Originally Posted by
ridethetown
This exactly.
The wheel doesn't have to turn into the direction of a curve. If you've ever roller bladed (yeah, I know...) you can very easily stand on one leg and turn left and right, arcing turns and tight turns no problem. No skidding and - at least on the roller blades I've seen - no turning of wheels. Same true for bike, motorcycle, etc.
OK I said I was out, but just this last time ... the wheels DO turn left and right on your roller blades - just not relative to the shoe. As you turn, the wheels rotate about a vertical axis.
Their motion is ALWAYS aligned with where the wheels are pointed (*tangent to the curve in your example). If you want to understand counter-steering, the first step is absolutely that you must accept that the bike is tracking where the wheel points. These objections are frankly trivial. You can have wind blowing you, gravity pulling you to one side, riding inside a rotating barrel etc etc and yes the bike will go that way. But all irrelevant to the question.
Done now, I promise.