ELKHART LAKE, Wisconsin, June 7 -- According to Charles Darwin, our survival instincts evolved over millions of years. Each instinct helped us avoid hazards and overcome physical limitations that could have turned us into lunch for a dinosaur, made us fall out of a tree or off a cliff, or just prevented us from finding a square meal.
When you take a human being and put him (or her) on a motorcycle, though, a lot of these instincts turn out to be dead wrong. They're great at 4 or 8 miles an hour, but they're lousy at 60 or 100. This was the lesson I learned at Keith Code's California Superbike School at Road America.
I've taken the school three times, and each time, I've learned more about riding than I thought could possibly be taught in one day. Code's school is mostly about cornering, which is the basis of fast (and safe) riding. The school has four levels -- grades, if you like -- but although I'd taken the Level 1 and 2 schools before, I decided to go back and take the Level 1 school again, because I needed a refresher on the fundamentals of cornering.
The school consists of five short lectures, each of which is followed by a riding session on the racetrack (usually about 10 laps or so, depending on how fast you are). The program starts with a lesson on throttle control, followed by turn-entry points, quick steering inputs, relaxation during turns, and finally, turning your head well in advance of a turn.
A continuing theme, throughout the day, was that in cornering a bike quickly and safely, you have to overcome a whole set of survival instincts -- instincts that, if followed, would lead you to do exactly the wrong thing and probably end up in the hay bales.
[Disclaimer: Keep in mind that what you're reading here are my interpretations and observations from what I went through at the school. None of this constitutes advice on how to ride, and it certainly doesn't represent Keith's advice on how to ride -- if you want that, go and take the school yourself; I recommend it highly!]
Chop wood, chop almonds, chop suey, but don't chop the throttle!
When you get into a corner and find that you've come in too fast, our survival instincts say, "We're going too fast, because we're using too much throttle and not enough brakes -- so let's cut the throttle and grab the brakes!" Problem is, if you do this mid-corner, you're going to destabilize the suspension and use traction you might not have, to try to slow down. The result is usually either bad or worse -- either you run wide and go off the road, or you low-side, go down, and slide off the road. The ol' survival instincts tell us to slow down, but they end up making us crash!
The intuitive approach may have worked when we were running around on two feet -- but on two wheels, with 100 horsepower, things are different.
The first solution is to make sure you get enough speed scrubbed off before the turn that you can handle it comfortably -- once you're in too fast, chopping the throttle and slamming on the brakes isn't the solution. The way to keep the suspension stable and get through the corner is to apply more throttle and steer aggressively -- or, if you must reduce the throttle, do it gradually.
Less (room) is more
The second lesson -- both in cornering and in overcoming misguided survival instincts -- is that cornering works best when you start the turn fairly late and approach the turn from the outside (from the right-hand part of the lane, for a left turn). The natural tendency for most riders, including yours truly, is to start the turn much too early and take what Code calls the "low, lazy line." The reason for this, he says, is that our survival instinct tells us that the inside line is safe, because it puts more distance between us and the edge of the road. The brain thinks this will give us more time to get through the turn and more room in which to do it.
Well, the low, lazy line is fine at the start of the turn, but then, you have to keep making steering corrections, because you've actually made the rest of the turn sharper, not gentler. Again, the intuitive approach may have worked when we were running around on two feet, at one humanpower -- but on two wheels with 100 horsepower, things are different.
Tote that barge, flick that bike!
Watch a motorcycle road race, and you'll observe that once a rider has set up his body position for a turn, he actually gets the bike leaned over very quickly, then makes no further steering input until he's ready to straighten the bike back up for the next straight (or to flick it the other way, if there's a turn in the opposite direction).
This is yet another case where our instincts are wrong. A lot of people (again, including your humble columnist) have a tendency to lean/turn the bike gradually. This is partly out of laziness, and partly out of an instinct that says, "If you lean the bike too quickly, you'll lose traction, and you'll low-side." Well, this can happen, if there's gravel or oil on the road, or if you're running on cold tires, but under normal conditions, Code says he's never seen it happen -- and, I had to admit, neither had I. What's more, turning too gradually increases the amount of space you need to make the turn -- if you're negotiating a tight corner and don't turn quickly, you'll run wide. If you're on the Pacific Coast Highway, this could mean going off a cliff!
The only good passenger is a limp passenger
Once you've made the steering input, Code says, it's important not to make any other "inputs" to the bike. What this means is, don't move, don't stiffen up, don't shift around, and don't do anything except gradually open the throttle.
By turning my head early, I got around corners much more comfortably -- "Hey, there's another acre I didn't know I had!"
A related point -- and still another survival instinct gone wrong -- is what Code calls "bad-passenger syndrome." This is what happens when you lean the bike over in a turn, but keep your body vertical, or at least leaned over at an angle less than that of the bike. The body (or, more to the point, the brain) may think it needs to be upright -- but all that does is force you to lean the bike over more than necessary, which makes it less likely you'll make the turn successfully.
The final lecture/exercise of the day -- and the final illustration of how our instincts can get us into trouble -- had to do with how we look through turns. Keith emphasized that it's important not just to look through the turn, but to turn your head before you reach the turn entry point. Our instinctual reaction is to start turning the bike as soon as the head turns -- but that would cause the rider to start turning too early, on the "low, lazy line." I found that by turning my head early -- as much as half a second or a full second before I actually started turning the bike -- I got around corners much more comfortably. It was like, "Hey, there's another acre I didn't know I had!"
Each one of Keith's cornering lessons improved my riding enormously -- I don't know what my lap times were, but in each of my previous days at the school, they improved steadily during the course of the day. What's much more important, though, was that I got through the corners with more room to spare, and with a lot less trouble at the end of the day than I'd had at the beginning. This translates to safer riding on the road.
Surveys have shown that something like 90% of all motorcyclists have had no training at all. These riders follow their instincts -- they tend to start turns much too early, sit too upright in turns, don't look through the turn early enough (if at all), and get much too "busy" mid-corner. This is why the highway-safety statistics look so bad for motorcyclists. As I've already noted (in Motorcycle Issues 101, April 21, 1998), if you take out the drunk, unlicensed, and untrained riders, the statistics look a lot better. Riding a motorcycle is always going to involve more risk than driving a car -- but a lot of this is because you can't get away with riding on instinct, the way you can on four wheels. On a bike, your survival instincts can lead you right off the road!
Copyright © 1999 John J. Kafalas