I almost gave up on motorcycling. A culmination of struggles led me to a
single moment that had me ready to hang up my helmet and take up knitting
instead. What happened? What did I learn from this experience? Stick around. It's
story time on this episode of MotoPhilosophy.
I remember the corner like it was yesterday. It was a gentle, downhill, slightly off
camber or, "fall-away" turn to the right. I set up on the yellow line, slowed way
down and tipped in. But the corner was steeper downhill than I thought and more
off camber than I thought. So I did what I was taught. I added counter steer and
stayed on the gas. The bike started running wider and wider. I added more and
more lean, but it didn't help and soon I was coming face to face with a silver
Honda Accord. I had no option. Stand it up and mash on the brakes, and run off the
other side of the road, and hope there was enough of a shoulder. There was, but barely.
The Honda driver, rightfully, flipped me
the bird and drove away. And then I got to feel the love of my wife as she
properly scolded me. But it didn't really matter this was the accumulation of
things I'd been experiencing for a while. Motorcycling just wasn't that much fun
anymore. Context is everything, so let's go back a little ways. From as long as I
can remember I was obsessed with motorcycles. When Top Gun came out I was
just as excited about that Ninja as I was the fighter jets.
"Highway to the Danger Zone"
After beating the crap out of several vintage 70s dirt bikes, I got my first
street motorcycle at Seventeen. A Yamaha Vision XZ550 that I pulled out of a motorcycle
junkyard. From that day on I simply could not ride enough, and I devoured any
information. This was long before the internet was even a thing so finding
information it was hard. So I would order books out of the backs of my dog-eared
motorcycle magazines. For our younger viewers; magazines were these hard copies
of printed articles on topics that you cared about that, for a small fee, they
would mail to your house monthly. Well, when the opportunity came up to become
an instructor for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, I jumped at the chance. I was
a disciple. I knew the material forwards and backwards. Talked the walk and walked
the talk, as they say. Speed was never really a priority for me but I was, and I
still am, obsessed with proficiency. How precise could I be? How perfectly could I
ride that corner? How well could I navigate some random canyon a thousand miles
from home that I'd never seen and may never see again? Track riding was the
next natural step, and then they built a world-class racetrack 40 miles from my front
door. With it came AMA and World Superbike races as well as all the track
time I could ever devour. And I devoured laps by the thousands. That first year I
put about five thousand track miles on my army green SV650. But as a rider, I was
struggling. The more pedantic I became on the whole "Slow, Look, Press and Roll"
concept; setting my entrance speed early and then gently accelerating through the
entire corner, the worst my riding became. I was having more and more close calls.
More and more moments of terror as I'd end up in a corner faster than I wanted
to be, and I felt trapped into staying on the gas, adding more countersteer, and
praying for the best. At the same time, even with all that
track time, I was falling behind all my riding buddies. I couldn't even dream of
keeping up with them on street rides any longer.
They kept graduating to the B and then A group, while I was left struggling in
the C group. Struggling with running wide, or giving up all my speed at the beginning
of the every corner, while everyone else just flew by me. It was just becoming a
lot less fun, you know? And then a group of us rode out to California for a week.
I remember my buddy, riding two up on his Honda 919, just leaving me in
the dust. I'd watch his brake lights stay on
halfway through the corner and I remember I berated him for taking so
much risk. "You're gonna get yourself killed with that kind of riding," I said
to him. He needed to set his entrance speed and then accelerate through the
entire corner. Like I was. The way we've always been taught to do it.
The way it's always been done.
- Don't you know the whole world puts on a sock and a sock and a shoe and a shoe?
- And it was on this trip that I had my encounter with that silver
Honda. I was doing everything by the book but it wasn't working. And it's not like
I was trying to go faster and faster. I was actually riding slower and slower.
But as my experience grew, I was drawn to more technical roads and more
challenging riding environments. But as the riding got more dynamic, everything
started falling apart. I was frustrated more than I was satisfied. I was scared
more than I was joyful. That afternoon after that last close call, I had
basically resigned myself to the idea that maybe I just wasn't cut out to ride,
and I would be wise to give it up before I could no longer provide for my loved
ones. Fortunately, a fellow MSF instructor, we all called Shorty, was closely
associated with the Freddie Spencer school and later the Yamaha Champions
Riding School. The story of my near demise in that California corner was
told over dinner. That was when Shorty introduced me to the concept of trail
braking. Just like so many of our fellow riders who leave comments on
our trail breaking video are skeptical, and even critical; so was I. No way! You
touch the front brake the bike will stand up and you'll crash. The front tire
is small and doesn't have much grip. You have to put the weight on the back tire
because it's bigger. Countersteering is the answer!
- That's how dad did it that's how America does it
But at the end of the day, what I thought to be truth... it
just wasn't working. And I didn't want to give up the thing that I loved so dearly.
So I cautiously started giving it a try, and over the next year of riding, I
worked on nothing other than trail braking.
- In Greece, he spent a year in silence
just to better understand the sound
of a whisper.
At first it felt so wrong,
like folding your arms backwards. But it wasn't long before it made
perfect sense. Speed equals radius. The faster you go the wider the arc of the
corner. By accelerating into a corner you are pushing the bike onto a wider arc, so
the only way to stay on the road is to add more lean and with more and more
countersteering. But lean angle isn't infinite, and if the
road condition isn't perfect, like downhill or off camber, you quickly get
yourself into trouble with few options to get yourself back out again. And I
know... I know what some of you are thinking; that you just need to enter the
corner slower. Set the entrance speed even slower. But how slow do you enter if
you've never seen the corner before. Remember I did this for almost 15 years.
I was obsessed with this method and I kept entering slower and slower and
slower, until he was almost coming to a stop before tipping in. And my corner
speed was so, so slow because I was just gingerly sneaking on the throttle
through the turns. With trail braking every aspect of riding got better. I can
honestly say, since that fateful afternoon when I came nose-to-nose with
a Honda Accord, that set this all in motion, and I got my head
around slowing until I could see the corner exit, I haven't overcooked a
single corner. I haven't had a single near miss. I haven't run wide not one
time. And I didn't just start riding easier roads. Quite the opposite.
I now seek out the twistiest, gnarliest, first-gear, off-camber roads, I can find.
Roads that made my former self cry, are now my happy place. I'm not gonna go into
intricate detail about how trail braking works because we have an entire video
dedicated to it, and we have more videos planned specifically about this
technique. But what I hope you take away from all this?
Well, I not only learned a new skill that made riding a joy again. I learned that
just because that's the way it's always been done, doesn't mean it's the best way
to do things today. I learned that to be successful I need to be adaptable.
Pedantic, highly structured, step-by-step, strict, sequential processes don't always
work in highly dynamic environments. Look, accelerating through the entire corner,
adding more lean as you speed up, only really works in gentle bends with near
perfect visibility, or controlled environments like racetracks, where you
already know every nuance of those nine corners. And even then, trail braking
still works better. Years later, I return to that same road
and that same corner. I was on a much more powerful bike, riding much, more
briskly than I was the first time. I knew the corner was coming. Using trail
braking, I rode into and out of it, and it was a nothing of a corner. The corner
that almost killed me? Yeah, it was downhill, and yeah, it was off-camber, and
yeah, the exit was obscured by the terrain. But using the more modern
technique, using trail braking, it was no big deal.
So, if you're watching this and you're having the same challenges I was having;
riding is less fun because corners aren't very fun. You're trying to
accelerate through every turn and it's just not working. I would encourage you
to watch our trail braking content. Open your mind to this idea.
It is, unequivocally, less risky. It gives you more choices. It gives you more
control. You are not locked into a singular option;
Gas, Lean and Hope.
Thanks for watching this episode of MotoPhilosophy. We really
hope you enjoyed it, and hopefully you learn something. If there's any topic
you'd like us to cover, as always, leave a comment. We read every comment and try to
respond to as many as we can. Thanks again and ride well.