after reading this thread and watching the knee-down-on-a-roundabout-lessons youtube vids, i decided it was high time for me - mainly coz i thought it would be a cool thing to do. so i jumped on my bike and looked for a big deserted two-lane roundabout.
I found one and set to it. round and round i go (no, not like a teddy bear). took me ages... going a little faster, then a little faster, and so on... hanging off the bike... then finally my slider touched down. funny thing was that my first reaction was to get a fright and jerk my knee upwards! managed to do it a few more times then decided it was probably time to go home. "One more try" i thought....
got halfway into it and did something wrong, not sure what, i think i snapped the throttle shut. the bike stood up and started to run wide and suddenly all i could see was kerb coming at me at 70kmh!! i thought "i'm going to crash" then i thought "stop staring at the kerb, lean the thing over again and stop being a pussy". my bike has never felt to heavy as that one moment trying to lean it away from the kerb... anyway i rode it out and missed the kerb by about a foot, then rode home real careful-like. scared the crap out of me.
anyway, i thought about it later and realised that i probably just should've been a bit cleverer to start with.
1. i didn't have a good reason for pushing myself other than "it'll be cool"
2. i didn't have enough runoff area
3. i was on a public road (there were no cars, but there could have been)
so i hope someone can learn something by reading this and maybe thinking a bit harder beforehand about stuff than i did! i was really close to binning it whilst basically just trying to show off. woulda looked pretty stupid then.
on the other hand i am pretty happy that i can now trust the bike to those lean angles, and back myself to not lock up/target fixate when faced with a potential stack. but i should have just waited for the next track day or big empty carpark or something.
I found one and set to it. round and round i go (no, not like a teddy bear). took me ages... going a little faster, then a little faster, and so on... hanging off the bike... then finally my slider touched down. funny thing was that my first reaction was to get a fright and jerk my knee upwards! managed to do it a few more times then decided it was probably time to go home. "One more try" i thought....
got halfway into it and did something wrong, not sure what, i think i snapped the throttle shut. the bike stood up and started to run wide and suddenly all i could see was kerb coming at me at 70kmh!! i thought "i'm going to crash" then i thought "stop staring at the kerb, lean the thing over again and stop being a pussy". my bike has never felt to heavy as that one moment trying to lean it away from the kerb... anyway i rode it out and missed the kerb by about a foot, then rode home real careful-like. scared the crap out of me.
anyway, i thought about it later and realised that i probably just should've been a bit cleverer to start with.
1. i didn't have a good reason for pushing myself other than "it'll be cool"
2. i didn't have enough runoff area
3. i was on a public road (there were no cars, but there could have been)
so i hope someone can learn something by reading this and maybe thinking a bit harder beforehand about stuff than i did! i was really close to binning it whilst basically just trying to show off. woulda looked pretty stupid then.
on the other hand i am pretty happy that i can now trust the bike to those lean angles, and back myself to not lock up/target fixate when faced with a potential stack. but i should have just waited for the next track day or big empty carpark or something.
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