Jim Davis says:

I spent some time recently recalling the details of an event Cash and I participated in because it was important to the motorcycling world near home.

North of Houston there is a large Harley Davidson community that we encounter on the road with some frequency.

Cash and I ride Japanese bikes. The reputation of HD rider groups is that they want nothing to do with Japanese bikes or their riders. Not true of the group I’m referring to.

That group was well aware that Cash and I are experts in teaching motorcycle safety. Since they planned to host a motorcycle safety training weekend on a very large parking lot in a couple of weeks, they contacted us and asked if we could help them set up and man some exercises for them.

We agreed, particularly when told we could choose whatever events we wanted.

We wanted to add value to the event, not just have these riders run familiar ‘tired’ routines.

There were a few more than 20 bikes involved, and at least one of the riders was a motorcycle policeman. So, we first hosted a brief lecture on the parking lot and explained the concept of “preloading” the engine.

This is where you use the throttle to wind up the engine idle speed to about 1500 RPM and use the clutch lever to remove all power from the rear wheel. ‘

This is so that, in the event your bike is close to falling over at slow speed, you can QUICKLY add power to the rear wheel, accelerating the bike and standing it up. No time delay having to use the throttle and waiting for the engine to speed up.

Then we had the bikes approach a set of parking lot markings, perpendicular to those markings with the front wheel at a dead stop.

The objective of the event was to ride an immediate 90 degree turn to the left or right without crossing the closest lane marker.

Many of the riders were stunned because they believed that from a dead stop you had to drive STRAIGHT ahead until you had enough speed to control a lean of the bike.

After demonstrating how to do it, the group all tried it.

Many were successful but quite a few ‘almost’ made it before crossing the adjacent line like this:

We got them all together again and taught them the significant value of looking where you want to go.

We placed a cone (X) inside the lane and told the riders to use them as visual targets. This is how virtually all the remaining rides went:

All the riders were happy with the training and exercises. Cash and I made some new friends.

Nobody cared what kind of bike anybody else was riding.