Road King Blog

In the emergency services, we were aware of a tendency of people driving by emergency scenes to stare at the action, and subconsciously steer their cars in the direction they are looking.

It’s called the Moth Effect.

When you ride a motorcycle, the effect is magnified many times.  You will go where you are looking.

• Stare at the edge of a turn, you’ll run off that edge.
• Stare at a cone on the practice lot, you’ll run over it.
• Stare at the ground in front of your wheel, you’ll go down.
• Turning right from a stop sign?  Stare at the center line, and you’ll cross it every time.

Turning the head and eyes an looking where you want to go takes some getting used to, but it makes a world of difference in my riding.

That’s Jerry Palladino, a well known riding instructor and author of the excellent Ride Like a Pro video series making a slow speed, tight turn.

Unlike the bikes we used in the BRC (which weighed around 320 pounds), you can’t toss a large touring bike around with sheer muscle.  You have to learn to make it do what you want it to with proper operation of the controls.  Give a small, light bike the wrong inputs while moving very slowly, and you’ll have to put a foot down and wrestle it back upright.

Do that with a 750 pound Road King, and it’s going to lean over and come to a rest on the engine guards.  You’re not going to wrestle it back upright.

And they’re no fun at all to pick back up.I know, because I did it.

Fascinating fact - if you tip a modern Harley over, it shuts itself off and displays “tip” on the odometer.  The computer will not let you re-start the bike until you get it back on it’s sidestand and turn the ignition switch off.

So, how do you make a 750 pound bike go where you want it to go while it is moving at a walking pace?  Three keys:

1. 1.Keep the clutch in the friction zone, supplying power to the rear wheel any time the bike is not straight up and down.

1. 2.Keep slight pressure on the rear brake.

1. 3.Turn your head and look where you want to go.

Check out the Ride Like a Pro site (www.ridelikeapro.com) for examples.

Based on the advice given in the Hahn book, and from a variety of other sources, I had come up with a plan to build my riding proficiency in slow, measured steps.

Phase 1:

Mid-day riding around the residential streets in the local neighborhood.  25 - 30 MPH posted limits, two lane roads with minimal traffic during the mid-morning timeframe.

Phase 2:

Adding short trips on larger, higher-speed roads around the neighborhood, returning after a short time to the roads involved in Phase 1.

Phase 3:

Spending more time on the Phase 2 roads, and venturing out for the first time onto multilane roads in the vicinity, with posted limits of 35-40 MPH.

Phase 4:

More time on the Phase 3 roads, and venturing onto slightly faster and busier multi-lane roads with limits in the 45-50 MPH range.

When adding complexity (like winds or higher traffic levels), I fall back a phase and work up again.

My wonderful wife, sick to death of listening to me talk about bikes constantly, agreed to the purchase of a motorcycle.  I set about looking for a bike, and happened across a 2006 Harley Davidson Road King Police at Seminole Harley Davidson.  The bike had only 1088 miles on it, and was in nice shape.

The dealer let me ride it around in their lot for a bit, and I was hooked.  A whole bunch of paperwork later, I rang the bell at the dealership and they delivered my bike to the house that afternoon!

Yes, I said delivered.  Even though I had already obtained proper riding gear, I was not going to try riding the bike home from the dealer on heavily traveled roads (or the Interstate) as my first time riding in traffic.  

The Road King is a big, hefty bike (around 750 pounds), and I felt then (as I do now) that a healthy respect for it’s size and power would be important to my riding career.  And I was right….