I have a confession. I never took a proper motorcycle safety course. I took and passed my road test for a motorcycle license on a scooter. I was in my 40s at the time, had school-age kids, and was using the scooter mainly for around town. My wife and I have gotten by with just one car for most of our married life, and the scooter gave me a way to dash to the store when my wife had the car.
But as the years passed, I upgraded to first a Kawasaki KLR250 and eventually all the way to a Honda Africa Twin, a tall and heavier bike that I write about here. I learned to ride better by watching videos, experimenting, experience, and talking to other riders.
Piecemeal, in other words.
Something an older rider told me early on stuck with me, and not to my betterment. He told me about escaping a collision by using something he'd learned in a motorcycle safety class---pushing down on the hand grip to make the bike lean and thus swerve out of the way.
So through the years, I've tended to push down on the handlebar, shift my weight, step more on one foot-peg than the other, etc. to cause the bike to lean. It worked, at least to some degree, and I've ridden for thousands of mile and spent hours practicing slow-speed maneuvers.
I could have made my life much easier if I had learned early on about proper counter-steering. Just Google "countersteering," and many, many videos will show you the basics. One I like is here.
But here it is in a nutshell.
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| To countersteer, push the left grip, causing the bike to lean left, thus turning left. |
- Find a place to safely practice, like an unused parking lot.
- Pick up a bit of speed, say 20 m.p.h. at first.
- Push the left hand-grip gently forward, not down, applying a tiny amount of force.
- Note that the bike leans left.
- With a bit of brake, you can use that lean to go left in a 180-degree turn, reversing direction back up the parking lot.
- Now try it on the right side.
- Repeat and repeat.
