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Hi there fellow biker or aspiring biker. And welcome to “The Motorcycle Podcast”. My name is Patrik and I´m your humble host and friendly messenger sharing tips and tricks on motorcycling so that we all can become better and safer bikers.
Like I said in the introduction episode of The Motorcycle Podcast – I´m no motorcycle guru – this is a podcast by bikers for bikers giving you all the tips and tricks that they don´t teach you at the driving school and the tricks that you normally have to learn the hard way. In this podcast you will learn these tricks BEFORE you learn them the hard way and loose loads of money or even your own life. Because as we all know, motorcycling IS utterly dangerous and the margins couldn´t possibly be smaller. A simple mistake can have fatal consequences on you, your bike, your wallet or people around you. And we don´t want that. Do we?
And that´s the mission of this podcast. To make bikers better bikers one little step at a time. To share tips and tricks between bikers so that we can all live to ride another day. No matter if you´ve been riding for 40 years or for 6 months or never – we can all become better riders because motorcycling is a continuous learning process. And to be honest, experience is great but just because you´ve got 40 years of riding motorcycles under your belt doesn´t mean that you´re a good rider or even a better rider than a well educated biker who has been riding for 5 years and continuously has been improving his or her riding technique and knowledge. So for that reason guys, let´s get educated. Let´s become educated and skilled riders.
And before we start. Thank you guys so much for all the emails and you´ve been sending in lately. it´s amazing how many awesome tips and tricks you got out there. And please, keep them coming! No tip is to small!
And last but not least, thank you so much for following The Motorcycle Podcast and for giving the podcast such good ratings on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. It really helps. More than you can imagine actually. Because it makes more people finding it. So again, big thanks!
So, compadres, today´s tip comes from the Yamaha Teneré rider Tomas from Sweden and he says like this:
“Hi Patrik, thanks for a great podcast. I think you´re totally right. There are sooooo many small mistakes you can do on a motorcycle so by just talking about them people might learn from other´s mistakes. I think it´s great – I wish you would have done this when I was a beginner because I would have needed this a lot. My experiences has been quite expensive so to speak…
The first thing that came to my mind when I thought about tips and tricks wasn´t really a tip but it was a mistake I did once that gave me a sweaty lesson…
I was about to make a u-turn on a country road here in Sweden and ended up with the front tire very close to the left side edge of the road. I didn´t notice it by the time I was doing the u-turn but the road was slightly curved so it´s highest point was like in the middle of the road and the lowest points were the closest to the edges, if it makes sense.
The road was pretty narrow so I went as far out right as I could so that the turning angle would be better. But the road was too narrow to make a proper u-turn and I kind of realized it too late. All of a sudden my front tire was straight in front of the edge of the road in front of a ditch. So the motorcycle was basically 90 degrees to the road. And since the road was slightly curved I didn´t manage to back the motorcycle up towards the center of the road again. I was a pretty new rider and the motorcycle was pretty high and heavy so I couldn´t push very good with my feet and the gravel on the asphalt didn´t help the pushing, to say the least.
I ended up trying to jerk the motorcycle back and forth to get it rolling a bit backwards but since it was in a slight downhill it didn´t help much. I was fighting with that damn motorcycle for at least 10-15 minutes and I remember I got soaking wet of sweat trying to move it and save it from rolling down into the ditch. I finally managed to jerk it enough backwards so that it could turn away from the ditch and I could finally complete the very messy and very non professional u-turn.
So my tip would be: plan your u-turns well. Especially when you´re on narrow and curved country roads!
Well it´s a small thing and a small tip but it might be worth knowing about it because you don´t want to end up in those situations as a new rider.
Take care Patrik
Greetings from Tomas in Sweden!”
Thank you Tomas for sharing your little tip about u-turns there. I really appreciate it. And no tip is too small for The Motorcycle Podcast because we know very well by now how even the smallest thing can have catastrophic consequences when riding a motorcycle and I think your story is the perfect example of that. Luckily you got away with the sheer horror. And truth is, I´ve got a similar story to yours actually!
Google Maps once tricked me into a super small and narrow country road and I directly realized that THAT was not the way to go. So i quickly stopped by the side of the road as far right as I could and then I turned left as much as i could to make a u-turn. But the swing radius on my old classic Suzuki vx800 (my first motorcycle ever) was shitty as hell and it was obviously not enough for making the u-turn. Which I realized just a little bit too late. Well, no problem, just back up and continue the u-turn. Well that wasn´t gonna happen! Because yes, the road was of a little hill with the highest point in the middle. Same situation as yours Tomas.
So, the bike desperately wanted to continue to roll down into the ditch and I desperately wanted it to back up the road. But physics was not on my side that day and I tried, just like you, to jerk it like crazy to win a few millimeters every time. But it was a bit tricky because you kind of had to let go of the hand break lever in exactly the right moment when you pull the handlebars backwards to gain a few millimeters. And after a few minutes of jerking I was exhausted and felt like a thousand degrees and the sweat was dripping all over my body.
After about a 10 minutes fight I felt so embarrassed because I really couldn´t get it back long enough to be able to complete the u-turn and now it was kind of too late to give up and just go straight and turn somewhere else further down the road. Yeah because now the motorcycle was facing the ditch straight so it was just as hard trying to turn right and left. I was doomed to stay here for the rest of my life and I seriously considered whether I´m competent enough to ride or even own a motorcycle. And I was seriously contemplating just rolling the bastard into the ditch and walk from there. And if you´ve been listening to episode 1 of the podcast you know that it´s not the first time I´m questioning whether or not I´m capable of riding motorcycles.
Anyhow, I obviously had to change tactic. My right hand had started cramping from holding the front break lever for such a long time so I decided to jump of the bike and push it backwards. But it was so frikkin scary because I had never really done that before. Especially not in a situation like this when the 220+ kilo bike just wants to roll down the ditch with the law of gravity and you have to hold the front break lever down just to make it stay on the god damn road.
I finally built up some confidence, or should I say, despair, and jumped of the bike and managed to keep my right hand on the front break. So far so good. I was of the bike and the bike was not in the ditch. Very good. I then used the rest of the little energy I had left to push it as hard as I could backwards. And it was scary because the road was, just like in your case Tomas, super slippery because of all the sand and dirt on the asphalt. I almost fell once and my pulse was probably skyrocketing at that moment. Even though my Suzuki VX 800 was old, she was in very condition and I wanted her to stay that way. I really didn´t want to drop her on the road or in the ditch. I finally managed to push her backwards far enough to do the u-turn and I then put her on the side stand on the side of the road and turn her off. Yeah don´t ask me why but I left the frikkin engine on the whole time which was producing a lot of heat going straight up on me. As if the sun wasn´t hot enough already.
I needed a break! I took of all the motorcycle gear and just crashed in the grass beside the road to regain some energy and to dry up all the unnecessary and stinky noobie sweat. 20 minutes later I could continue my journey and boy how I promised myself to never do that mistake again. But I did of course. At least once.
So what is the problem here actually? Are the curved and narrow country roads to blame? Or is it the poor swing radius of the motorcycles me and Tomas had? No its not, it´s the driver´s fault of course. Bad planning is what it is. We should ALWAYS plan our driving and adjust it to the prevailing conditions. Whether the road is curved, narrow, full of traffic, full of animals or whatever actually.
So with that being said and to add to what Tomas said:
If you´re about to make a u-turn on a narrow road and you see that it´s curved and higher in the middle: for the love of Jesus, don´t go full swing radius on your motorcycle and end up with your front tire a millimeter from the ditch. Go as much to the right as possible and then turn left as much as possible as you can. And when you´re in the middle of the road, on the highest point, back down again and then turn, safe and secure, then go forward without breaking a sweat.
Jesus I´m getting sweaty just thinking about it again!
Do you have a motorcycle tip that you want to share in The Motorcycle Podcast? Brilliant. It doesn´t have to be a huge thing, it can be as simple as David´s in the first episode or like Thomas in this episode. I´ve said it before and I´ll say it again: the devil is in the details. So bring them details and let´s talk about them. Think about it the next time you´re out riding. What do you do? What little tricks are you using? What have you learned the hard way that might be interesting for others to hear before they make the same mistake? What mistakes have you done? Because I´m pretty sure you have a few up your sleeve.
If you have one, which I know you do, you send it to me on The Motorcycle Podcast on Instagram or Facebook. It can be in text or it can be a voice message. You decide. I prefer voice because it´s more fun and interesting to add your voice to the podcast. But it´s all up to you of course. Like I said, hit me up on The Motorcycle Podcast on Instagram and we´ll take it from there.
Thanks guys for listening and thanks to all of you who spread the word about The Motorcycle Podcast on Instagram and TikTok. Big up to you! Also make sure to follow the podcast in your podcast player to make sure that you won´t miss the upcoming episodes.
Two wheels, one love!
Keep the shiny side up folks!
See you next time in “The Motorcycle Podcast”
Adioooous!
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