Posted on 05/26/2005 12:28:56 PM PDT by martin_fierro
Nice Tourist there, and a lovely 'sea foam' handelbar in the background. Kinda looks like my garage sans a BMW or two....., :-)
Good post - there is a lot of ignorance of motorcycles in this thread. A low sider is very survivable and like you said, racers do it all the time at very high speeds. A high sider like from a tank slapper is a lot more dangerous as the rider is thrown directly into the road. Matt Mladin had one of those three years ago and missed the rest of the season.
The biggest danger in riding are automobile drivers that pull out in front of bikes.
Jimmie Moore got off at Brainerd at 180+ in '03 and would have been fine, but he hit the only tree on that part of the track before he slowed down and it broke his arm. We were both working out at the same gym in '03 and we (Jimmie, the gym owner and I) rode together as he was rehabing.
We have some super back roads here in Oregon. ;)
What did you think of Matt's performance at Pike's Peak; about half way through the race his rear tire went away, he stopped put on another tire and finished fourth and he still leads in the championship ~ that cat can ride!
Yep ~ ya gotta watch those larger vehicles that share the road ~ I always pretend that I'm invisible, so I'm never surprised by what a four or more wheeled vehicle does ~ when you think that everyone sees you is when you get smoked.
Mladin is in kind of strange situation. He is way too good for AMA but not good enough for MotoGP. World Superbike is an option but I don't think the money is all the much better than AMA and not enough to leave the US where Matt is obviously comfortable.
I once had high hopes for Yates and E Bostrom. Both are just horribly inconsistent.
Yates can ride, he's to big for 600's, he should have won Pikes Peak but he bobbled (I think his tires were gone) on the last lap and wasn't that E Bostrom that passed him on the Duc for the win. Too many bros racing and I get them mixed up. :)
Spees is a comer.
Yeah ~ I think Mladin likes it here, I know Suzuki gives him big $$ to race in this country.
It's hard to imagine a low side at 130mph? Very few 130mph turns out there, where you can spin up the rear wheel or get on the front brake too much and tuck the front. My guess is he laid it down intentionally or ran off the road then lost it and bounced.
Used to be a fact, reason # 1 for motorcycle accidents, cars making right turns in front of 'em. I think now its different. Everyday some expletive on the cellphone tries to kill me. Daily!
Watch a pro road race on Speed Channel and they low side at speed quite often; in a turn the front wheel goes away (washes out) and down you go on the low side. It happened to # 40 last week at Pikes Peak in one of the 600 cc races.
Anyone that lays a bike on purpose is a fool, ya gotta keep the tires on the road to stop ~ a bike sliding down the road on it's side takes a while to stop; metal and plastic don't work half as good as rubber for slowing you down.
I've heard guys say: "I had to lay it down" if the truth be known 99% of them tried to stop just using the rear brake and the rear tire locked up and they couldn't steer into the slide fast enough and boom, down it goes. :):)
I saw a racer on TV, dump his bike and climb on top of it doing 150+. When he hit the sand that's when things got exciting.
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