121–130 of 138 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice, what bike?
A Yamaha XSR900 - probably not what people would think of as a natural bike to go on a 5500 km journey from Northern Europe to the Balkans, but you really can tour on anything. It was great in the alpine roads - especially the few days I did unloaded. It wasn't ideal on the few unpaved roads I found - especially with road tyres - but I coped with it. A few more litres in the tank (only 14L, ~300km) would have been he…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A normal stable turn requires a lean in the same direction. If you turn the bars to the left but don't lean to the left, you will topple over to the right. Countersteering is purposefully turning to the left and NOT leaning to the left, causing you to begin to topple over to the right...but then you quickly save it by turning the bars to the right. Now you are turning and leaning to the right.
At speeds faster than parking lot speeds, that is incorrect. You purposely push the left bar away from you to turn left. That's all you do. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljywO-B_yew Check it out.
There’s a lot about riding a motorbike that feels counterintuitive. The way this article is written it sounds like you can only initiate the steer with a counter steer but even if you’re already in a bend you can provide a counter input to tighten your line and steer harder. It’s taught pretty early on for new riders and it saves lives. There’s loads of other weird things, because the rear tire is wider than the fron…
> Utterly counter intuitive that to retain control over rough ground you want to almost let go of the handlebars. I've hiked through a lot of forests ever since I was a kid and have a method, often criticized, but that has never injured me, of going down difficult terrain. I more or less glide down at a constant speed, putting my feet in places to apply upwards force. It helps a great deal that I have very flexible a…
Because I don't switch my feet I can keep up faster than I can run and I don't slip because I always have 2 feet on the ground at a time and it's kinda like surfing without the board.
I have never grokked written or verbal explanations of countersteering. I have been riding bicycles and motorcycles for almost 5 decades now - I do it all the time in practice. But explaining it makes it weird.
This! I think people from south east Asia can relate to this. I’ve been an active rider for over a decade before coming to US. When counter steering was taught in the motorcycle safety program,it felt counter intuitive. One reason I can think of is back in my home country max speeds were under 50mph where you dont have to counter steer that much.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How does this happen? In the U.S. we have the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) which teaches a basic motorcycle riding course, and can give you a certificate for a motorcycle endorsement on your state license. One of their only prerequisites for the course is that you can ride a bicycle, because it guarantees the rider understands countersteering at low speeds before getting anywhere near a motorcycle.
In EU motorbikes fall under a different license then cars, so it involves both practical and theoretical test. What I know from the Swedish licenses is that the motorbike one is considered the more difficult test to pass. There is a "high speed" slalom course you have to do as part of the test and it's impossible to do it without counter steering through it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Skilled cyclists use the front brake alone probably 95% of the time I am skeptical about this claim. Here’s a recent video by a former pro on the subject of braking, for example, and he is squeezing on both brakes at the same time in most of the shots. [1] He does say that the front brake can be squeezed a lot harder, though, and is source of most of your braking power. Even in the places where Brown says you shoul…
> I am skeptical about this claim. Here’s a recent video by a former pro on the subject of braking, for example, and he is squeezing on both brakes at the same time in most of the shots. [1] He does say that the front brake can be squeezed a lot harder, though, and is source of most of your braking power. Note that he's stopping with both brakes and also moves his hips behind the seat, which makes tumble-forwards sit…
I have never grokked written or verbal explanations of countersteering. I have been riding bicycles and motorcycles for almost 5 decades now - I do it all the time in practice. But explaining it makes it weird.
This is actually why this needed to be written, new riders on a race track come with a malformed understanding of how the bike works, and when you need to put more force into the bike to turn at higher speed, they don’t know where to put the force. People think that just leaning does the work, but you can try to turn a motorcycle with your hands off the bar and see how that works… basically you just go straight. The…
Being able to do a thing is vastly different from being able to explain how to do a thing. If you ask me how I turn on a bike, the real answer is I just have the intention to go that way, and then I start going that way. Lots of other things are like that too; ask someone who is fast at word searches how they do it and it'll be something like "I kind of look at the grid and the word(s) pop out; and if it gets really tough I move my head around a bit and then they pop out" Not very helpful if that's not what happens to you, but it's what I do.
This Veritasium video touches upon the same phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cNmUNHSBac
Sadly it's wrong. My gripe with it is that it presents countersteering as necessary , while it's just a technique to more quickly initiate a turn. Basically by steering right while leaning left, then snapping the handlebars to the left, you can change your centre of gravity relative to the bike's faster than you can just by leaning left. When leaning your body left you also naturally push the handle bars right which…
Why wouldn't you be able to countersteer it as any other bike (except in this case by using the opposite handlebar motion compared to a regular bike)?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you see where the link says: >For the technique with a similar name used in automobiles, see Countersteering (Automobile). ?
The sentence that makes it completely clear that the article isn't about what is often called "countersteering" in automobiles?