So I've been wandering through a European website that seems to be aimed at newbie riders -
www.lazymotorbike.eu. I've actually found a lot of interesting and enjoyable reading there; the english translations are very good, with only the occasional humorous misspelling or wrong word.
Now my disclaimer is, the owners have asked that the text from their site not be copied. I'm going to take a chance that copying some of their text here, in order to make it easier for us here to process, isn't in the spirit of copyright infringement. They've asked that links be used instead, which I'm more than happy to do:
http://www.lazymotorbike.eu/tips/weather/#stormThis section has me a bit lost, and I was wondering if anybody here can comment on it based on their riding experience? It is advice on riding in bad weather:
Stay loose!
When you ride through a storm, you will feel as though you have to use all your strength, and you will contract your muscles, to keep your bike on the road, to compensate for the gusts of the wind.
But counter-intuitively, that is not what you need to do. On the contrary, you should relax your muscles as much as you can!
Why relax?
When you relax as much as possible, and your head and arms and legs move about in the wind, your body will not conduct the gusts of the wind to your motorcycle, there will be no steering input from the wind.
When you contract all your muscles, every gust of wind will be translated into a jerk to the steer. And with every movement of the steer, your bike will set into a corner, while all you want is to ride straight on.
But how do you manage to ride in a straight line?
It might sound strange, but your motorcycle is able to ride in a straight line all by itself. You help your bike in the best way by applying the trick described below.
So far, so good - I can accept the above, in theory at least. But the "trick":
A flappering knee
When you do this for the first time during a storm, you will be surprised about the effect:
If you stick out the knee at the side where the wind comes from, and you relax your muscles in your leg, and let your knee flapper about, your motorcycle will ride a perfect straight line.
The effect is simply baffling, especially when you were used to pull every muscle during heavy storms, to keep your motorcycle on the road, because you were certain that the wind would blow it aside.
But how is that possible?
You can imagine that your flappering leg will function as a sail, when the wind blows from an angle with your bike.
If the wind comes from the left, that means that the left side of the bike will try to decelerate. In the mean time, the wind blows the bike to the right, and both forces together compensate: as a result, the bike will lean in to the left, exactly as much as is needed to ride in a straight line.
Blown to the side
So, to ride in a straight line through stormy weather is not very difficult. But when it's stormy and wet at the same time, and you cross metal strips on a bridge, or white plastic stripes on the road, you will be blown aside for a moment.
But the nasty effect of being blown aside after passing a truck will almost disappear when you use the flapping knee trick.
Does this sound like something that is familiar to anybody here? If so, can it be explained in a way that might make more sense to me?