Sounds good. I can do early, and have pretty much the full day free.

Sunday works for me too. I'll have all day free.I have the tires, and probably by Saturday I'll have some more parts too. It's registered as of this morning so it's legal to drive on the street now. 

Saturday is out for me but I'm free all day Sunday. the hourly forecast for sunday on accuweather is showing only mostly cloudy until afternoon, with thunderstorms intermittent in the later afternoon. So I think Sunday is still an option.

Sooo....are we still on for sunday or not. The thread seemed to diverge a bit. If we're still on I'll plan to be at the lair at 10am on Sunday.

The downside of spring/summer weather is you never know for sure, lol! That being said, my WeatherBug forecast for my area (Rockville) now shows a 50/50 chance of storms/rain on both days, so it looks like it's equalized (with less over the weekend in general). I'm good either way, always a fan of the more the merrier and fine for whatever is most convenient for everyone involved. Rain gear will be brought either day.

Command decision. Back to the original plan. Riding sunda - my lair 10am.

wrenching on bikes and training on saturday.

Sunday. 10am. Lair. I'm sad to miss the wrenching session tomorrow I got the bike back together last weekend and did a tail tidy during the week. Just figured out a license plate light solution today (for VA inspection). This is going to make it lots easier to prep for track days. Also addressed the rear rebound issue (I think).

Out of curiosity, what sort of training/coaching?

Gabe, I'm teaching/coaching AGrip, Robert, and Sitwon who've recently taken the BRC course. As I often say, the BRC is necessary but not sufficient. 

We're filling in the gaps left by the BRC starting out with working on clutch, throttle and brake control. This involves a tremendous amount extremely slow speed work. Then we move onto combining these with cornering. From there we work on panic stops, swerving, and generally keeping the bike under control is all the typical situations that trip new riders up.

When I train someone, I typically work with them a couple times a week for a few weeks on parking lot exercises and then ride with them for their first 1000 miles on road. I've done this for a number of people over the years most recently with  Yun Lung Yang. 

Bravo sir! I wish I knew that when I graduated BRC last year! That reminds me I need to practice very slow maneuvers in preparation for a motorcycle police style riding class I'm taking in August (ridelikeapro). Not to get off topic too much but it was educational to watch, and looking forward to learning how to keep it better under control at slow speeds and obstacle avoidance especially. I had a bit of a panic moment last week turning right and saw a large plastic-covered newspaper right in my path (hidden by the hill/turn), an oncoming pickup truck in the left lane and little room on either side of the paper to maneuver.  

While I was able to go to the left of the paper and avoid the truck, it was still close and my reaction has me convinced I need to practice obstacle avoidance (in turns especially) beyond the obvious potholes and dings in the road and slower speed maneuveres. 

It's really less about obstacle avoidance and more about panic reaction management and unlearning the instinctive thing which is to stare at the thing you are afraid of (and as a consequence ride right into it.)


As a past-time, I coach, or should I say 'advise', quite a wide range of riders from beginners to those who have been riding for decades.

 

Bloody awesome blog entry Yermo, and very insightful even though I suspect you only touched lightly on some of these subjects. I would love to sign up for coaching sometime. On another note, you should be writing books, perhaps an autobiography - if your not/haven't already that is. What started out as a glance at your blog post just consumed me for some time. (I believe Amazon and many other publishers take some of the pain and hassle out of the process now as one of my friends has her own book out in paperback and e-book format - she remarked it wasn't difficult at all.)

Anyway, I digress enough - we now return you to your regularly scheduled program.

Thanks for the kind words.

Another great Miles-by-Motorcycle ride today! Hot, yes. Damp, yes. But another overall great day out with terrific people on some really good roads.

Had an awesome time and learned a lot from you guys and the day, including a little experimenting. Thanks again for the assist in picking myself up and patching the screw from the tire. had I continued on that tire unpatched I might have really "screwed" myself further. I owe you guys a round.

It was also an enlightening mental workout battling out the "yips" and getting confidence back in the seat after that minor spill. Kept telling myself "Relax" which seemed to be the my theme of the rest of the ride. Despite my luck today, I learned a lot and it was educational - both in new knowledge and in rediscovering my riding behavior, and that makes it worth a foot ache, new tire and a little injured pride.

Thus I leave you with the song that popped in my head from saying "relax" over and over to myself, lol!


http://youtu.be/lyl5DlrsU90

PS - Funniest moment for me: Discovering the location we were patching my Dunlop tires was in front of a (closed) Dunlop Tire store. What are the odds of that one?

Yes, I'd have to admit that was a funny wrinkle in the whole thing.It's a shame we don't have video of the 4 guys all working on patching the tire

and then I forgot that Yun Lung Yang was watching the whole thing: https://vine.co/v/hagqDpXjOw1?fb_action_ids=10101890795...{"10101890795138238"%3A536573353056499}&action_type_map={"10101890795138238"%3A"vine-app%3Apost"}&action_ref_map=[]

Yesterday's ride as recorded by the Garmin Zumo 500: