2Wheeltips

When you strap-on your protective gear and mount your two wheeled steed, does it ever feel like you’re about to step onto the battlefield? Once out there, you are likely to encounter 18 wheeled monstrosities, 4 wheeled sardine-cans, and single-wheeled hamsters spinning inside the heads of absent-minded drivers.

To bring the battlefield analogy home, did you realize (as was pointed-out to me by Mr. David Hough) that more people die in motorcycle accidents each year than did on 9/11? So, we have the War on Terror, but we don’t have the War on Motorcycle-Ignorance. Perhaps it doesn’t have a ring to it…

When you go into the battle, you can choose to be like Sun Tzu, a master strategist and a supreme tactician. Someone who knows the enemy and – perhaps more importantly – knows themselves.
If you’ve taken the MSF class, you may have encountered this same advice in perhaps less colorful form when your instructor strongly encouraged you to ride within your – and your bike's- limits.

Or you can choose to be an ignoramus. Run into the battlefield with your pants down and wearing a blind fold.

Not having a good understanding of certain counter intuitive principles of motorcycling (like counter steering, vision casting, dangers of left turns, and so much more….) is tantamount to being that guy dying on the battlefield.

…but you are here, reading this, so I know you are Sun Tzu. And perhaps the ignoramus will have to learn the hard way. There is, however, the third category, and these soldiers need our help.

You probably have a friend – or a friend of a friend – who wants to get into motorcycling or would like to improve their skill set. These eager soldiers must be sent to the right bootcamp. This is how you can help.

Tell your friends about 2wheeltips via Facebook, twitter, and whatever other means you might have of spreading the good word. Point them to an article, or a cool video, or perhaps the upcoming interview with David Hough (and many more to follow).

Growing our little corner of the interweb will enable Tony and Carol to dedicate even more time to 2wt and bring us even better content.

Let’s show our gratitude and appreciation by thanking them right now. Thanks Tony and Carol…you guys rock.

One of the reasons we all love to ride our bikes is so that we can lay into those curves and feel the heart pumping. Even if you like to take it nice and slow while riding, a situation may present itself where you will need to make a split-second decision. So let me ask you a question:

Are you accustomed to making decisions while your heart-rate is elevated?

I know we can all be great decision makers when we have ample time to think about our options, but how are you under pressure? What kind of decision-maker are you when your heart is going boom boom boom out of your chest?

To be a great decision-maker while your heart-rate is elevated you must train under such conditions. How? Glad you asked…

All you have to do is speed-up that inner-metronome every once in a while. Go for a bicycle ride with your dog; maybe some tennis with whoever rides on the back-seat of your motorcycle; don’t forget that humans are made to run, so put on those moccasins and get out there; try my personal favorite, mixed martial arts…whatever gets your ticker in the upper register.

I wish I could say that I am some kind of genius who has figured this out all on his own; alas, that’s not the case. Those guys who make motorcycle-riding their profession figured this out a long time ago.

Of course, there will be a few other beneficial “side-effects” from all this heart-pounding. Being in better shape will allow you to ride longer if need be and will improve your overall health…it’s what I call a win-win-win.

All this talk of running, tennis and so on makes me wonder…what type of other hobbies do 2wheeltipsters like to do? What is your favorite non-bike related activity? And please don’t say “watching golf”.

…so I just finished watching an episode of Super Bikes on the Speed channel. If you’ve seen a cool bike-stunt in a movie (Torque, Biker Boyz…) chances are it was performed by the host of Super Bikes Mr. Jason Britton.

Well let me just say that those guys are just irresponsible and frankly I can’t believe someone would show such …oh who am I kidding…that was some cool ass shit.

Now I know most of you will say that wheelies have no place in motorcycle safety, but let’s take another look.

What does it take to become someone who can ride his bike on the front wheel, back wheel, no wheel, whatever…?

It takes a lot of practice for one.

For another, stunt-riding is all about getting outside of your comfort zone and teetering on the brink of falling as a “normal” thing. It sounds like these skills are directly applicable to accident-avoidance, right?

…or maybe I’m dead-wrong on this one…what do you think?

I would like to thank SuperTinTin (a Skype snap-in) for sponsoring our Interview with the Experts series on Windows platform.

SuperTinTin is the best audio/video recording software on the market for recording audio/video conference by capturing original media data while making sure there is no signal loss.

Because it is not a screen-capture recorder, video quality is not affected at all if you open, close, resize messenger windows while recording.

SuperTinTin will allow us to share our interviews with the members of 2wheeltips.com

You can visit SuperTinTin at http://www.supertintin.com/

Thanks SuperTinTin :-)

by Dino Dogan

If you walk down the aisle at your local amazon.com you might see an attractive book cover with a motorcycle casually leaning on its kick-stand in front of its house; i.e. garage. The book is Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work by Matthew B. Crawford.

Personally I don’t rate books on a 5 point scale –all amazon like- instead I prefer to think of them in terms of worth-reading or not-worth-reading and this one falls deep into the worth-reading pile.

You will learn as much about your motorcycle as you will learn about yourself when this book takes an M. Night Shyamalan turn into the modern-corporate-dweller psyche.

Masterfully done, tremendously put together and brilliantly illuminating. A must read for all.

Dino Out

If you had a chance to interview a motorcycling legend, what questions would you ask?

I ask because 2wheeltips will have a rare opportunity to interview David Hough, a renowned advocate of our cause, an author of two must-reads the Proficient Motorcycling: The Ultimate Guide to Riding Well and Street Strategies: A Survival Guide for Motorcyclists, and a long-time instructor and the student of the game.

Oh, and did I mention that he is also a recent inductee into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame.  http://www.motorcyclemuseum.org/halloffame/halloffame.asp

My grandpa bestowed a few words of wisdom on me when I was a kid. 
He said “son, don’t get caught with your pants down; don’t wait to shit your pants before buying an extra pair of underwear and go tell grandma to iron my pants.”
I don’t know what his obsession with pants was all about but once, while in Prague, he traded his Levis for a car. Or was that just a commercial I saw?

What does this have to do with motorcycling? Glad you asked.
Turns out, everything.

Don’t Wait to Get Caught in the Rain

If you never rode in rainy conditions, perhaps you want to do a practice run on a drizzly Sunday afternoon. This will give you a chance to get the

By Dino Dogan
Now accepting friends on Facebook :-)

Here are some disturbing statistics.

People killed in motorcycle accidents for the years
2005=4,553
2006=4,810
2007=5,174
2008=5,290
How come the numbers are going up?

People injured in motorcycle accidents for the years
2005=87,000
2006=88,000
2007=103,000
2008=96,000
What happened in 2007 to cause the spike in injuries? 

Lets brainstorm and come up with ideas to lower these numbers in 2010.

What can we do about this?
How low do you think we can get these numbers?

 

By Dino Dogan
Now accepting friends on Facebook :-)

Women riders face several unique issues when it comes to motorcycle riding. Arguably, the biggest issue is the motorcycle itself.

The bike has to be correctly adjusted for your body size. This. of course, is not unique to women; when I purchased my bike, the seller was 6'2" and I am 6' even, so I had to make adjustments to the handlebars, the front brake and clutch levers, mirrors, etc. The mere two inch difference

By Dino Dogan

For those of us prone to introspection, I'll bet the answers will go beyond the usual…

“Oh, I love the sense of freedom” or
“It’s the wind in the hair” or
“I like the fact that I can’t be reached on the phone” (my personal favorite), or
“It’s the rebel in me” and on and on…

I decided to dig a little deeper and this is what I found. Tell me if you agree.

A famous psychologist (as far as psychologists go, anyway), Abraham Maslow, proposed that we (humans) have various levels of needs.
This is also known as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs as published in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation.

The story goes like this.