Originally Posted by
jadmt
my point is if you get used to going fast and I mean really fast on a motorcycle (I made a living riding for over 10 years) a bicycle will feel a lot more casual when you are going 40-50mph and 35 mph will feel pretty mundane. .
Originally Posted by
john m flores
Motojournalist here. My most recent top speed run was at the Suzuki Hayabusa intro at the Utah Motorsports Complex. I only hit 150mph on the front straight because I then had to brake hard, downshift to third, and then turn left.
Yeah, 35mph is pretty mundane, but 40mph+ is context dependent. Out west without traffic and wide open sightlines? No problem. But back east bombing down a narrow, tree-lined two-laner with tar snakes and potholes and driveways and unseen creatures in the forest? I'm on high alert because my stopping distance is much longer than on a motorcycle thanks to the miniscule contact patches. And my wool jersey isn't abrasion resistant, my helmet doesn't protect my chin (the most common injury location on the head), and I'm not wearing my leather gauntlet gloves, ankle-protecting boots, or airbag vest.
Yeah, being in an Aerostitch with a full-face Arai feels a lot more secure than just bib shorts, a pair of shades and some sunscreen, even at 2-3x the speed. (Depends on the bike, too; my DL650 was bucking the wind at 95, but I accidentally hit 157 on a Buell 1125R, and it was scary how collected that bike was, going that fast)
Fastest I've recorded on the velo was 47mph, on a long, steep descent somewhere outside Mount Airy, NC.
I had another incident a day later on that ride, where I bunny-hopped a nasty looking bridge joint near the bottom of another similarly long, fast descent (IIRC speed was about 30-32 mph) That move seemed like it caught several seconds of hang time; enough for me to reconsider the wisdom of launching a 40-year-old road bike like that, and to figure out the best way of returning it to the pavement on 32mm tires, such that those tires would remain the only thing coming into contact with the pavement.