Trapped! That’s the best way to describe our situation yesterday morning when we had planned to ride. Looking out my window, I saw a heavy-duty pickup truck pulling a large trailer with a backhoe atop it. Soon, that heavy equipment was joined by a second pickup pulling a Ditch Witch, Then there was the work truck that kept stopping in the middle of the road right behind my driveway. There’s some kind of sewer work going on in the neighborhood, so we’ve been navigating around heavy equipment all week. But Saturday morning they boxed us in until mid-afternoon.
Our luck was not on the good side that night as heavy thunderstorms rolled through and dumped quite a bit of rain on our roads. The flowers and trees are loving all this moisture, especially the crepe myrtles, brown-eyed Susans, and magnolias (still blooming!), but we had to hope the roads would dry out overnight. But we did finally get a break and dry roads on Sunday morning. No work trucks in sight meant our only concern would be the heat; it was already in the mid-80s and heading up to 90 for a high with loads of bright sunshine.
As we drove over to get the bikes, we averted a small tragedy. Stopping at an intersection, we spotted another small box turtle trying to cross the road. Bill jumped out of the car and dodged traffic to pick up the little guy who managed to duck his head just in time to avoid an oncoming car (the turtle, not Bill). He placed the turtle on the floor of the car where the little ingrate proceeded to attack Bill’s motorcycle boots as we drove over to the woods to set him free. Mission accomplished, we arrived at the garage, geared up, and headed out.
The heat of the day, already approaching oppressive, was immediately dispelled by the cooling breeze that hit me as our ride began. I knew as long as we were moving, I’d be able to enjoy the ride. And it was an enjoyable ride right from the start. We headed onto the curved road where I could practice my counter steering. As I pushed on the handlebars to move through the curves, I began to really understand why motorcyclists love curvy roads. It’s like playing on the bike as I swerve and lean from one side to another.
We got to do S-turns on the small gravel lot before heading out to the larger neighborhood. At this early point of the ride, I remembered to look in my mirrors as I came to a stop, and I had a much better day continuing to practice this skill. Another skill I practiced was turning my head fully right as I turned right. This is more than just looking to the right; it is a full head turn. This allowed me to turn the bike tightly so I did not swing into the other lane of traffic. The head turn also meant the bike didn’t try and straighten from the turned wheel as much. Of course, I need to also look back left as I turn as an extra precaution against traffic, so I need to work on more quickly locking my head to the right and turning after a final glance left.
Another technique I picked up from watching police motorcycle competitions was to push my legs out as I try to come to a no foot stop. I was able to get the speedometer down to 1 mph with my legs out, so clearly this does help me balance. As for the police motorcycle competitions, I highly recommend watching some. The skills on display are amazing especially as they perform them on 700–800-pound large motorcycles. A fun video to watch is the Common Tread video where they enter a police competition (https://youtu.be/qf1j1shZi20).
There was no rain threatening us on our ride, so we were able to do our standing and stopping practice. It went very well as I could bring the Desert Sled to nearly a complete stop while standing. But not everything went well. While we were in the parking lot, I tried to do a figure 8 between 4 parking spaces, focusing on the center spot to help keep me between the lines. As I was making my second attempt, the bike lurched toward the left, so I straightened it quickly. But my right glove stuck on the throttle and I revved that way more than I should have, causing me to lunge across the parking lot. After that, Bill got off his R Nine T and measured the spaces, determining that they were 2 feet short of what they should be. That made me feel better about not succeeding with the figure 8, but I need to figure out why I lapse on throttle control.
We finished up our ride by practicing straightening and stopping drills and speeding to a stop. There would be no ride on the R Nine T for me this week as last night’s rain left the field swampy. I’ll have to hope my “on week” holds through to next weekend.
Luckily, I did spot a Black Swallowtail amongst some flowers, and the dragonflies clearly are living large off the mosquitoes as there were plenty about. I even spotted three Canadian geese chilling in the shade, and we startled a baby bunny as we rode into a court. We also made some young boys’ day as we zoomed by them as they congregated on the side of the road waving to us. We rewarded their interest with some horn beeps.
When we parked the bikes and got out of our gear, we were soaked in sweat but happy, and I spotted a cabbage white dancing along on this hot but lovely day.
Flutterby Biker 