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Dedicated to the memory of our Mentor, Uncle B.

This week I am very pleased to read all the entries and would like to make special mention about the senior experienced riders contributions. I am sure that Mystery and discotex had a difficult time in deciding which entries to choose. All is good, and as an aside I attended a group ride in the Wairarapa last weekend and I am delighted to see some of the other riders provided good insight and comments on how the day went for them.

Mystery and discotex, I hope the challenge of choosing your entries was personally rewarding – in having to read other peoples reports and their efforts in riding practice it does put a different perspective on things as a selector and I trust this was a useful exercise for you. Thanks for participating

Originally Posted by Mystery

Hi Guy
Really hard job trying to decide who to select. There were so many interesting and informative posts.
I have selected Miss.L. She overcame the urge to go home on a wet and horrible Auckland day and did an awesome job of handling poor weather, wind and motorway traffic. Well done!
Regards
Mystery

Originally Posted by Miss.L

I signed up for the girly coffee ride thinking it would be nice to get out and meet some other girls that ride. Saturday rolled around and the weather was crappy! raining then fine then raining again and very windy.
Met up in Barrys Point Road where McJim was waiting to escort us newbies accross the bridge, by the time we were ready to leave the wind was up again and I was ready to wuss out, but McJim wouldn't let us!
Long story short we rode from Takapuna to Botany to a really nice little cafe somewhere out near Glenbrook (through the back roads), then back home via the motorway. I practised riding in high-wind conditions - relaxing my grip, countersteering to keep from being blown off the road, maintaining open road speeds, and scanning ahead and around me on the motorway so I knew what the car drivers around me were doing.
I had a great time and couldn't sit still when I got home because I was so pleased with myself for concouring another one of my fears, big thanks to everyone that was there on Saturday

Originally Posted by discotex

Hey,

I think Macktheknife's advice about overcoming fear reactions has to be the pick of the week for me followed closely by Miss.L's post about handling the wind as that's been topical lately.

Cheers,
Discotex

Originally Posted by Macktheknife

I help run the AWNMR in Aucks and really enjoy sharing the knowledge of 26 years of riding with others, I am no expert but do have some good skills in training others to handle a bike. Every week several Mentors and newbies of various experience (and some more experienced ones too) meet to practice some skills. These can be anything related to handling a bike well, braking, cornering, reading the road, how to be a good pillion, what a pillion briefing should contain, building confidence in your riding skills. We do this in all weathers and on most surfaces, then we all go off to the pub for a meal/beer/coffee/whatever.

Last week we trained specifically to help people understand how your own panic reactions can work against you in situations. Some simple cone work highlighted that if you read the situation incorrectly, your own mind 'tricks' you into having a reaction that is actually going to make the situation worse than it was to start with.
Changing the way people looked at the exercise resulted in them suddenly seeing that it wasn't as hard as they had first thought, and starting to enjoy the challenge and rapidly improve.

The lesson here is very transferable, in corners especially, riders often think they have misread/misjudged a corner and try to take some kind of action based on this assumption, sometimes this action makes things worse.

A simple exercise is to ride a road you know well at moderate speed or slower than you normally would. Delay your entry point into the corner as long as possible, just hold off tipping in until you feel yourself start to tense up, then go into the turn.
Notice how it feels after you have completed the corner, was it as hard as you imagined it to be, or did you feel 'that wasn't so bad actually'? Usually this exercise is a real eye-opener, and the point is not to get you to go faster around corners but to understand that panic and tension in the body is not going to help you deal with the situation, so relax, trust yourself and the bike, and focus on getting through the corner.
Remember, this is to be done at a slower speed than you would normally ride, you don't want to put yourself at risk, just learn about your reactions. It is recommended to do this with a mentor to help you.
Ride safe
Mack

Your selectors for next week will be Miss L and Macktheknife


Heads Up and Enjoy