when I want to stop, back to slow.

I pulled my front brake on my CBT, right at the apex of a curve on a u-turn. That taught me to not do that again

[Rogerborg]

[Hawkeye1250FA]

Use your brakes when you want to slow down or stop. (I know it sounds sarcastic, but its not meant to be!)

If its absolutely tipping down with rain, use (slightly) less front and more back brake. (But you will be travelling slower anyway to take account of the conditions - so will only need a small amount of brake to begin with).

Choose a route beforehand so you know exactly where you are going and your route to get back so that it includes several roundabouts.

Practice going around them - down a road - back to the roundabout and back again. Repeat until you are comfortable.

Then head for a car park and practice fine tuning your slower riding (use the back brake during the slow maneuvers).
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1993 RF400R - 2002 Bandit 1200 - 2012 1250 FA

[grr666]

Ask 'been riding bikes since the age of 7' boyfriend? Where did you train for CBT? Oh and avoid ditches. They're'
everywhere round here. Once your front wheel is in one, then both brakes are pretty much useless.
____________________
Currently enjoying products from Ford, Mazda and Yamaha
Ste wrote: Avatars are fine, it's signatures that need turning off.

[SomersetWolf]

[ScaredyCat]

[SomersetWolf]

[Oldie]

Just go out every Sunday morning at 6am for an hour or two and it will probably all come together nicely. There's nothing difficult about it and it will become natural.

[Ste]

[B5234FT]

Seat time beats everything else. As long as youre sensible about when and where (so you dont end up dead, or holding people up too much), just get out on the bike.

Whatever the power rangers might tell you, slow speed is the single most important aspect of real world riding if its not solely conducted at 6am on a sunday. Time spent in a carpark is never wasted.

I couldnt do the U turn either, but eventually it just clicked. Dont sweat it, it will come eventually. Use the clutch rather than the throttle.

[M.C]

[Nobby the Bastard]

[M.C]

[chickenstrip]

[Nobby the Bastard]

Basically, the more doubt you have about the surface you are riding on (whether it's wet, icy, or slippery in any other way) the more you use the rear and the less the front.
____________________
trevor saxe-coburg-gotha:"Remember this simple rule - scooters are for men who like to feel the breeze on their huge, flapping cunt lips."
Sprint ST 1050

[mrmistoffelee...]

[Rogerborg]

[Teflon-Mike]

Did your instructor, by any chance, try teaching you to 'Slip & Drag'...

nb, rev the nuts off the thing; and slip the clutch to let it rev, whilst holding the speed down, 'dragging' the back brake, to perform slow-speed manouvers, especially the U-turn?

If so, you have my sympathy, as I grimmace.... it's far from the 'best' way to do things, especially on a lightweight 125. It's the motorcycle equivilent of patting your head and rubbing your tummy, a display of dexterity and co-ordination, to do something almost utterly pointless!!! It's become the 'norm' though, through DAS in the last twenty years, where, on the bigger-bikes, their first gear is often 'just' that bit too tall to let you go quite that slow, without the engine stalling beneath tick-over revs... and the instructor or examiner have to 'trot' rather than walk along side you.... on a tiddler, that usually has a first gear so low you'll struggle to even reach 20mph reving the knackers off the thing.... you REALLY shouldn't need to do it! and, in the 'sports' where such slow speed control is essential, like trials wot I did, or Moto-Gym-Khana (A bit like a CBT on acid!)... no bugga DOES slip and drag... they change the gears.. so they can ride it clean, clutch out, IF they want to go THAT slow......

If you want to wind up an instructor.... when they complain at you for 'coasting' when slowing for junctions and stuff.... and tell you "You CANNOT be in 'full-control' with the clutch not out!"... smile and nod, then ask ernestly, "So, why were you telling me to ride with the clutch part 'in' FOR control on the U-Turn?"....

That little gripe asside.... there is a lot of stuff on CBT and training, that you have to do for test, that is pretty much irrelevent to every day riding......

I mean, how often do you have to slalom through road cones out on the road?...... OK, I will confess... whenever I find myself getting tangled in road-works I DO have the dire compunction to start slaloming around the cones.... But I have to resist!

ALL the slow-speed stuff you did on CBT... was pretty much 'exercises', and you'll only ever really need 'bits' of it at any one time on the road, and you dont need to worry about making the instructor or examiner 'trot', so you have almost no need to worry about trying to go THAT slow, and should be able to do pretty much all of it, clutch out 'clean' which is the 'better' way of doing stuff, where you need only jiggle one control, not three, and go at the pace that you are most comfy at and bike has that bit more self stability beneath you.

Onto brakes..... rule of thumb, is; 70/30 front before back, in the dry, 50/50, front before back in the wet; that 70/30 or 50/50 ratio is referring to 'braking effort', not lever travel or pressure, and it IS only a rule of thumb.

Sports bikes tend to be nose heavy, and with weight shift throwing even more of their weight onto the nose during braking, a lot of GP-Wannabees wont even bother with the back brake, as it don't do much when the back end is in the air anyway.... curiously, listen to real GP-Hero's and they will explain how they use a lot of back brake, and how delicate the have to be with it, to use enough to 'balance' the bikes attitude to set it up for a corner... which does imply that the race-reps attitude to the back is a bit of a cop-out, to 'good technique' but still....

Cruisers, tend to be the other way; they carry a lot of their weight on the back, and they tend to have a lot more of it, so the back is rarely in much danger of lifting under heavy braking; meanwhile rather 'extreme' geometry at the front, combined with a lack of weight, they are far more inclined, if you use a lot of front brake to get 'crossed up' which can be unhelpful. In the US, where the style originates, C&U regs are rather lax, and often don't even require a bike to have a front brake at all, whilst lacking the same sort of rider-training or even testing, in many states, that we have; a lot do ride them like a car, and only use the back 'foot-brake' like the would driving a car....

However, for YOU... you are a car driver... and I make no bones, BUT, lets burst that 'bubble' that as an existing road user of howumpety many years in a box, you 'must' have a shed load of road sense and stuff, to 'help' you ride a bike..... judging by general level of incompetence displayed by the majority of car drivers these days... I would dispute the notion many car drivers have very much road sense what-so-bludy-eva! You may.... but.. dangerous to presume, even more to rely on it!!!

Long standing car drivers bring as many unhelpful acquired tendencies with them as they do potentially helpful ones....

Many moons ago when I instructed, it was often very frustrating, teaching a CBT, to have car-drivers, often pick things up on the play-ground very quickly, as they had some idea about the clutch biting point and stuff like that; BUT, the delicate throttle control demanded by a motorcycle, that has an engine that often revs to 2 or 3x the crank speed.. that you are sitting right on top of, with no fire-wall, carpet, or bonnet insulating you from the noise, or Radio 2 drowning it out... the 'sensation' is very very different, and so is the vantage point. Utter newbies often struggled to pick up the basics as readily, BUT, without the 'baggage', they were far more often, a) much more responsive to learn, b) less hampered by expectations and experience... ie they would do as they were told! and not argue, utterly convinced that the engine was about to explode!

A-N-D CBT is an artificial environment; its a play-ground, it's make believe... especially if some wally like me has just pointed to a couple of cones, and said "Now imagine this is the give way line at a junction".... it isn't is it? SO, very easy for existing car drivers to make the 'separation' from the reality they are familiar with, and maybe do a 'little' of what they are told.... they know what they should do at a 'give way' real or imaginary... utter newbs, not so much..... SO, existing car driver, on the pad, may take some instruction, and can, get up to speed relatively happily......

Then they get out on a real road......

And it's an anecdote I repeat quite often; but one such student; great guns on the play-ground, all eager to get out on the road... 50 yards out the gate, first junction.... falls over.... literally 'just' falls over!!! He managed to get his boot down before handlebars started making dents in tarmac, and he laughed it off after; BUT.... wonderful example of how, coming off the 'make-believe' of the play-ground, onto a real road, with proper road markings, parked cars, etc etc etc... his 'car driver instincts' kicked in, and following him up to that first give way line, I actually watched as he took his left hand off the handlebars and started reaching to find the hand-brake, before stopping.... and then wondering why the bike started to topple, COMPLETELY forgetting he didn't have a couple of extra wheels to prop him up!

Major crimes of the car driver, are forgetting to cancel indicators, that don't self cancel like they do in a car, on bikes; and mirror dependency, NOT doing proper rear observations, trying to do it all on the mirrors, and often only one of them!!! In the most dire cases, 'lessons' deteriorate into simple nagging matches, reminding the student to cancel indies and do proper rear obs, and watch road positioning, and the like, over and over again, as they 'revert' to car driver habbits, that can be enormously hard to break.

But, one of the more difficult is spacial awareness; on a bike you are sat head and shoulders above most car drivers; you have an unobstructed 360 degree view around you, and not a heck of a lot else! Lightweight bike, is often shorter than the rider; there's maybe a foot and a half of front wheel ahead of them, maybe three foot of bike behind...

Car drivers tail gate.... fact. Next time you are in the car, see how often you actually obey the 2-second rule! I bet it's not often!

On a bike, then, any car behind you will likely not be as far back as it should be to start with... but, you are sitting up close to the handlebars, and mirrors, and aren't looking through a window at them.... you have a much more 'direct' sense of perspective on a bike, and that alone, will make stuff seem closer than it is.... more, used to sitting in a box, you will feel out in the elements, unprotected and vulnerable, that too will make other traffic, whether in-front, behind, or to the sides seem a LOT bigger and a LOT closer than it does when you are in a box...... AND.. they WILL be closet to you! You don't have that boundry metal around your seat! And as far as the tail-gaters go, their datum is the back number-plate, that is almost right under your bum on a bike, compared to in a box!

You REALLY have to recalibrate your perceptions when you climb on a bike.... and if they are pre-calibrated to car-driver's 'seat', you do have to re-learn.

But BRAKES.... in a car you use your foot... car weighs what? well, mine weighs two tons! Most are around a ton, and even the little ones these days are rarely less than 3/4 ton. To slow that down, car has probably four hefty cast iron hydraulic disc brakes, and a servo to boost the line pressure you put on the pedal with your hoof.. then thers are four wheels with pretty big bits of rubber, being pressed against the road by all that weight, and, well, how long is even a small car? The weight shift under braking isn't likely to lift the back very far, very often, if at all, is it? You can be incredibly heavy hoofed on car brakes, and the shear scale of the things means they will tolerate it, and if they dont? Most have anti-lock systems now anyway!

A bike.... mine is pretty heft; weighs just shy of 1/4 ton, that's half the weight of even a very light car! It's also an awful lot shorter.. and when I'm sat on it, big lump of weight is sitting way way up compared to where it is in a car.... then there's only two tyres, annd not a lot of mass pinning them to the floor.... SO, you HAVE to be that much more 'delicate' modulating the brake pressure, and to get as much braking as you can, balancing the brake force between front and back wheels.

Small irony, the idea of a delicate woman in a car being some-what heavy handed and brutal on the controls, compared to bearded beer swilling biker, having to be that much more 'delicate'... BUT, it is one of those shifts in perception you need to make; you CAN get away being a lot less accurate, a lot more heavy handed and far less 'careful' in a car...

Bikes beg finesse, and delicacy on the controls, in spades.

Your YBR brake lever souvenir is testimony to that; and no doubt you made the oh-so-common newby mistake of 'grabbing' or 'snatching' the lever; applying a lot of brake force very suddenly, and consequently causing the wheel to 'lock' and take you down.....

Got kids? How many times have you nagged them 'NOT to SNATCH!'...

Absolutely imperative, to avoid that urge to grab, and grab big; I say it time and time and time, but rushing be fast way to pain on two wheels! SLOW DOWN.... and that means your actions, as well as your vehicle velocity!

IF you have to slow the bike, to feel you can take your time and be less hurried, then do so.. DONT rush into danger!

Brakes, gears, steering; NONE of it should be rushed, and ALL of it should be done gently, not violently... like the kids again.. what do we tell'em? "Angry actions get angry replies!"

Talk to the bike, DONT shout at it! don't snatch. Imagine you have a large angry dog staring at you! NO SUDDEN MOVEMENTS!

That hammered home.... 'your first brake is your third brake'... you have two brake levers on a bike; one for the front wheel and one for the back... But the 'third brake' is the engine..... or engine braking.. and you get that as soon as you roll off the throttle... hence first brake, is the third brake......

99% of riding a motorbike is in the throttle, and find control of the thing...

And braking starts not with the brakes BUT that throttle... and again, learning to be gentle and delicate with it... you work the throttle in the car with your foot... on a bike with your right hand, you have a LOT more delicate control through your hand, AND bike begs is, so USE IT.

Dont rush! roll off; need more slowing? Use brakes.. DONT SNATCH.. and modulate the brake pressure, as you slow....

In the car, when you slow for a stopped queue of traffic, you will press the pedal down, then, as you slow back off, so that as you arrive at the tail of the queue, you come to a nice gentle halt, not a end in an abrupt lurch or three!

Bikes are light, they wont tolerate that sort of ham fistedness you might get away with in a car! That last bit of the 'stop' needs a lot more delicacy, AND you need to back off the brakes a lot more to avoid the lurch, or worse, braking force that was great for slowing you from perhaps 60-30, seeing the wheel effectively 'lock up' and skid, in the 15-0 bit... and remember, no ABS to help either... you HAVE to do it with your hands!

Practice practice practice, get the 'feel' of the brakes, and do it by not going so fast to start with, giving yourself space and not rushing; get 'smooth', not sudden!

And this is Oh-So important on a lightweight bike, that doesn't have the weight to damp much rider clumsiness or the power to let them get away without the precision... this is something 125's are GREAT at instilling in a new rider, if they appreciate that's what they are about.

Diligence, discipline and precision, but above all, FINESSE... being gentle!

And whilst I am on my hobby horse; to continue the theme about control delicacy and how much of riding a bike is in the throttle control...

You say you did IAM in the box... how long ago, and what was the policy at the time on 'short shifting' 'block shifting' and coast-braking? I believe it has shifted a few times, and been more or less promoted or adopted by individual observers..... again, this could be more of a distraction to riding a bike......

In a car, over the last twenty odd years, there has been a tendancy to teach new drivers to get up the box as quickly as possible; use as many gears as you can, and as little throttle; then, coming down again, use teh brakes to slow, and sort it out after, block-shifting to suit when you need 'drive' again.....

FORGET IT.

Bikes don't have a random access gearbox for starters; nor do they have the convenience of a thing called 'syncro-mech' (actually I learned to drive in a Morris Minor... that didn't either! But still!).. syncro-mech, lines up cogs when you shift so they snick in to engagement; on a bike, the mechanism is rather more crude; and just CANT get away with the same degree of ham-fistedness or sort it out after lack of finesse.

You have a sequential shift, so if you want second gear from forth, you have to go through third; AND you cant just stab the pedal down two clicks and hope it will drop in, because that lack of synchronization mechanism, means that to get from one gear yo the next you NEED the motion between shafts made by letting the clutch out between shifts.... AND shifts are, like brakes best not 'snatched' but accomplished slowly and deliberately....

BIG big newby problem, and one car drivers oh so struggle with is 'short shifting'.... Little bike, once moving, usually has enough power to pull higher gears, quiet readily at lower speeds.....

Car driver... usually isn't used to the noise of a frantic little engine that needs to rev to probably 10,000 rpm to deliver 10bhp; they are used to an engine, probably a desiesel, that makes maybe 100bhp at something daft like 3,500 revs, and will happily 'chugg' along on that enormouse torque, at barely tick-over, and are used to 'short shifting' up the gearbox quickly and getting into top early.

Dont work well on a bike! Especially a little one! On a little 125, with no more than 14.5bhp to be A1/Learner-Legal, they dont have much power, and it will take pretty much all of it to go 70mph if they can. BUT, only takes about 3bhp to go 30... And they probably make that sort of power as low down as 3,000 revs; very very easy then, with car driver habbits, to 'short shift' and get up into top gear by the time you are doing 30... when the bike will probably pull fairly well, if a bit slowly, to maybe 40, but from there, as the wind resistance starts to mount with speed, and the available power not rise so much, they will often 'top out' at around 50mph.... and its counter intuative to change down, to speed up... but that's what is needed, to use a lower ratio, to get the engine revs up to where more power is made in the rev range to get the bike accelerating.....

Meanwhile, slowing down, and this is where it impinges on the braking question; if you have gone UP three or four gears more than you need, to go 30mph... slowing down, you have to come back down three or four gears you never needed to go up!

AND.. in taller gear to start with; with not very many engine revs, there's not very much slowing to be had, let alone engine braking, just rolling off.... so you havce to start coming down those cogs to get some slowing happening, and probably spend more time, with teh clutch 'in' sorting gears, doing your slowing solely on the brakes, than you do slowing on the throttle....

Top tip... DONT over shift! dont short shift. DONT over work the gears!

Want to make braking easy? dont change up; use the revs, get the throttle response lower ratios offer, and give yourself that 90% of riding control to be found in the twist grip!

No changey up... no need to changey down again! You dont need to make so many shifts, so you can take your time, making the ones you have to, and make them deliberate, possitive and SMOOTH. You'll also not so easily loose track of whet gear you are in... if it bothers you to know! AND you will get that first brake is your third brake of slowing from the throttle, BEFORE you start having to work levers to get more..

Do it on the throttle, NOT the gears... you will also avoid the bang-down lurch, when a gear change from too high a gear, drives the engine up to those revs you changed up to avoid, and you do get positive engine braking applied by that, rather than the more gentle 'slowing' as revs drop on the throttle.

Its an affliction even a lot of non car drivers suffer, as learning to ride, 'GEARS' seem like something to do, something important to do... and so they do a lot of it..... and make these problems even if they dont have car driver habbits.... if you have them as well, you have a double whammy, so AVOID the issue... no shift up, no need shift down, its BIG step to becoming 'smooth' and learning to get all you can from that 90% all on the twist-grip control that is available....

I have a 125 as well as the big 750; the 750 has a pretty powerful and wonderfully 'flexible' engine; I could probably ride all day like a twist and go, in 3rd gear, which with a little judicious clutch slip it will pull away from a stand still in, and take me to around 80mph, before it runs out of revs.....

But even on the 125, 3rd gear is my mother of all work; I tend to indulge in some rather mindless teenage hooliganism, reliving my lost youth; where I am a little more laid back and 'sensible' on the 750... but? 1st gets me moving; its very low, I could pull away in 2nd, but it would need a bit of clutch slip, so unless on a hill, 1st gets used to get me going; then I do 'short shift' to 2nd pretty much as soon as I am above walking pace, because it will run out of revs very quickly otherwise (Although , I did observe my O/H 'pass' the 31mph speed trap exercise of her Mod 1 test, in first gear... she missed her shift to 2nd, so put on that 'You've had it now!" expression your O/H probably lives in dread of! And 'went for it'... as i winced at the sound of tortured tappets, I noted the examiner similarly strained... and after she 'passed'.. much to both of our surprises, I went and removed her rocker cover... located the bits she'd shaken loose, and bolted them back together!!! no-joke. I DID A slightly extreme example... but still) Normally, bike will run out of puff at about 20-25mph in 1st, and in such a low gear not take very long to get there, so short shift to 2nd is apropriate; AND... round the houses I can leave it there! round the houses here are all pretty much 20mph traffic calmed zones; so gives me the throttle response to hold a decent road speed and the response to dodge kids balls when they are playing kirby or whatever! Out onto the 30 roads to town; 2nd's still 'good' and will carry me up to about 40mph, so put me in the middle of the rev range for max throttle response, to get round cars nosing out of T-Junctions, slow for dopes pulling out of parking spaces only looking in thier mirrors etc etc etc.... I probably wont change up to 3rd unless I do have a good clear-ish bit of urban road and not too much odds of having to contend with too much, or I am up onto 40 marked main roads or the duelie.... and again, I probably wont use much BUT 3rd around town. Wont be until I am out on a faster A-road that, is probably only a 40 or 50 zone, I can still ride for response in 3rd, but If clear enough I might snick up to 4th, which will take me all the way up to 70, near enough, and I can leave it in for pretty much anything to retain throttle response, particularly on a bendy swoopy road... and I really only will use 5th, if I am on a long, open boring road, with a 60limit or more, where, having wound the thing up to 60-70, in 4th, I might snick 5th 'just' to knock the revs back, as an 'over-drive' gear to hold the speed I've got, rather than find any more.... its a 125 four stroke... it aint GOT no more!

BUt, moral of the story IS that you can, and certainly round town, do pretty much everything in 2nd or 3rd gear on a 125, you do NOT need to cog it up four or fivce notches like you would in a box 'for ecconomy' or whatever... crikey its a 125! If 100mpg aint enough ecconomy for you, buy a push bike! It doesn't have the 'spare' to save, so use what you got, and do'nt be afraid of the revs, USE them, not the gears!

Give yourself that throttle response; and the imediete engine braking it offers, and learn to exploit it, and find the delicate touch and finesse on both the throttle and the brakes and when you have to chang ethem, THEN the gears..... dont make work for yourslef making unnecessary up changes that beg more work still, making down changes, and give you so many more oportunities for foul up as well as beg you RUSH when you shouldn't.

Aim for 'smooth'; be gentle, be delicate, bikes and particularly lightweight ones demand and reward that delicate touch, finesse, discipline and dexterity; they punish ham fisted ness and clumisness. and that is the best lesson that they can offer. Get smooth on a lightweight, you can be smooth on anything!

Remember, dont rush, dont panick, don't SNATCH; gentle positive persuation; slow and deturmined, and SMOOTH, and dont make work, for yourself, short shifting trying to ride high reving little motorbike like low reving car.... use revs not gears.

Its not just brakes its ALL of it... and bikes beg that much more empathy, and sympathy than cars do; and they do demand a lot of recalibration of perceptions, and ARE more demanding of you; so DONT presume on car driver experience to 'help' very much... it is new, similar, for sure, but its NOT the same; and don't get frustrated, that you think it 'should' be easier than it is, because of... it wont be, and you will have to re-learn as much or more than you can carry over, there are more differences than there are similarities, and bikes, that left to thier own devices fall over, that move in three axis and three dimensions, tilting to turn, behave an awful lot differently and do beg a lot more of the rider.. so remember DONT RUSH, take your time, and acquire that delicacy on the controls that has probably never been expected of you driving a box....

Will help with brakes, will help with gears, will help with steering....

And last tip... HEAD UP... LOOK AHEAD.. you did IAM, did you cover 'predictive' observation? On a bike, this is paramount. You dont have four wheels on teh floor and a ton of metal planting them there; you dont have the box about you or the tolerence to get it wrong; you cannot get away with the sort of 'reactive', on/off, slam it about, only watching the bumper of car infront, driving, endemic on our roads today.. you need your eyes on the next corner, you need to know what's going on, five cars ahead of you; you need to make space, and be prepared to hold it and use it, to AVOID the sudden reactions bike DO NOT like...

Finally? Small solace, but your YBR brake lever suvineer... it is probably one of THE most common type of motorcycle accident these days... the 'panic snatch'... we have many many accounts of it on here, where folk have reacted to a car pulling out infront of them, panic snatched and gone down, and never collided with the car that made them snatch... bikes tend to slow down a lot faster with rubber on the road than plastics.. so if they stopped before they hit anything after they had gone down, sure as eggs they could have stopped even shorter had they kept the rubber on the road! Other variation of that one, is the speed cameras that catch fantastic photo's of bikes going through the trap on thier side, where again, speeding rider has spotted camera box, snatched and put it down.... it is Oh-So-common, and not confined to newbies, by an awful long stretch! so dont feel bad about it... happens to a lot of folk, who really aught know a lot better.... now you do... so DON'T DO IT AGAIN, OK? Just be 'smooth' and gentle.
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My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[Nobby the Bastard]

Jeezuz fucking christ, Tef. Do you really expect anyone to read that?
____________________
trevor saxe-coburg-gotha:"Remember this simple rule - scooters are for men who like to feel the breeze on their huge, flapping cunt lips."
Sprint ST 1050

[Ste]

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[ScaredyCat]

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