FJRiders.com

But, can you ride slow?

bungie4 wrote: ↑Sun Oct 04, 2020 6:43 pm But, can you ride slow?

In motor school we were told, "Speed masks inability." They meant that it's easy to drag pegs at 50mph but doing it at 4mph is a whole different deal. I have been too chicken to ride my FJR through a practice course. The speeds are just fast enough that if it starts to go, it is very hard to stop. With protected bikes, the rule is that we don't put our feet down. We had a guy spiral fracture his leg doing that. We just let the bars catch the bike, pick it up and start over. The first week of motor school should just be called, "Drop your bike and learn to pick it up week." Haha. It's been 20 years since I went through that class, and 18 since I rode a work bike. I haven't even been to a training day in a long time. Most of my old friends aren't there anymore.

If you want to start doing stuff like that, cut tennis balls in half. They stay put but don't crash you when you run over them. They're also cheap and high-viz. The diagrams with measurements can be found all over the internet.

Oh, yeah: That guy in the video was really good. Super smooth and did it with a passenger. Damn!

Reminds me that I’m overdue for some parking lot practice.

That was incredible.

Moto ballet for sure. The one thing that is counter intuitive for most of us would be how he is leaning away from the turns. Don’t get me wrong, very impressive. I could not even begin to accomplish that without months of practice.

I'm not going to even try. Saves me from having to pick up the bike.

I would like to watch Cav try that.

I seem to remember Skooter taking part in Slow Races where the object is to have the longest time through a course. I'm pretty sure he fried his clutch doing that.

Hppants wrote: ↑Sun Oct 04, 2020 8:32 pm Reminds me that I’m overdue for some parking lot practice.

That was incredible.

We have a city park that is not busy at all. It has a great paved area for doing practice on slow speed turns. I use to do it a lot with my cruiser. It had a low seat height and if I screwed up I could just put a foot down and save it. The FJR is too heavy and tall for that. So I did it on my FJR but was just more careful.

Two things I learned.
1. Lean away from the turn.
2. Get your head around. I mean way around to the direction you want to go.

I haven't been to the park in awhile. I need to change that.

I can't do the things that guy does.

Take the bags off!

Fold the mirrors in.

Notice he has the clutch covered all the time.

How many of us will be reporting they just dropped their bike after watching the video?

ionbeam wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 9:08 am Notice he has the clutch covered all the time.

The friction zone was something I had to learn to use on a bike.

I grew up driving manual transmissions. However when I was learning to drive slipping the clutch was a good way to get a whack on the back of the head from Dad.

Here, the State Police offer free classes to anyone. They put all the cones out, have 2-3 teachers, break into small groups of 4-6 each, and then they run you through the courses and teach you. You will learn a lot. They did it probably 5-6 times each riding season until Covid hit. The problem they have is it's free, so people sign up, and then don't show up, so you might show up and only have 3 people show up, which sucks for them, but is great for anyone attending because you get a lot of instruction time. You can do the class as many times as you want.

My guess is that guy got a lot of practice from owning a Garmin GPS.

FJRPittsburgh wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 11:05 am My guess is that guy got a lot of practice from owning a Garmin GPS.

That's funny shit!

HotRodZilla wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 12:30 pm

FJRPittsburgh wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 11:05 am My guess is that guy got a lot of practice from owning a Garmin GPS.

That's funny shit!

That's too true to be funny.

Any of you have Mountain bikes? They're much lighter and if you drop one, no harm, no foul. For a simple intro, try the 10ft box: https://youtu.be/pkQJkdQkwaY. This is where half-tennis balls come in handy. Try it both ways, and then try it in a 9ft box. We can get 3 27.5 full suspension bikes in the 10ft box. My 29er makes it harder, but not impossible. Use a higher gear and modulate the brakes, in lieu of a clutch. When you get good at it, do it without backpedaling.

Yes, the skills transfer. I didn't see any good diagrams of the other courses. There's one with 2 lines of cones and a bunch of turns and another that is basically a serpentine route with super tight turns. We could get a line of 3 bikes to pass another line of 3 bikes in that. That was one of the hardest stunts I have ever pulled off.

ionbeam wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 9:08 am Take the bags off!

Fold the mirrors in.

Notice he has the clutch covered all the time.

How many of us will be reporting they just dropped their bike after watching the video?

I don’t need a damned video to drop my bike. JSNS!

Its been a while since I did a gymkana. Like a decade

I would probably screw up the course so bad there would be no reason to even have markers out there

HotRodZilla wrote: ↑Mon Oct 05, 2020 12:45 pm Any of you have Mountain bikes? They're much lighter and if you drop one, no harm, no foul. For a simple intro, try the 10ft box:

I'm a relatively recent convert to mountain bikes and it took me a while to get OK at tight single track hairpins without occasionally falling over. I'll mark out one of your boxes and see what happens.

Great video. I love that $h!t.

Canadian FJR

It has to be acknowledged that his passenger is showing almost as much skill as the rider is. Also, I wish they had not added the music to the video, I would've really liked to hear him ride the friction zone.