You're confused Isotope: adding rake gives a bike quicker handling by decreasing trail, and vice versa. A "zero rake" fork actually increases trail compared to a positive rake fork, making the bike more stable. Bikes meant to go very fast inside a motorycle draft (they hit speeds in excess of 130 miles an hour) generally have negative rake forks for even more stability.

Sheldon links to a great article on this of course, I recommend it.

http://www.phred.org/~josh/bike/trail.html

Does anyone know why bikes use rake? Why not slacken the ht angle and have no rake at all?