GStwin.com GS500 Message Forum

Well.... I did it today. I was going in to work, Cycle Gear. It was a slow right hand turn into the parking lot that has a slight grade, about 4%. Rolled in to the turn and I saw it, loose gravel. Front went out and I was on the ground, lowside on my right.  It really happens faster than I would have thought. It took me about 4-5 seconds to realize what had just happened. I thought I was going to be the only one ever not to lay it down... :icon_rolleyes: To add insult to injury I hear honking. Turns out there was a white pickup truck behind me that saw the whole thing. The were impatiently honking at me to get out of the way. I pick up the brake handle,  get the bike up and started to push it into the parking lot, white truck about 3 feet behind me then he swerves around and drives past.... No one else was out there that saw the drop as I guess I looked like my bike broke down, needless to say no one offered any assistance. By this point my right knee is hurting pretty bad and im pissed at myself for falling and the white truck for driving by. I get to the store and what do I see... The white truck, parked in front and a guy in his early 30's inside the store. I push the bike to where I normally park it, just in front on the side walk out of the way of foot traffic. Don't even take the helmet off, walk inside, find the guy, asked him.. Hey, did you see me go down back there? Yeah man, are you ok...  :mad: :mad: :mad: Trying to hold back I calmly said, your business is not welcome here. Please go out side, get in your truck and leave.

I hate the fact that he rides as well and didnt even see if I was ok.

After explaining to the manager why he got a call from a customer about me being rude he said people have gone down in that same spot before. The street sweepers come at night and push the loose rocks off the road onto the side right where the turn in is.... Well I checked the knee, its not to bad, grabbed a broom and swept the whole street side. Finally looked at the GS, I broke the brake handle, scrapped the right mirror a little, scraped the suzuki electro cover right off and scraped the last 1in of the exhaust. Overall, $5.25 in repairs and I was back on the road. No better place to brake stuff but in front of a cycle store. You almost cant even tell it went down. I have to say I'm happy I didnt have case guards. I feel that at that angle of drop the guards would have levered the engine and I would have smacked my head on the pavement. Just my .02.

I can still walk, breathe and ride another day. Ride safe and even if you take the same turn/roads every day, watch out. Stuff happens that we would never expect to change road conditions and if I had taken the turn at 5-6 instead of my normal 9-10 mph I may have been able to keep it up.

:cheers:

Well glad you are ok.  You know what they say there are 2 types of riders those that have gone done and those that will.

Quote from: Foreverunstopable on December 15, 2006, 10:46:40 PM
I thought I was going to be the only one ever not to lay it down... :icon_rolleyes:

Dam! now ill be the only one.

Quote from: Foreverunstopable on December 15, 2006, 10:46:40 PM
Trying to hold back I calmly said, your business is not welcome here. Please go out side, get in your truck and leave.

:thumb:

Quote from: Foreverunstopable on December 15, 2006, 10:46:40 PM
grabbed a broom and swept the whole street side.

:thumb: no one else will go down there until it snows again.

Im glad to hear your okish, put some ice on that knee and your be good to go in a day or to.
Well atleast it sounds like you lucked out on the damage.

Yeah, I only broke my pride...

After the fall the GS started right back up in all its glory. I was happy to see that the stock front right signal had just bent back then went into place with the flex tube it has. I cant say as much for a car crash at 5mph!

Question:      Have you laid your bike down yet?
You mean crashed.  :laugh:

Glad you survived, and it wasn't worse.  Hope you and your knee feel better.

Quote from: Foreverunstopable on December 15, 2006, 10:46:40 PM
The white truck, parked in front and a guy in his early 30's inside the store.  Don't even take the helmet off, walk inside, find the guy, asked him, "Hey, did you see me go down back there?"  "Yeah man, are you ok?"  Trying to hold back I calmly said, "your business is not welcome here.  Please go out side, get in your truck and leave."

This is where my sarcasm would kick in and add, "Thanks for stopping to help a fellow rider".

yup yup .. those are the guys that you just want to let all your anger out on ... me and my cusin was coming back from austin,tx and we got off on a pretty busy off ramp (to way traffic .. yeld sign both ways) .. i almost watched my cusin do a head on .. F-350 almost did not see us but stoped .. but the guy that had to seen us plan as day as he was looking right at us coming off .. desided he was not going to wait .. my cusin went to the left of him .. you could not stick a pice of paper between his bike and that car ... and the guy did not even stop did not even tap his brakes .. i locked mine up so i did not T-bone his car .. so .. just becareful out there .. ppl dont watch, and  dont care .

I laid down at the track this year.  I drove off the side of the rear tire because I was trying too hard to pass someone on a turn, and botched my posture.  (I had my weight on the inside, causing too much lean.  I might have also levered up on the peg, but I'll never know.)

It was the best thing I ever did, first because in the track environment it was relatively safe, and second because I really know what not to do now.

Forever: you need to add another category.....

____yes
____no
____yes, a whole buncha times (pandy)  :icon_mrgreen:

Glad your damage (and your bike's) was minimal.  :kiss3:

I have yet to lay it down at a stop or a turn.. but it scares the shaZam! outta me everytime I go through a turn or start to get alittle lean.. I have a phobia of loose gravel.

I slip on loose crap at turns (I mean intersections) all the time.  It's really important that you pretend it never happened.  Just keep looking through the turn.

Because a motorcycle is self-correcting, if you react, the odds are close to 0% that you'll do something to make your situation better.  Usually, your tires will re-grip, and the bike will recover itself.  You might have to recover by changing underpants, but usually that's all.

I think Chuck is so right here. The roads around here are absolutly awful this time of year, and some roads all year round. There are alot of trees over the roads here so the roads are often smiley with sap and leaves and some roads have gravel. I know all the roads that usualy have gravel and can have bad conditions and i ride them with much more caution but so often i have found myself lent over on a corner then seen a stream of loose gravel and stand the bike up braking gently to avoid sliding and then trying to correct my turn but so often been in the oncoming lane (thankfully mostly this happens at night and roads arn't busy here so ive been lucky) Recently ive been thinking that dirt bikes slide and recover constantly all the time and you don't often fall off, and i do alot of dirt bike riding. So instead of panicing and throwing weight around i do my best to make any slighty corrections and just ride it out. As Chuck, im always slipping on loose stuff.

Yeah good input on the loose stuff. I'm much more careful now in turns.

Sometimes when the roads are bad (ice, dirt, gravel, water, salt, sand, etc) I think it would be nice to have training wheels. Yes, I know that sounds weird.  :cookoo: I'm not sure if they could be bought as I've never searched for them (might be surprised). It could be a beefy but small wheel with a strong hinge attached at the wheel hub where a shock would run from hub to the wheel at the end of the hinge. The hinge and shock would allow the bike to sway either way but at a certain point, keep the bike from hitting the ground. I would have liked something of this nature when I first learned how to ride. I remember I got on my GS for the first time, not realizing the touchy throttle, hit the gas, did a little wheelie, and fell over five feet away. And for some reason, the three times I've laid it down it has only been on the one side.  :cookoo:

Thanks.  :)

I think training wheels would have been my second mod on my SVS....after the frame sliders that I *did* put on....  :thumb:

I don't think I have ever seen anyone just blow off another rider in need like that, especially right behind them. Heck, the neighbor that helped me right my GS a few weeks ago wasn't even the problem. (I stopped too close to the road edge and didn't get a foot down until the point of no return.)

Several months ago I saw several people trying to dig a Harley Road King out of a ditch. Often, cars stop in the curve where the ditch is to turn left. There is no room on the right for a car to pass on the shoulder, but enough for a bike to go around...except that the shoulder drops off after about 18 inches.  :o The bike was upright, but just about 2 feet below the road surface. I can only imagine hauling that hog out of the grass and muck with traffic all around.

No honking, just friendly help.

But then I'd honk at Pandy and help her too!
Hey, Pandy!

If there's a biker at the side of the road (no matter what kind), I stop...whether I'm in my car or riding my bike. Conversely, I've had auto drivers stop and help me when bikers have blown by (it's rare that they don't stop, though). I've also had Harley riders stop to make sure I'm ok...and BMW riders (heck, a BMW rider waved last week!  :icon_mrgreen:). I can't pass up a rider who might need, even if they've just pulled to the side of the road to adjust their gloves or gear, which is most often the case. Even if I can lend my cell or keep them company until help arrives, I'm happy to do it (and the karma seems to come around since I got a lot of help last week when I was the one at the side of the freeway   :icon_lol:).

Hi starwalt!!!  :kiss3:

Quote from: Chuck on December 16, 2006, 02:31:32 PM
I laid down at the track this year.  I drove off the side of the rear tire because I was trying too hard to pass someone on a turn, and botched my posture.  (I had my weight on the inside, causing too much lean.  I might have also levered up on the peg, but I'll never know.)

You should have your weight inside. thats what allows you to push the bike more vertical, by getting your bodyweight inside the turn.

Quote from: pantablo on December 16, 2006, 10:22:05 PM
You should have your weight inside. thats what allows you to push the bike more vertical, by getting your bodyweight inside the turn.

This is what I have the hardest time with: weight on the inside while turning.... I feel as though I'm going to fall over (even though with timid testing, I find that I'm able to lean the bike more when I'm leaning my body in the same direction that I'm leaning the bike). This is a mental thing I'm working on and have to practice more (track day....I really am going to take that plunge one of these days so I can keep up with the big boys on BAGS rides  :icon_mrgreen:).

Quote from: pantablo on December 16, 2006, 10:22:05 PM
You should have your weight inside. thats what allows you to push the bike more vertical, by getting your bodyweight inside the turn.

I meant I had my weight on the inside peg.  Which I should not have done.

again, thats the right thing to do, especially at the track where hanging off is appropriate. get your body over and also weight the inside peg. the weight transfer of your body position lets the bike turn with less lean, and having your weight on the inside peg helps the tire edge grip, not the opposite (which would be conventional wisdom). when you're ready to straighten the bike up exiting the turn, switch and weight the outside peg which will help straighten the bike.

this shot shows what I am talking about:
body off to the inside, my weight is supported by the inside peg and my outside knee on the tank. I am consciously weighting my inside peg. I can actually lift my outside foot off the peg without effect. bike has significant lean angle too.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v505/pantablo/pablo-bill1.jpg)

 :laugh: to me it looks like your weight is being held up with your knee that is draging  :dunno_white: but what do I know, I have I would say around 2" chicken strips on my rear tire...no rush to really take a turn that fast and lean that far over  : :laugh:

hahaha, knee is barely skimming the ground. This was taken a year and a half ago so now I touch even less-Once I touch to know where I am I pull it up a bit...

yea .. your just letting your knee do all the work  :cookoo:   :icon_lol: .
as far as the  dirt in the corner thing .. i try my best as i am coming to the corner to try and make a fast scan of it and look for any dirt or gravel ect.  that might be there .. this help when me ,css,stray  all went to big bend last year .. i came in a few corners a little hot tell i seen the gravel/dirt and let up and set it up a little so i was not so far leaned over that way if i did slide a little i could maybe keep the tire sides up :) .. stray on the other hand was not that lucky :( .. but he got it fixed and was ready to go later that day ! theres on intersection here on my way to work that i really get a good lean in to just cuz i can :) .. but i noticed some red broken brake light covers laying in that intersection so i backed off before it was to late :) you would think it would mess up your cornering (the look threw the corner bla bla bla ) but it dont

Pablo, we must be saying the same thing, but in different ways.  It's confusing to talk about weight, because with all the forces going in, it really only makes sense to talk about pressure.  But thinking about it in terms of "weight" makes it easier to think about.

Your weight is inside, of course, just by virtue of where your body is with respect to the contact patch.  The question is how much foot peg pressure you're using with each foot.  I've tried it both ways, and putting pressure on the outside peg gets me around the turn faster with less lean angle.  If you press the inside peg, you carry too much lean for the turn, which looks great in photos, but doesn't get the job done as well.

I went around this one turn two dozen times gouging up the pavement with my inside peg until I realized what the instructors were waving at me about.  By shifting foot peg pressure to the outside (still leaning inside for damn sure) I could breeze through it and started wishing the other bikes would get out of my damn way.  (There was a no-passing rule in effect for that corner.)

I'm not making this up.  That's from TOTW2, and what they taught me at the track.  It works.  Some of these links talk about cornering in bad traction situations, which actually brings us back on topic, but all of them regard highly "weighting" the outside peg:

http://forums.superbikeschool.com/lofiversion/index.php/t16.html
http://www.transworldmotocross.com/mx/how_to/article/0,13190,408350,00.html
http://www.docwong.com/st-clinc/snow1.htm
http://cindygross.tripod.com/cornering.htm
http://www.bayarearidersforum.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=95183

The last post in this thread is some guy talking about exactly what happened to me:
http://forums.superbikeschool.com/lofiversion/index.php/t566.html

Quote from: davidcl on December 16, 2006, 06:09:01 PM
Sometimes when the roads are bad (ice, dirt, gravel, water, salt, sand, etc) I think it would be nice to have training wheels. Yes, I know that sounds weird.  :cookoo: I'm not sure if they could be bought as I've never searched for them (might be surprised). It could be a beefy but small wheel with a strong hinge attached at the wheel hub where a shock would run from hub to the wheel at the end of the hinge. The hinge and shock would allow the bike to sway either way but at a certain point, keep the bike from hitting the ground. I would have liked something of this nature when I first learned how to ride. I remember I got on my GS for the first time, not realizing the touchy throttle, hit the gas, did a little wheelie, and fell over five feet away. And for some reason, the three times I've laid it down it has only been on the one side.  :cookoo:

Thanks.  :)

California Superbike school use a bike they call the slide bike or something, to simulate power sliding during turns on the race tracks - you have probably seen Hayden and Rossi doing it a fair bit. But anyway the bike has training wheels at the end of an arm on each side of the bike and basically you try to make the bike slide and it falls over onto the training wheels - at the sort of angle you would be cornering at, so you could get your knee down. This allows you to practice sliding without falling off.

This is one

(http://www.superbikeschool.com/albums/album02/aac.jpg)

are you not talking about the difference between low speed and high speed turns, i.e. in the low speed turns you keep your body upright and lean the bike over, and in higher speed turns you lean into the turn?

And as for the white truck, what an @$$hole.  if I crashed here I would be surprised if no one stopped to help. Hopefully thats an aberration and not the normal state of affairs there... are ppl hard in your town?  :icon_razz:

My first day I dropped it in the pouring rain trying to u-turn to park to get to an audition... car behind me startled me. Some guy helped me pick it up and was very consoling.  :cry: The lady behind me let me wave her off. Then I came back and dropped it again when I got on it (parked on the inclined side of the street). I crashed into a jeep that had lost total control on the freeway. 4 ppl stopped. It got backed over by a waitress (she left a note... but then again it was in front of her own workplace). Some asshat parking garage pressure washer knocked it over breaking his own leg (I hunted him down and extorted minimal repair cost from company). And the wind or some idiot knocked it over this week. But somebody picked it up. So its a crazy dangerous world out there but ppl can be helpful and kind too.  :dunno_white:

oh and previous owner was on a base in CO where the wind blew it over coupla times. But it's still like 95% good as new.  :cheers:

Jeeze your unlucky Indy.

When i came off a month or so ago it was about 10.30 at night so it was dark, the bike was on its side and i couldn't pick it up due to broken collarbone and slipped disc in my back. I had rung the parents and they were coming down to help but this car driver coming past slowed right down and rolled down his window and said i would help but i just don't know this car its a rental car, then drove off. I was like WTF you can't help me because YOUR driving a rental car your not familiar with. You obviously know how to stop the damn thing. At this point i knew my parents were only 5 mins away so i wasn't really angry just more shocked and amused by how crazy that guy was.

am I unlucky? I hope I am and that this isn't the normal rate of damages to a motorcycle. I was wondering recently how ppl keep their bikes so nice... and how they can afford to spend like 8-10k on a new bike when it's just going to get knocked over anyway.  :icon_mrgreen: Maybe its just luck, or my living in an urban area with a bunch of rain-addled doofuses. But is it bad? If I do get a "total loss" payment with no liability on my end for the last accident then I have made back approximately double what I paid for it. (from doing my own labor, hunting down the guilty criminal scumbags who did these things to my bike, and letting some things slide). its been a Buddha Loves You of a lot of work, time, and heartache, and it's got a couple flaws now, but still in pretty damn good shape. Most of all, thank modern society for the wonderful thing known as insurance, and liability.  ;)

This is frickin' AWESOME!  :bowdown: :bowdown: :bowdown: :thumb:

Quote from: Kasumi on December 17, 2006, 04:09:55 AM
(http://www.superbikeschool.com/albums/album02/aac.jpg)

Hijacked... lol

Good info on turns for the track tho.

Superbike school has some awesome equipment, awesome procedures, awesome ideas.  That would be one of my dream vacations.  With so much mythology involved in riding, they seem to try to figure out why things work and go at it in a very systematic and learned way.  Very cool in my book.

Hey Chuck,
There are lots of theories to going fast on a track and TOTW2 is one of my reference books on the subject. What works for one person may not work for another. Thats one thing I love about having all these references such as Code, Iensatch, Pridmore, etc.
I understand what you (and Keith Code) are saying, and I've put that to good use as well. I used that idea of strength from outside foot to inside hand to great effect, but more often I need more weight on the inside, particularly on turn-in, holding until I'm about to get on the gas on exit, then I weight the outside. Regardless what Code says, this does help me get the bike straightened. For me, at my pace, I find using the inside peg to "pivot steer", in addition to my outside knee pressure on tank and outside forearm on tank work much better. But others may have different results.

Its like what a racer I met once told me: There is no right line through a turn. Its whatever gets you through fastest, given whats going on around you. So sometimes you need a different line to get past someone, or to protect your inside line, etc...no one method of anything is perfect all the time.

I still dont think your weighting the inside peg is what caused you to crash. Like you said, you used to drag all sorts of things before trying the outside peg method. Tells me that even if you were putting pressure on the inside peg, even if you were dragging hard parts, the bike could be leaned over more, since you had previously cornered while dragging parts successfully. Make sense? I would examine other aspects of your crash to see what else could have caused you to crash. I dunno-I'm just rambling at this point...

it was the gravel.

Quote from: pantablo on December 18, 2006, 12:46:31 AM
I still dont think your weighting the inside peg is what caused you to crash. Like you said, you used to drag all sorts of things before trying the outside peg method. Tells me that even if you were putting pressure on the inside peg, even if you were dragging hard parts, the bike could be leaned over more, since you had previously cornered while dragging parts successfully. Make sense? I would examine other aspects of your crash to see what else could have caused you to crash. I dunno-I'm just rambling at this point...

That's ok, it's a good discussion, still only half-off-topic.  :laugh:  What I was doing at the time was accelerating hard around a corner that I was getting better at over the course of the day.  I found I could get around it faster each time by putting more of my weight on the outside peg, but when I went down I was thinking about another bike near me and whatever I was doing, I wasn't thinking about how to behave with my body.  I could feel how much pressure I had on the inside peg, but I wasn't thinking enough to lighten up.  Since my body weight was on the peg, which was on the ground, it wasn't on my tires, which took away some valuable traction that I needed while I was accelerating pretty hard (yes, even in the GS).

I'm sure there were a dozen factors involved, including too much power, too much lean, less-than-optimal tires, weak suspension (still using the GS shock at the time), and so on...  any one of those taken away would have been fine, but what I really "blame" is what I was trying to control at the time and failed, which was my balance of foot peg pressure.  So no, all other things being equal, simple foot peg pressure wouldn't take me or anyone else down, but as part of a symphony of factors, it can be the final straw.  (Holy mixed metaphor!)