Flow Practice

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Flow Practice

So, I attended Tom's Flow school last night,

Between the highway pegs and the saddlebags I earned a new name from Tom, "The Grim Reaper of Cones".

Tom determined my issue was my angle of attack, in other words I wasn't going deep enough into the maneuver before turning the wheel.

After that instruction my performance increased greatly, The ratio of Dead cones dropped immensely, the cones left in my trail after that weren't so much dead as just battered. A little more practice and by the end of the evening I was doing pretty well. A few more nights of practice and it will be a lot better.

I did pile Charlene into one of the telephone pole barriers and put her and me on the ground. It was weird, I came into the corner quickly, applied clutch, applied rear brake, but there was no slowing, for about a second and a half it was just uncomfortable because nothing I could do changed anything. Tom thought I was fixated on the pole, but I knew better, something had gone wrong, I was applying brake but there was none.

A little more practicing and it happened again, this time out in mid field. Once again I could feel my foot against the brake, once again I was pushing hard and once again there was no rear braking, the difference this time was I looked down at my brake foot. The problem was the highway pegs. For Four years and many miles I have had those pegs and never (luckily) had it happen while on the road. My right foot started out on the brake pedal and as I rode my foot moves outward onto the highway peg. Highway pegs don't move (well they do after you put the bike on the ground), but while depressing a brake pedal with part of your foot over the peg means the brake is never really depressed.