Ever wonder what RideSmart is all about?

[Huzband]

This is just about the best example I've ever seen. No, I don't know the guy.

 

[Matts_12GS]

I just love the way it chips away at the stereotype too

 

[Huzband]

The helmet & boots are quite the dichotomy, don't you think?

 

I'm guessing this isn't his only bike.

[Matts_12GS]

The helmet & boots are quite the dichotomy, don't you think?

 

I'm guessing this isn't his only bike.

 

Probably not. He's straddling the best parts of motorcycling if you ask me... He knows how to ride and enjoy, yet still dresses to fit in the club.

 

Good on him!

 

[Huzband]

But what would his Bro's say if they found out he was being used as a good example on a BMW forum?

[Matts_12GS]

But what would his Bro's say if they found out he was being used as a good example on a BMW forum?

 

They'd take away his platinum AMEX, and report him to the BAR Association!

[Huzband]

But what would his Bro's say if they found out he was being used as a good example on a BMW forum?

 

They'd take away his platinum AMEX, and report him to the BAR Association!

 

[Whip]

Body position is RS, but I think he turned in too soon.

 

[Huzband]

Body position is RS, but I think he turned in too soon.

 

 

No, that's the preffered lane position on the Dragon. Too many people across the yellow up there for anything else.

[Whip]

I think he IS heading for the yellow line and is gonna have trouble with the left hander coming up fast......I could be wrong he could be avoiding someone right now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Bullett]

But what would his Bro's say if they found out he was being used as a good example on a BMW forum?

 

They'd take away his platinum AMEX, and report him to the BAR Association!

 

HEY! Watch the slams at the bar, fella!

 

[Albert]

He wasn't moving. It's on the side stand.

[russell_bynum]

I think he IS heading for the yellow line and is gonna have trouble with the left hander coming up fast......I could be wrong he could be avoiding someone right now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's hard to tell for sure, but at first glance, I'd say you're right. Early turn-in which now has him about to run wide.

 

But...he's working the body position well and may just save it.

 

Looks like fun!

[Matts_12GS]

But what would his Bro's say if they found out he was being used as a good example on a BMW forum?

 

They'd take away his platinum AMEX, and report him to the BAR Association!

 

HEY! Watch the slams at the bar, fella!

 

I feel a lawyer joke thread coming on...

[Dave_zoom_zoom]

I think he IS heading for the yellow line and is gonna have trouble with the left hander coming up fast......

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I see your point and think you're correct! However, looks like he's having fun. He just needs to go back to the book and reread the part about "Problems with an early entry". Oh well, I guess he most likely realized that a couple seconds after the photo was taken.

 

Dave

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Whip]

Sharon/Bullet knows all about RS.

[NCStephen]

I do believe that is a pretty long turn and if he is still in that tight this close to the end he is doing OK, IMHO Still I agree he is angling out a bit much for the next left but long camera lens do distort the play area involved. I don't think this is his first rodeo.

 

NCS

 

From the killboy fail thread at ADV

Not done so well and done better

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[OoPEZoO]

 

I'll bet that was his last ride with out wearing gloves......ouch!

[Joe Frickin' Friday]

I do believe that is a pretty long turn and if he is still in that tight this close to the end he is doing OK, IMHO

 

Yep, I know exactly where that turn is, and it takes you through a full 180 degrees. Killboy caught me there in 2008:

 

 

 

 

 

Note the sparks under the left sidecase - that's my centerstand touching down:

 

 

 

 

If I had run wider and tried harder to bite my mirror (and maybe slowed down just a touch ), I might have avoided dragging the centerstand like that.

[Jake]

Yeah, but you still had the coolest looking belly-pan on the board bar none.

[Huzband]

For shame, for shame. This was not only after your RS, your noggin is over the line.

[Joe Frickin' Friday]

For shame, for shame. This was not only after your RS, your noggin is over the line.

 

Yup - we talked about that at length a few years ago. I knew it was a crappy turn, so I originally offered those photos up as a teaching opportunity.

 

Yeah, but you still had the coolest looking belly-pan on the board bar none.

 

What, this old thing?

 

 

 

Virtually all of that was done in 2003, prior to taking the RidingSmart class. A lot of factors added up to make that happen:

 

• Deals Gap has a bunch of places where the pavement gets off-camber.
   
  
• I had a full load of luggage.
   
  
• That spring I had installed a used Ohlins rear shock, and the preload adjuster was not providing full ride height adjustment.
   
  
• I was not doing a damn thing with my body (RidingSmart) to counteract any of those other factors.

So yeah, I dragged the hell out of the belly panel. The other side of the bike looked similar.

 

After RidingSmart, grinding hard parts on the pavement was very rare.

[eddd]

For shame, for shame. This was not only after your RS, your noggin is over the line.

 

I'd feel a bit of shame if I was nit picking a single example of riding from the comfort of my computer.

[Lighthiker90]

If I had run wider and tried harder to bite my mirror (and maybe slowed down just a touch ), I might have avoided dragging the centerstand like that.

 

Not having taken the ridesmart class I have to ask. "Bite my mirror"? That is the first time I have heard that one. Can you give a few more details.

[Glenn Reed]

The general idea is if you move your upper body to the inside of the turn, the bike stays more upright, and in the case above, hard parts don't hit the pavement.

 

"Bite the mirror" is an expression of the extreme extent to which this concept can be taken in order to make a particular corner without any issues. The further you move your body to the inside, the closer you get to where your head is near the location of the mirrors.

 

If you go back to the picture in the very first post of the thread, you will see what he means.

[Joe Frickin' Friday]

Not having taken the ridesmart class I have to ask. "Bite my mirror"? That is the first time I have heard that one. Can you give a few more details.

 

For a turn with a particular turning radius and speed, the combined mass of you and your bike will lean in at a particular angle. The idea is that if you lean your body over further, the bike itself will lean over less, resulting in better ground clearance and a suspension that is a little closer to vertical and therefore better oriented to absorb the bumps and dips in the pavement. Big touring bikes weigh a lot more than GP bikes, but it still matters. Moreover, we have less cornering clearance than GP bikes, so every little bit of gain helps.

 

Rather than sliding your entire body around on the bike like a monkey in a sidecar, RidingSmart teaches repositioning just your upper body. Most of your body's mass is there anyway (as opposed to your legs), so this works fairly well. The idea of "biting/kissing the mirror" is a simplification of the movements that result in getting your upper body where it needs to be:

 

-lean forward

-lean to the inside of the turn

-lean down

-lift your opposite butt-cheek off of the saddle

 

Additionally you would also use your feet on the footpegs and your knees on the tank to bear your weight so that you unweight the handlebars as much as possible.

 

You can see from those pictures that that's what I was trying to do, although not to the extent that I should have. If you go back to that 2008 thread, it all gets discussed in nauseating detail.

 

If I had done any one thing, I could have avoided grinding my centerstand:

 

-better RidingSmart form. If I had leaned in farther/lower, the bike would have been more vertical.

 

-stay closer to the outside of the turn. This would have given a larger turning radius, requiring less lean. This would have had the added bonus of getting me the hell away from any oncoming traffic. This is actually an important part of the RidingSmart curriculum, one that I think is often underemphasized in discussions like this.

 

-slow down. again, less lean required. This might have been the key to everything else: if I had not come into the turn so hot, I might have been less phobic about riding out near the fog line, and less rattled about hitting such high lean angles (so I might have done a better job of biting the mirror.

 

Ideally, I would have done all three: a slower turn-in speed, stay to the outside, and bite the mirror. Once I could see through the turn, that would have been the right time to start picking up speed and graze the double-yellow.

[Lighthiker90]

Thanks Glenn & Joe. I have much to learn about body position. I took the Basic Rider Course. Looks like the advanced will be a good follow up.

[Albert]

When I took Ride Smart it was from a much more refined and genteel group of instructors. They called it "kiss the mirror". Ahhhh . . .

[roadscholar]

-stay closer to the outside of the turn. This would have given a larger turning radius, requiring less lean. This would have had the added bonus of getting me the hell away from any oncoming traffic. This is actually an important part of the RidingSmart curriculum, one that I think is often underemphasized in discussions like this.

 

 

And it can't be overemphasized, on a motorcycle stay away from the centerline, and if possible try to stay in the outer half of your lane.

 

Locals, when driving those roads, have a rigid unbending rule and that is: NEVER, EVER cross the double yellow even if you have line of sight, if you do it once, you'd do it again. I consider myself a part-time local, been riding the area since 1980 and driving there since the mid-60's and have seen everything from Greyhounds, camp buses, 40' motorhomes, and 18-wheelers hugging the the centerline and then some, not to mention the 19 y.o. 10-wheel dumptruck drivin' Dale Earnhardt wannabe's. Oh they're good, but they still blow it every once in a while.

 

On a bike, particularly a tall one like a GS, even if your tires are in the center of your lane on a hard left-hander, at the least, your mirror and hand are in the other lane. It can happen in an instance, there's no time to react.

 

Last Fall I was coming up 107 from Sylva to Cashiers two-up on an 800 GS. Rounding a blind 150* left with the guard rail at pavement edge, a kid in a beater coming the other way is 3/4 in our lane looking at his phone screen. Luckily I was in the right part of the lane, he missed us by a foot. We were both doing about 50, he didn't correct and neither did I. The whole thing happened in the time it took to read this sentence!

[eddd]

-stay closer to the outside of the turn. This would have given a larger turning radius, requiring less lean. This would have had the added bonus of getting me the hell away from any oncoming traffic. This is actually an important part of the RidingSmart curriculum, one that I think is often underemphasized in discussions like this.

 

 

And it can't be overemphasized, on a motorcycle stay away from the centerline, and if possible try to stay in the outer half of your lane...

 

I certainly agree with Bill. I live in the land of rented and owner-driven RVs, just outside of Zion National Park. People driving large unfamilair vehicles on narrow twisty scenic roads is common and a recipe for disaster. I'm hugging the fog line on every turn where I don't have a clear line of sight. On a ride through Bryce Canyon NP a couple of weeks ago the number of RVers straddling the centerline was ridiculous especially given that the road through the park isn't all that narrow or twisty. I don't want to sound like it is only the RV drivers. The closest I came to real disaster was at the hands of a local pulling a trailer on the road that drops down into town. I'm not sure why he was so far into my lane, but I hadn't been on a motorcycle there would have been a collision since there was no shoulder on my side only a guard rail.

[Lone_RT_rider]

Not having taken the ridesmart class I have to ask. "Bite my mirror"? That is the first time I have heard that one. Can you give a few more details.

 

One thing that I don't believe has been mentioned is that "biting the mirrors" makes a lot more sense on an R-RT vs. say a GS or something else with mirrors that are in a more universal high stemmed position.

 

-lean forward

-lean to the inside of the turn

-lean down

-lift your opposite butt-cheek off of the saddle

-lower your elbow such that it makes your fore-arm vertical and thus parallel to the bike

-Keep you head as parallel to the Horizon as possible to keep your frame of reference to the road

 

Mitch, I added a couple of keep things for you. The dropping of the elbow can also not be over-stressed. It forces your shoulder lower and farther to the inside of the turn. This really plants the riders center of gravity where it needs to be to balance the forces through the turn.

 

Shawn

[Joe Frickin' Friday]

-Keep you head as parallel to the Horizon as possible to keep your frame of reference to the road

 

That's a good one. The challenging part is to tilt your head back toward vertical without also tilting your entire torso back toward vertical. IOW, the tilt-toward-vertical needs to happen in your neck rather than in your upper- or mid-back.

[Jake]

You guys are riding too fast. I can't support this.

[Lone_RT_rider]

You guys are riding too fast. I can't support this.

 

[Albert]

That's a good one. The challenging part is to tilt your head back toward vertical without also tilting your entire torso back toward vertical. IOW, the tilt-toward-vertical needs to happen in your neck rather than in your upper- or mid-back.

 

+2 that's one I have to constantly remind myself of. For me it's the easiest bad habit to slip back in to.

[Albert]

You guys are riding too fast. I can't support this.

 

Don't worry, I just look fast . . . when you're passing me.

[Matts_12GS]

You guys are riding too fast. I can't support this.

 

Don't worry, I just look fast . . . when you're passing me.

 

[Huzband]

You guys are riding too fast. I can't support this.

 

Don't worry, I just look fast . . . when you're passing me.

 

You sure that's not half fast?

[TN_R_Girl]

Thanks Glenn & Joe. I have much to learn about body position. I took the Basic Rider Course. Looks like the advanced will be a good follow up.

 

Ride Smart offers instruction of a completely unique and different level. But glad to see you're interested!

Keep your eyes open here on the board ... it's put together by volunteers, tends to happen spur of the moment and fills up quickly.

 

Unfortunately, the ARC will not really cover this kind of riding instruction... from my experience, it's a recap of the BRC to get riders who have been on the road awhile to get back to basics. So, depending on how many miles you've got in the saddle, it may or may not be worth the $$ right now.

 

 

[ESokoloff]

The general idea is if you move your upper body to the inside of the turn, the bike stays more upright, and in the case above, hard parts don't hit the pavement.

 

"Bite the mirror" is an expression of the extreme extent to which this concept can be taken in order to make a particular corner without any issues. The further you move your body to the inside, the closer you get to where your head is near the location of the mirrors.

 

If you go back to the picture in the very first post of the thread, you will see what he means.

 

OK, an image is worth a thousand words.

 

Here are some images (several related frames for each link) of what my riding style has evolved into.

I've not had the opportunity to participate in a Ride Smart program but have learned from hanging out here that the cross-control method of my youth was for the most part not the best way (tho I still keep that arrow in the quiver when needed).

 

Not saying I've got it 100% right but here is what I've got....

 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/victoryjon/6503037635/in/set-72157628396694595/lightbox/

 

 

One more

 

[Lighthiker90]

Ride Smart offers instruction of a completely unique and different level. But glad to see you're interested!

Keep your eyes open here on the board ... it's put together by volunteers, tends to happen spur of the moment and fills up quickly.

 

Unfortunately, the ARC will not really cover this kind of riding instruction... from my experience, it's a recap of the BRC to get riders who have been on the road awhile to get back to basics. So, depending on how many miles you've got in the saddle, it may or may not be worth the $$ right now.

 

 

Thanks. That pretty much echos what I have been told about the ARC. I am due for a road trip and vacation so I will watch the board.

 

I believe you can learn something from everyone. In some cases you might learn what not to do I am old enough where my ego is in check and I have no problem seeking out knowledge and asking for help.

[RT_Jim]

Lighthiker90 -

Another alternative to RideSmart is the Total Control Advanve Riding Clinic course. Having just completed the course, it teaches something very, very similar to the RideSmart body position. You might want to check it out.

 

Jim

 

(not affiliated with Total Control, just a happy student)

 

[Dave_zoom_zoom]

That didn't print out the way I wanted it to.

 

SORRY

[Dave_zoom_zoom]

For shame, for shame. This was not only after your RS, your noggin is over the line.

 

Yup - we talked about that at length a few years ago. I knew it was a crappy turn, so I originally offered those photos up as a teaching opportunity.

 

Yeah, but you still had the coolest looking belly-pan on the board bar none.

 

What, this old thing?

 

 

 

Virtually all of that was done in 2003, prior to taking the RidingSmart class. A lot of factors added up to make that happen:

 

• Deals Gap has a bunch of places where the pavement gets off-camber.
   
  
• I had a full load of luggage.
   
  
• That spring I had installed a used Ohlins rear shock, and the preload adjuster was not providing full ride height adjustment.
   
  
• I was not doing a damn thing with my body (RidingSmart) to counteract any of those other factors.

So yeah, I dragged the hell out of the belly panel. The other side of the bike looked similar.

 

After RidingSmart, grinding hard parts on the pavement was very rare.

 

 

 

Mitch

 

I just wanted to say I think that you are one cool guy.

 

Not only are you an excellent rider, but you are willing to put yourself out there to take possible negative criticism along with the positive you may be looking for. It's clear to me that the important thing to you is the desire to continue to improve. (no matter how good you are presently)

 

I'm always looking for people like you that have greater skill/knowledge then I, to ask them if they might be willing to ride behind me for a while to give me pointers on how I may improve.

 

There are a few that think I'm good. But I know I'm only about 1/2 way to where I would like to be.

 

Keep up the good work in not only seeking your own self improvement but in helping many of us in our journey toward self improvement.

 

Dave

[Lighthiker90]

Lighthiker90 -

Another alternative to RideSmart is the Total Control Advanve Riding Clinic course. Having just completed the course, it teaches something very, very similar to the RideSmart body position. You might want to check it out.

 

Jim

 

(not affiliated with Total Control, just a happy student)

 

Thanks Jim. I will have to check that out. Columbus OH, if that is where the class is held is not all that far away either.

[Glenn Reed]

Thanks Jim. I will have to check that out. Columbus OH, if that is where the class is held is not all that far away either.

 

Actually the Total Control class does not appear to be held in Columbus. Jim may have gone to Indianapolis, or, as another Ohio rider did, come over to Maryland for the class.

 

Here is the schedule for this year. I am considering taking this as well, based on feedback from the other Ohio rider. As I am in Maryland, there are actually two sites here where I can go, making it much simpler in my case.

 

Looking at your location, there is an even closer option. The class is being held in Mississauga Ontario once each in June (this Saturday), July, and August. Looks to be about 90 miles from you.

[RT_Jim]

What Glenn said .... the class was not in Columbus, I had to travel to Indianapolis.

 

They also offered a Skills Day which I would highly recommend. During the class, they throw quite a bit at you and then you practice a couple times before moving on to something else. At the end of the day, your head is swimming.

 

The Skills Day is another day for you to practice what you just learned. The instructor is available and will work with you if you want, or will stay away if you want. A nice change to work on things and still get some feedback if/when needed.

 

In my case, I was the only person that signed up for the Skills Day so it was 1 on 1 time with the instructor and it really helped solidify some of the techniques.

 

Jim

 

 

[Matts_12GS]

Sounds a lot like the Swerve discussion, as well as a comment by Upflying recently about slow skills and the "box" stuff in correlation to riding at speed.

 

I've long been told to "go slow to go fast." Taking a slow skills course and then helping to teach it has made me much more confident and capable. It has also helped me to better appreciate the limits of my motorcycle.

 

That value in that kind of knowledge and trust of the machine cannot be overstated when one wants to push their limits and grow their capabilities.

[TN_R_Girl]

Mitch

 

I just wanted to say I think that you are one cool guy.

 

Not only are you an excellent rider, but you are willing to put yourself out there to take possible negative criticism along with the positive you may be looking for. It's clear to me that the important thing to you is the desire to continue to improve. (no matter how good you are presently)

 

I'm always looking for people like you that have greater skill/knowledge then I, to ask them if they might be willing to ride behind me for a while to give me pointers on how I may improve.

 

There are a few that think I'm good. But I know I'm only about 1/2 way to where I would like to be.

 

Keep up the good work in not only seeking your own self improvement but in helping many of us in our journey toward self improvement.

 

Dave

 

Dave, he puts himself out there... but if the criticism gets to be too much, he can just use his Admin powers to make it go away!!

 

Hi Mitch!

[Chris K]

You guys are riding too fast. I can't support this.

 

+1