Toe...you might not agree with this....but....if you organize a ride....& someone drinks....1 or 21....(alcohol peaks in the human body approximately 1/2 hour after the last drink)....& you feel you must take responsibility...cut them out of the group...it's the only fair thing to do for you @ the group (if your taking the responsibility)....think about it....on a track day or race day what do you think others would do if they found out you had been drinking prior to going out....not trying to be mean here Toe....just drinking (& especially riding don't mix...ever)....no I'm not a cop ....just a semi retired racer who doesn't like others taking my life...(& especially the SO's) in their hands when they don't have full use of their faculties....I don't want to argue this with anyone but....1 or 21 your not @ 100%....if you think you are...your full of shit!....if something were to happen to my SO...& the person had had just 1.....I guess their families would miss them (not a threat...just a fact)...lost to many good poeple to this type of stupidity....sorry for the rant but I would hate to hear you felt responsible for someone else's stupidity.......oh ya & jacking the thread....Mike
I wasn't there and we don't have bears in Texas that I know of but we have plenty of beer and not a small number of motorcycles (usually cruiser/harley types) parked ouside of places that sell alcohol almost exclusivley.......not restaurants.
They give the rest of us motorcyclists a bad name by the stunts they pull but, regrettably, it is a self pruning tree. I suspect those same folks aren't wearing helmets either so they probably won't get away unscathed with this behavior very long.
I haven't been riding very long so I am likely not as experienced a rider as some of you but I have been designing highways for a long time. Highway design takes into account what is called a stopping sight distance (how long it takes you to stop your vehicle if a hazard is ahead in the road) and the road should be designed so that, if you are riding the posted or advisory speed (like in a curve), you will be able to see a hazard far enough away to stop your vehicle before you get to the hazard. If we ride faster than the posted speed, our reactions to tell us to stop won't be any quicker but we will cover more ground than allowed for while our mind is making decisions about what our eyes see (the hazard). In a curve, the curvature itself, say in a wooded or mountainous area where you can't look across the curve, limits our view and that is also taken into consideration when designing the road. Going too fast anywhere, but especially in a curve, puts you in a hazardous situation, not just from the difficulty of finding your line and not crossing the yellow line, but also from being able to stop your motorcycle if you see a hazard. My MSF course was right, the motorcycle stops best when it is upright and traveling in a straight line. You have neither of these conditions when you are riding around a curve.
As I said, I haven't been riding very long but when I first started riding, I really enjoyed taking curves fast, even when I hadn't been on that road before. I would go 10 or 15 or 20 mph faster than the curve ahead, slow to 25 or 35 or 45 sign basically relying on my (imagined) quicker reactions to stop or just not thinking about the risk at all. I was lucky, I never came upon a road that had gravel from a driveway or intersection or a recent "chip seal" or a fence down with livestock on the road or a mud slide or deer or a stalled car or a bear or people looking at a bear. I was lucky. Hopefully, most of us have been and wil be lucky but I am going to increase my odds. Now, I'm going to at least check out the curve (or hill or anything else with limited sight distance) at a slower speed before I take the curve fast. I may even ask a friend to post himself in the middle of the curve so he can relay information about hazards that have appeared since we rode the curve earlier. I usually ride for pleasure only and get the hell out of Dodge into rural areas to ride on weekends. Our rural roads are all good roads but these hazards exist everywhere, no matter how well the road was made or maintained. I love riding but my safety is my responsibility and my duty to people who count on me. I want to ride for a long time. I don't really like it, but I've got to slow down in the curves and maybe look for some track time for that thrill.
Just some unsolicited ramblings.....
Ray
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