Confession of an old fart

[racerman_27410]

Pat et al.... i've had the sand in the road lowside experience and i can remember the yips...one tip a good riding buddy of mine gave me was to look where i wanted to go.  If you see some crap in the road dont look at it... look at the clear area right beside of the crap/obstruction and thats where the machine will go.


works perfectly and over the last 10 years it has transformed into me riding the clear lines by looking where i want to go and taking it easy on corners that i cant see thru.


KOokaloo! (carefully  )

[Mark Olson]

movie Quote: "so you are a bullshit artist. Did you try to bullshit today?"

I've got two words for you - second one is "you" - see if your californicated brain can figure out the first.

well lets see , since I gave you all that great advice it must be "thank you".         In response I must say you are very welcome.



P.S. If you have no sense of humor please state that now and I will temper my responses for your benefit.

[StatDoc]

movie Quote: "so you are a bullshit artist. Did you try to bullshit today?"

I've got two words for you - second one is "you" - see if your californicated brain can figure out the first.

well lets see , since I gave you all that great advice it must be "thank you".         In response I must say you are very welcome.

First word was either "bless" or "thank" - I received a lot of good advice - some that I'll discard is buying a new bike with ABS or replacing my "antique sized" rims with "modern" ones and radial tires - I've been sliding around on bias-ply tires for (damn!) 38 years now (counting a few years of "pre-official riding" experience).  Modern tires would likely kill me in sort order!
The issue is not mechanical - through the thread of advice I came to understand that the issue is one of trust.  I've had a number of crashes over the past 38 years - some trivial (damn, broke the bar end mirror) - some more significant (the one mentioned, the drunk pulling out in front of me, Christmas eve 1986 .....) - I need to trust the bike.  In order to do so I need to tear it down over the winter (interesting, we have real, actual, snow covered winters here when we don't ride much), re-build the forks, re-build the shock, replace and balance the tires plus take care of some cosmetics (the bike, not me, I'm pretty much hopeless on that count).
In the spring I need to start ridin with purpose - 7/10ths on some tasty back roads - working the corners until they flow and then upping the velocity.
Failing that I'm going back to a Kawasaki H2 MK3 with tuned chambers on it - owned one in the late '70's - front end "feel" just didn't matter as the front tire was never touching the pavement while the throttle was open!

Thanks all - sorry if I was a "mr. crabby pants" (as my kids used to say when I was working full time and attending grad school) - and the advice was very much appreciated.

Yes - while studying psychology my "hero" was Maslow ...

P.S. If you have no sense of humor please state that now and I will temper my responses for your benefit.

[edit] I fixed the quote paragraphs so Doc Steve's response is clear. Hope you don't mind Steve.....Pat