U-turns

[madmike2]

I love doing the drills from the DVD. Once you get into the rythm it almost becomes Zen like. I will say that the 12 foot gaps between cones come up pretty fast while taking my Goldwing through them. Riding the Wing in tight maneuvers is a mental thing. It's sort of like the theory about a bumble bee. A bumble bee really shouldn't be able to fly based on aerodynamic physics. The thing is, that the bumble bee doesn't know that....so it flys. You think "damn, a bike this big shouldn't be able to do this or that, but once you relax with it, trust your eyes and let the bike do what it can do, it's actually pretty agile, even in slow maneuvers. The only thing that has held my Wing back is me. Of course hopping on the FJR after the Wing almost feels like riding a mini bike.

So...nobody has any theories as to why left hand tight maneuvers are easier than right hand? O.K., it must be me. Yet another topic for my therapist. :blink:

It turns out that the genesis of the "bumble bee cannot fly" paradox appears to have been an inaccurate retelling of a famous aerodynamicist' lecture spread by the hack media of the day early in the 20th century.

But I would hazard a guess that a turn going one way "seems" easier than going the other way may be related to sight and balance reflex coordination influenced by the dominant eye in most people. Gauging distance on a fast pitched baseball, sighting in a target on a rifle, etc ., where the dominant eye used to gauge position to the objective perplexes the old coconut if attempted on the counter side with the less dominant eye. :umnik2:

EDIT: Upon reflection it seems to fit with why my BRC instructor pounded into our thick skulls to turn our head's to fact the direction of our objective in the U-Turn skills practice. The dominant eye will be at as close to the same plane as the weak eye and makes the brain more happy.

As an alternative idea, I read somewhere that right turns are more difficult because the right hand is being used for the throttle. There's a mental resistance because, unlike the left turn where the left hand is basically steering only, the right hand has other functions and those are also related to the perception (speed control, steady speed increases or decreases affect balance, etc.).

But then, I'm not a writer...just a reader and observer.

 

[SacramentoMike]

Old thread, but since it's back to life, and nobody's mentioned this: for practice, here's a great exercise they taught at the Lee Parks class.

Make circles around a post (or a traffic cone, or a tin can) in an empty parking lot. Keep your eye ON THE POST all the time. Don't look ahead, just watch the post, around and around. You can make the circles a little smaller over time, and/or add a bit of speed. This teaches and reinforces looking through the turn. After a while, reverse the route. The only way to do a u-turn on a narrow road is to be looking back where you want to go, not looking at your front wheel or at the side of the road. This exercise gives you the feel of doing that.