mileageslaves I wish I was fast like Richard or Ron
By David Cwi #28490 STOP
ME IF
you’ve heard this story before. I’m talking about when I first came to real- ize that there is fast and then there is FAST. I owe this bit
of knowledge to Richard and one eye-opening day in the Smokies. Chasing after him that day, I did learn that I had the nerve to pass folks standing in the way of our quick progress if they insisted on dawdling on narrow technical roads. And that well-developed passing “skill” still accounts for why, in the twisties, I’m faster than some of you. I stuff you behind a car I’ve passed without hesi- tation while you have second thoughts, thereby allowing me to get some lead time. While I’m not the fastest in the pack, I console myself with the knowledge that I always know exactly what my bikes can do when accelerating from HERE to THERE. But, you guessed it, by look- ing on the bright side of my twisty skill set I’ve already digressed. I’m trying to remember just how
far back in time this story goes. While I want to say I was on an air- head, for some reason I keep pictur- ing my incredibly tall, old school tank bag on an ’85 K bike with a cus- tom eight gallon Ray Randolph tank, low bars, and a narrow Pichler fair- ing. And I keep picturing Richard on a Honda Hawk GT NT650. If that’s true, then I must have been riding the K that day, since the Honda Hawk was introduced in 1988. By then, I was riding the K. The Honda was a naked bike
weighing in at maybe 400 pounds wet. With its 30 inch seat height and
102 BMW OWNERS NEWS May 2016
53-inch wheel base, it looked like a toy to me. In contrast, I had this black K bike that allowed me to roll along, comfortably lying on the bag with hands atop low bars. I mean, I was tre cool. How hard could it be to keep up with Richard in the Smokies? I mean his “toy” made less than 40 hp. Piece of cake. No problem. Or so I thought. Richard made it simple at a club rally: “If
you want to just come down to the Smokies, I’ll show you some great riding.” Back then I was basically a “slab guy” who lived in the East and went to rallies on interstates with no serious practice time on back roads, nothing like the riding in the Smokies. So I’d not spent much time at all on “technical roads.” But I still had the illusion that my skill set was up to the task. However, to put it bluntly, Richard “schooled” me. It took maybe three minutes before I was
flabbergasted. I mean, he just took off. And for sure he never gave passing a second thought; he just went. My first reaction was simple: He knows the roads and I don’t. You are more likely to be fearless (or stupid) if you think you know what’s around every corner and if the road holds no surprises, you are ready for that decreasing radius upcoming. Years later, I had an education about cor-
ners and their psychology from Susan Gal- pin during her seminar on “Conquering Corners Before They Conquer You.” Susan is all about “quick riding” on tech-
nical roads, which means she literally enters and exits corners while never hitting her brakes. While you are charging into the cor- ner, desperately shaving off speed and over shooting the apex, she is quickly motivating around in the right gear and leaving you to wonder how the heck she does it. (FYI, her seminar and on-road coaching is free and probably this year in the Smokies. You might even check out YouTube, searching “Susan Galpin.”) So there I eventually was, basking in her
practical wisdom and taking in her knowl- edge. I hoped to get better, but better only happens with practice, which of course oth- ers had time for, but not me. To this day I can recall her elucidating the difference between right hand corners and left hand corners from the panicked rider’s point of view. But before getting to that, let’s finish up the Richard story. Richard and Susan had a very effective
way of making me realize that I was the problem and not the bike. Often as part of her seminar Susan will ask you to get behind her while she rides YOUR bike through the corners with you as passenger. (Having never been a passenger before on a motorcycle, there is a picture of me getting off the bike the first time and kissing the tarmac.) Now early K bikes were a problem for
those of us coming off airheads. K 100’s are top heavy to begin with (so we claimed), and if you added a custom fuel tank with more fuel up top and put a giant tank bag on top of that, you compounded the prob- lem. While airheads approaching corners were forgivingly “flickable,” things were dif- ferent on a K bike. You had to shave off speed, pick a line and power your way through a corner, and the early bikes had no ABS. So clearly my problem in staying with
Richard was the bike. That little, snazzy red Honda Hawk was the ideal weapon for the twisties while I, poor I, was hampered obvi- ously by my K Bike slab-mobile. And then my bubble was burst. “Say Dave, I’ve never ridden one of those
K bikes. What do you say we swap bikes?” Oh, dear. You can guess the result of that exercise. He just took off!! That was my first day encountering the
mysteries of left and right hand corners. For years afterward I hooked a trailer to that bike and REALLY learned about cornering, as the trailer has no brake and insists on
lifestyle
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