From valerie.w.gregory@LMCO.COM Wed Jun 20 14:47:43 2001 Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2001 12:36:25 -0600 From: "Gregory, Valerie W" To: HAWKGT-L@HAWKGT.COM Subject: Re: Your replies to my rant I've been sitting back on this one - everybody's got an opinion, and they're all different - Tyson will make up his own mind, do what he wants, and live with it afterwards, good, bad or indifferent. But I found another interesting angle on rider skills in a e-newsletter I subscribe to from a rider training school in New Zealand, and thought I'd share: >From Megarider e-newsletter June No 2 2001 (New Zealand Motorcycle Safety Consultants [nzmscon@paradise.net.nz]) Y IT'S BETTER ~~~~~~~~~~~~~ (Guest Editorial) Most riders don't realise that if you read the road correctly, you don't need a lot of bike handling skills. Any rider spends "x"% of his attention on machine control and "y"% on street reading. The better the rider, the smaller "x" is and the larger "y" is. On Monday, I had to do my first hard braking in about 10 years. It was due entirely to a second's lapse of attention on my part. It wasn't dramatic, but it shouldn't have even occurred. My "y" lapsed and I had to resort to "x". *If* you read the road correctly you won't need to worry about the higher bike handling skill levels. So, if you concentrate on relatively small improvements in "y", you will find there is a much greater improvement in your riding in a shorter timescale. Most riders do it the wrong way round, seeking to perfect machine control and neglecting street-reading. The time to pay the most attention to machine control is after you can read the street fluently, not before. Then add the fine machine control to perfect your by-that-time already awesome riding skills That's is why *experienced* riders spend so much time discussing such fascinating issues as oil spots, the actions of crazy car drivers, tar patches, rain grooves, dust, etc. And it's the newbies who spend so much time discussing tyre traction limits, scraping pegs, sliding the front wheel into corners, stoppies, wheelies etc.... Andy Woodward (a UK Megarider) ------------------------------ Some of you other oldtimers from rec.motorcycles will recognize the author - NZMSC has obviously cleaned up his dyslexic "hte's". I would nominate Andy as one of the world's best foul-weather, piss-poor-roads-complete-with-sheep-droppings-and-stone-walls riders. Val Gregory AMA 466527, DoD 1258 '90 Hawk GT Tell the truth, explain to me, how you got this need for speed? She laughed and said, "It might just be the next best thing to love." - David Wilcox, "Eye of the Hurricane"