A couple more notes on the weekend

It is brutal hot. Brian's evap cooling vest is the only thing keeping me from withering.

Almost spilled the bike yesterday. With all the changes, it feels like a different bike. Made a stupid rookie mistake in a turn. A bit scary, but a good warning.

I came into a turn a little too fast. Most likely the tires would have held on and I would have been fine. But in my hangover fueled grogginess, I grabbed a big handful of front brake. (Mistake Number 1: Never grab the front brake in a turn.) As it should of, the bike stood up straighter, meaning that even though I was slower, I was turning less and headed for the guard rail. So I turn the bars and lean over more to take the turn. If I would have ridden that out, I would have been fine. But I didn't.

(Mistake Number 2: If you make mistake number 1, don't let off the brake before you're through the turn.) So what's happening here is the bike is fighting to stand up, and I'm forcing the bars to get it to lean over. I let off the brake, and the "fighting to stand up" goes away, and I'm WAY over steering and the bike is more than happy to take all that extra force I'm applying and keep on leaning much more than it should.

(Mistake Number 3: When in doubt, throttle it out.) So at this point, the bike is precariously close to falling over and is pointing me over the double yellow and into the oncoming lane. And I grab the brake again to take some lean out of the bike. Now normally, this might not have been so bad. Bad, but forgivable. But with my suspension being mush, my bike was still sorting out the last two mistakes I made in the previous split second. That poor dead rear shock couldn't keep the rear wheel planted enough. So it broke loose, fishtailed, and scared the shit out of me until I could get it settled.

Honestly, it was probably the worst executed turn I've made in the last 10 years. The kind of thing that puts new riders in the hospital. But lessons re-learned. Don't override the road. Don't push a bike's limits until you know them. When you do fuck up, stick with the rules. I'm just glad there wasn't somebody behind me following my line at my speed. I could have been responsible for them taking a spill because of my poor riding.