How to NOT ride the Dragon

[keithaba]

HOLY CRAP!!! I don't know how you stopped like that, but I am glad you did!

It is just crazy how fast an incident like that happens.

 

[quicksilver]

This is the best post I've seen in a long time. :clapping:

That is soo cool that you can share something like that, for everyone to learn from.

Awesome use of technology.

Nice butt clinching save.

I replaced a lot of FJR plastic from panicing in a very similar switchback.

I'm interested in reading constructive critques of this clip.

How should it of been prevented?

Is riding form the root issue?

Chin up pointed at the exit ?

I think this should be one for Iggy's hall of knowledge.

 

[Fencer]

I'm interested in reading constructive critques of this clip.How should it of been prevented?

Is riding form the root issue?

Chin up pointed at the exit ?

I made a few potentially serious mistakes

1. This was my first time on the road, but the second pass (back down). Going from the opposite diresction, This "hole" is not there. Its only in the right lane in this direction So the danger was not noted in the pass going up. See my other vid going the other direction and you will not see the dip.

2 I was riding pretty aggressive as I was racing (in my head) the guy behind me on the GSXR1000 and was pulling away up to this point. I prob had a few hundred yards lead on him before this.

3. I don't think form was the issue. I mis-read the road pure and simple. I did not see the hole untill it was almost to late (may have been the shadow on the road or just looked past it to the next turn). I noted the curve and planned to hang the turn but the dip in the road fuzzled my brain. I stood the bike up, Hit the brakes, TARGET FIXATED badly on the edge of the asphalt, and the bike followed. The place you see the bike go is directly the place I was looking. Also, you can hear from the engine tone change the spot I noticed it and hit the brakes

4 Curves I can do, dips I can do. The combination of the two at the same time momentarily confuzzled me, I fixated and the rest is history. I knew what I did wrong as soon as I did it. Like I say in the Vid. "my fault". Now that I've BTDT, I think I can handle it better next time.

HOLY CRAP!!! I don't know how you stopped like that, but I am glad you did!

When you screw up like I do, you get those cat-like reflexes to save your ass

 

[RsvlFeej]

Just found a similarly tough-to-read section of road on Hwy 36 heading west from Red Bluff, (northern) CA. Took about 3 hours of boooorrring slab from Roseville to get to Hwy 36, which looked enticingly curvy on the map. Very first turn after the signs proclaiming something like "138 miles of curvy roads, trucks longer than 30 feet not advised" (one of my favorite signs in the world, BTW), had a 25 mph curve-ahead warning arrow. So, having just finished 3 hours of mostly straight ahead riding, I began to set up for the corner with a bit of caution (at about 55 mph since I was still stiff and hadn't fallen into rhythm with the road yet). Look ahead into the corner, which is level with the surface I'm currently on, getting ready to drop corner entry speed to a slower-than-should-be-necessary 40-45 mph, have a good line for corner entry, and suddenly the road drops by 10-15 feet. Now my entry speed is too fast because it's tough to brake when the roller coaster drops out from under you, my entry line is shot because I was aimed to be in position at the wholly visible start of the curve, and there's an equally abrupt rise in the road coming fast. Managed to get squared away before the corner started, but my line was still not ideal so I can't see very far through the corner. Naturally, at the apex, the road has about a 2 foot hump, which tried to launch me to the shoulder. Frack! What kind of goat-trail road am I on?

The first 10 miles or so on 36W was packed with some of the weirdest road engineering decisions one can imagine. I narrowed the reasons down to 3 possibilities: 1. The road construction company did not have access to large earth-moving equipment when they won the contract, so they just kind of flattened out the road bed with a tiny grader; 2. The engineer was a "Mother-Earth" type who couldn't bear to defile her natural, graceful undulations, so he left them all in place; or 3. It's a fault-line like on Hwy 25 near Parkfield and all they can do is slap more asphalt on top of the constantly shifting tectonic plates. A little further up the road are some gorgeous, smooth-as-silk, scrape your pegs forever curves, so I might be up north to play again someday. When the time comes, I hope I remember the idiosycracies at the start of the twisties.

 

[FJRMGM]

well, you were lucky on that one. Cooking a right-hand corner is a sure way to get dead.

Good save but man, if there had been any other vehicle coming from the other direction.....whew...

I've always had problems with the transition from sunlight to shade, like in that corner, messing with my brain and what I think I see.