One good turn, I'm told, deserves another. One bad turn, though, apparently deserves several weeks on crutches and the threat of an MRI.
My fellow Wavemakers and Guests, distinguished and otherwise, I'm about to milk my recent scooter crash for a speech. There are many schools of thought about how to learn, among them my personal favorite, that teaching is the best way to learn. Another is the ever-popular "Hard Way." I've already done the latter. Today, I attempt the former.
The evening of February 8, I was on my way to the comics shop when I made several mistakes in executing a left hand turn on my scooter in traffic. Although I have been trained, when the moment came to execute, my nascent skills evaporated in a cloud of fear and uncertainty. This is what I should have done.
The proper method for making a turn at speed, taught in riding courses everywhere, is a four step process that takes you from approach to departure in chronological order. Each step is summed up by a single verb than succinctly states the essence of the action. They are SLOW, LOOK, PUSH, and ROLL.
SLOW means to reduce speed, usually through braking smoothly with both brakes, before initiating the turn. Why slow down? Slowing allows you to take the turn at a comfortable angle, as opposed to a more extreme one that might scrape parts of your ride or yourself against the pavement. Why slow first? Slowing first establshes a rate of motion which later steps and decisions will be built upon. Also, slowing during a turn is dangerous. When a bike leans into a turn, all available traction is needed to transmit power from the engine to the road. Using some of that traction to reduce speed can result in tire slippage, and also reduce the gyroscopic stability which that speed grants.
That evening, I had slowed adequately, but given my low level of experience, I could have slowed more to give myself a wider margin of error in other factors.
LOOK means to turn your head and eyes and face the point where the turn ends and becomes another straightaway. This focus allows you to use your body's natural ability to calculate intercepts to work for you. Once you have a feel for your machine, the mental grunt work of connecting your want to go to a point with the actions required to get there become automated, much in the same way you scarcely need to consider the many factors involved in pitching a gum wrapper into the trash.
My mistake in this step was that I broke concentration and tried to modulate my speed with the brakes, which, as I mentioned, is the wrong thing to do. Had I allowed myself to do it right, it would have been taken care of my doing more of the next step...
PUSH. This is the functional key, the physical action that makes a turn a turn. At low speeds, one moves the handlebar side to side in order to change direction. Above 10 miles an hour or so, depending on the radius of your wheels, there is a better way. A body, such as a wheel rotating about its center of mass develops torque according to the right-hand rule, in which your fingers point in the direction of rotation and your thumb indicates the perpendicular axis. This torque causes the rotating body to remain stable in a plane perpendicular to the direction of the torque. Conventionally speaking, this means across the plane of the wheel. Anthropomorphically speaking, the wheel "wants" to remain upright. In order to execute a turn at speed, you press on the handlebar in the direction you want to go. Left for left, right for right. This action alters the dynamic, causing the system, that is, the bike, to tilt and therefore change course.
Here is the point where I could have corrected my previous errors. If I was going to quickly, or if I had simply allowed myself to move as needed, I could have pushed more, thereby turning tighter and avoiding swinging too wide, the source of my panic.
Even a good turn must come to an end, lest it turn into an impromptu donut. This is where we ROLL. ROLL describes the motion you make when you adjust the throttle with the right hand. Rolling your fist toward yourself opens it, applying more fuel; this is called "Rolling on." Previously, we've seen how rotary motion of the wheels results in stability, and how to disturb that stability to change direction. In order to re-establish straight-line stability, this disruption must be overcome. The most effective way to go about this is through an increase in torque, acheived by rolling on the throttle. Yep, the answer it "go faster."
Of course, I never got to this point. About the time I should have been rolling on, I was sliding across...the asphalt.
Later this week, I will get back on my slightly scratched scooter, head out to an empty parking lot, and give myself some good turns.