Who needs caffeine when you have decreasing-radius curves?

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Final­ly a day where there was­n’t a ton of fog at the high­er ele­va­tions. Even though it’s a lit­tle bit longer and the last few times I’ve tried I’ve got­ten socked in with fog, I rode Sky­line Boule­vard in to the office today.

I’ve rid­den Sky­line enough that it does­n’t have any real sur­pris­es for me. It does­n’t real­ly qual­i­fy as twisty, but it has some curves that if tak­en at a high enough rate of speed will force a rid­er to real­ly com­mit and stay com­mit­ted. It’s a pret­ty smooth, well-main­tained road and when the sun is shin­ing as it was today, it’s a real­ly beau­ti­ful stretch of road.

It’s not often that the com­bi­na­tion of road con­di­tions and my own com­fort lev­el at that time per­mit me to real­ly stretch my lim­its. But it real­ly is nec­es­sary to my devel­op­ment as a rid­er. If I can’t feel the pan­ic rise in the pit of my stom­ach I can’t train myself to hold my line and roll on the throt­tle. I keep on hear­ing it said (and I can say it myself) that I’ve nev­er dropped the bike because I was going too fast for the bike to han­dle a curve; I’ve only dropped the bike when I’ve chick­ened out and pan­icked. So some of those long, sweep­ing curves on Sky­line were great for me today. Com­mit to the curve, get in, stay in, then when the curve tight­ens and keeps going longer than I’m com­fort­able with, stay with it and gen­tly roll on the throt­tle. The reac­tion to the pit of my stom­ach drop­ping needs to be “stay with it” not “hit the brake.”

I’ve heard my tires chirp when I’ve down­shift­ed before, but today was the first time I’ve ever heard my tires make a sus­tained squeal when I was­n’t on the brake. Got­ta love engine brak­ing on a shaft-dri­ven bike. No, real­ly, I do love it. But maybe I should have tried slow­ing down a lit­tle ear­li­er before the turn onto Page Mill.

If Sky­line is an old famil­iar bud­dy who is glad to see you, Page Mill Road is that ornery bas­tard who has great sto­ries to tell even though he’s a pain to be around. There are a lot of first-gear switch­backs and the road is twisty enough that it’s real­ly a sec­ond-gear road in gen­er­al. Add to that the gen­er­al state of dis­re­pair – there are large chunks of pave­ment miss­ing every ten or fif­teen feet, a lot of loose grav­el right at the apex of curves, and even the recent­ly-paved smooth sec­tions are just paved over some real­ly uneven road, so the drops and bumps are just as dra­mat­ic, but not as sharp as they might oth­er­wise be. And hard­er to see as well.

Yet the view from Page Mill is gor­geous, and there’s rarely much traf­fic on it except for bicy­clists. So it’s a great road for try­ing to keep me on my toes and pay­ing atten­tion to the road. It’s either keep my eyes open or take the whole thing at five mph. Espe­cial­ly rid­ing alone it’s a road on which to stay real frosty.

So believe you me, by the time I got to work this morn­ing, I was awake!

Published by splicer

11 Replies to “Who needs caffeine when you have decreasing-radius curves?”

  3. Hell no. I have a bike with
    Hell no. I have a bike with some ground clear­ance. I’ve scuffed my Met­zlers with­in about an eight of an inch of their side­walls, so I have a lit­tle bit far­ther over I can lean, but my pegs haven’t even been close to the ground, and the parts that will spark when ground (eg my pipes) I’d real­ly rather keep from touch­ing the pave­ment, thank you anyhow.

  4. Well, it’s not as much about
    Well, it’s not as much about clear­ance, as it is about push­ing the enve­lope. There will come a time as you progress that you will spark. The first time will scare the fuck out of you. The third time, when you real­ize you aren’t going to die, it’s exilerating.By the fifth time, you’ll be used to it.

  5. No, it’s a lot about ground
    No, it’s a lot about ground clear­ance, and of course how far out things stick at dif­fer­ent heights on the bike. I can scrape the pegs of my Vira­go on every turn with­out push­ing the enve­lope *at all* because the bike rides low enough that it does­n’t need much tilt to scrape. You real­ly can’t lean a Harley with floor­boards as far over as an April­ia, despite what some folks might say after a few beers.

    Also, I plan on fol­low­ing the advice of my MSF ERC instruc­tor: nev­er scrape any­thing that isn’t on a hinge. Foot­pegs, OK, I’m hap­py to scrape them up. But I’d rather not drag any­thing that’s fixed to the bike.

    So have I ever “made sparks”? Yeah. But not on the Moto Guzzi. Only on the Vira­go. Again, with the Guzzi, It will be a while before I scrape the pegs. I have a lot far­ther over to lean before the pegs come near the pavement.

  9. Oh come on.
    I men­tioned
    Oh come on.

    I men­tioned floor­boards, “things that stick out” and “any­thing that’s fixed to the bike” **oth­er than foot­pegs**, all specif­i­cal­ly in the con­text of things that scrape. How is that in any way for­get­ting that there are parts of a motor­cy­cle oth­er than footpegs?

    And why would I have to men­tion crash­bars any­way? I don’t have any. I will FOR SURE nev­er make sparks with crash­bars on either of my motor­cy­cles (or in def­er­ence to you, my “scoot­ers” because nei­ther of them is a real motor­cy­cle, right?).

    Crash bars are a part not on a hinge, a part I think should not be scraped by the pave­ment. If your bike will go over that far and your crash bars are scrap­ing in the cor­ners, all you’ve done is lim­it­ed the per­for­mance of your bike.

  10. “Crash bars are a part not
    “Crash bars are a part not on a hinge, a part I think should not be scraped by the pave­ment. If your bike will go over that far and your crash bars are scrap­ing in the cor­ners, all you’ve done is lim­it­ed the per­for­mance of your bike.”

    Take a trip from Plac­erville to Auburn, and then say that.

  11. You mean Route 49? I’ll make
    You mean Route 49? I’ll make a point of it. I’ve only ever rid­den a short stretch of it, from Salmon Falls Rd to Rt 193, and hon­est­ly I don’t remem­ber that stretch par­tic­u­lar­ly well. We were kin­da going SW to NE and 49 goes SE to NW.

    All I’m say­ing is that if you’ve got some­thing that’s keep­ing you from going any far­ther over, um, then you’ve got to do rac­er tricks like hang­ing your ass off the low side of the bike in order to cor­ner any faster. If I’m scrap­ing non-mov­able parts, then the bike wants to go over far­ther than it phys­i­cal­ly can because that part is in the way. Remov­ing said part would allow deep­er, faster cornering.

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