I did a major forum software upgrade overnight and completed it this morning. I'm having some problems re-installing the forum add-ons so some features maybe missing but the forum seems to be working ok.

If anyone has any problems with the forum, please PM me, so I can check them out.

This topic came up on another forum I frequent and I thought it might be a good topic for us.

Over the course of 30+ years of riding, the most important thing I've developed is more sensitivity to how I am riding and a more refined and critical sense of what I'm doing wrong while riding.

One of the early revelations was to be able to diagnose after the fact and then before the fact when I had miss read a turn and took a crap line which caused the turn to be more difficult than it needed to be. Over the years, focusing on this has made me better and better at reading a turn and determining an appropriate line and speed for the turn.

A move to a midwest area where corners are often gravel strewn caused me to focus on developing my steering precision.  I spend allot of time riding a tire track line to be prepared for gravel in turns and use my ability to remain a constant distance from the center line as an indicator of how sharp I am on any given day or at a given time.

I've become particularly critical of how light my grip on the bars is and how I apply pressure to the bars. After seeing the movie Faster and watching Valentino Rossi flip Biaggi the bird with his knee on the ground after passing Biaggi, it was clear to me, that my grip was a good indicator of my comfort or lack of comfort while riding, and that I needed to focus more on using my core, lower body and balance to provide a neutral platform for upper body steering inputs. In short I needed to stop hanging on the bars.

Getting my grip to be light on the bars has improved the feedback I get from the bars and made me much more sensitive to how throttle use impacts cornering and improves stability. As I've become better at using the throttle to enhance my steering control. I've also become more sensitive to when I'm doing it wrong.

All the preceding combined have made riding much less physically demanding for me and made me much more sensitive to how much riding reserve I have when riding. It has also made me less focused on speed as an indicator of performance, and more on how well I'm executing. When I'm executing well, speed is easy. When I'm not, it is a struggle.

Comments?

http://youtu.be/CbTZkZTYkaM

Personally, right, wrong or indifferent I think about this scenario every time I pass on double yellows or at elevated speeds....

Polaris buys Indian

http://www.cyrilhuzeblog.com/2011/04/19/breaking-news-polaris-buys-indian-motorcycle-limited/

Just committed to purchase a 4th bike. Picking it up next Sunday.

Gonna need to buy dirt gear.....

Rant on.

As many of you may know, my wife is running for MN House. We just mailed a piece of campaign literature to voters pointing out that her opponent is the least productive legislator in over a decade, having authored or co-authored the fewest number of bills of any full time legislator since 1998.

We are being contacted by people who think this is good. People who don't seem to realize that if you want less regulation, you need to create a bill with less regulation in it and get it passed to replace the existing legislation which has too much regulation. If you want lower taxes, you need to create a bill with lower tax rates. If you want to get dead beats off of social assistance you need to write a bill to change the law so dead beats can't abuse social programs. If you want the thousands of things government does poorly to change or you want government to get out of the way new legislation needs to be proposed to change the way government does things and to get government out of the way. No new legislation, things just stay the same.

What is really funny is these people seem to be the people who are least happy with government and who want the most change, but they think doing the least is good.

If voters don't get the basics on how things get done in government, how the heck can they make decent decisions on who they want in office?

Rant off.