Originally Posted by
Kojak
I have to say, this is a pretty fricken hilarious thread. We've got 2 or 3 guys seemingly wanting to beat the snot out of each other when the OP merely states "Right now I can cruise along at 17-20 mph but as soon as I anticipate a curve in the road or path I hit the brakes and slow to 10-12 mph." This is not a guy who needs charts, graphs, physics lessons or videos on how to descend. This is a guy who just needs a little confidence, and who needs to ultimately trust that his tires will stick to the ground when leaning into a corner. Sure, much of this information is useful in descending and how best to negotiate your bike down a twisty descent.... but first one needs to get through step one, which is trusting your tires. Until this "trust" is in place, all this other stuff is just peeing in the wind.
I agree with one exception...I think the diagrams on early/late apexing were useful. I live and commute in the twisties and IMO the biggest cause of poor and/or slow cornering is early apexing.
Originally Posted by
cyccommute
I said, and will continue to say, that you push down on the bars and pedal.
You should never be pushing
down on the bars, you should be pushing
forward on the inside.
Originally Posted by
cyccommute
Once in a corner you shouldn't have to do much steering at all on a bicycle nor should you have to do too much steering on motorcycle because the geometry of the vehicles will tend to steer them towards the direction of the lean. From Wikipedia:
There's a lot of difference in geometry of different motorcycles...some are easy to maintain the lean on, some you have to work to keep turning.
At speed, bikes (human- or gas-powered) naturally want to stand up and go straight. It is only at very slow speeds that they would fall down on their own.
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