stlar_admin

A picture paints a thousand words. I think that a lot of other people I didn't understand this at first, and tried to jam a bike into a left hander by cranking the bars left (counter clockwise). To quote Arnold in one of his movies, "Big Mistake!"

Anybody wanna go? KSU from Eureka QT at 9. Moderate pace.

First time I've logged on in months. MM.

It's STLAR on Facebook.

Welcome to STLAR. The following links are provided as a focal point to the philosophy, techniques, and general guidelines we as STLAR members generally prefer on our rides, events, and within our activities. Much of this information did not necessarily originate from within the the ranks of STLAR, rather it has become adopted preference. Once again, Welcome! STLAR ride Guidelines How to ride backroads 101 Group riding hand signals 101 Factors which can contribute to a crash

The latest patch for Invision Power Board has been applied, taking us to 4.1.19.4 Post here if you run across any issues.

The request has been sent to IPS to perform the upgrade... It should occur within the next 10 days... It may be later today... it may be 10 days from now... they can't/won't say when.

Minimum is 3... you and Ray are good-2-go.

Try now.

Click on your current name in the upper right hand corner of the screen... and from the drop down list select "My Settings" ... on the left hand side of the screen select "Display Name" and Enter your new display name in the box. You can do this 5 times each day... BUT DON'T ... you risk losing your account and don't get cute and change your name to someone else's display name... you'll screw up both accounts and the easy solution is to delete one of the offending accounts. Guess which one. I'll leave this feature turned on for now. If you are really concerned about doing this ... send Dog a PM and he'll do it for you.

In the next 18 to 20 days IPS will perform an upgrade to this website from IPS version 3.4.8 to 4.1 of Invision Power Board. When this happens all the colors, special buttons, STLAR branding etc will disappear and it will take Dog a while to put it all back. The board should be operational to post etc. if all goes well. If all doesn't go well the board may be down for some time. The most important thing for you to know is that once the upgrade occurs... YOUR USERNAME WILL NO LONGER BE VALID... YOUR DISPLAY NAME WILL BECOME YOUR USERNAME. There are two things to do to improve your chances of retaining your identity on the board. Make your display name something with no spaces or special characters... so for example "Road Runner" should be changed to "Road_Runner" because when you try to login you'll need to login with "Road_Runner" So you should be changing your Display Name before the upgrade to something you can remember, something you like (cause you are going to have it forever) and it should have nothing but letters, numbers and underscores.. the use of dashes (-) or anything like !@#$%^&*() may or may not work. Make sure you have phone numbers, emails or other means of contact for your friends in case there is an outage so you can still communicate. May the force be with us.

1. staggered formation when slabbing, but when we are riding hard, I want my whole lane, and intend to use it, so single file por favor! 2. Inevitably, there are fast people and there are those who want to ride slower. Not a problem. Ride your own ride and wave faster folks past you on the straights, We will stop before turning to get the group back together, no one gets left behind. If you come to a stop sign after falling behind, and no one is there stopped, continue straight, it means we did not turn off. 3. If you feel you must make a pass of another rider, do it on a straight and not in a corner. This is not the track, and there are very few people I trust enough to allow to pass me in a curve, and those people know who they are. 4. Hand signals- If the leader gives a hand signal of any kind, do it as well your self to signal those behind you. I use Left turn, right turn, I pat towards the ground to slow down, If I tap my tail section it means to fall into single file and follow. If I pat my helmet it means cop sighted. If I point at my eyes it means you have a light out, if I point at my gas tank, it means I need fuel. If I put a foot out on either side, look where it is pointed- it means there is something in the road, some sort of debris. 5. Gas- if you need gas, pull alongside the rider ahead of you and point at your tank. Everyone should do this one at a time to let the leader know eventually that a fuel stop is needed. 6. Stunts - Sure, a little wheelie here and there is going to happen. Use your head though. If you are going to bust out a big old stand up, pull out in the other lane and do it, so you decrease the risk of hitting one of us. 7. Law Enforcement- We do not condone evading pursuit. We will not support your actions in doing this should you choose to do so. Personally, I will not share info with LEOs should I get pulled over and you decide to run, but do not expect me to take off with you. I feel that running is a bad choice, but it is ultimately, your choice. Keep in mind that it is a felony and you will go to jail if you are caught. AGAIN, WE DO NOT CONDONE EVADING LAW ENFORCEMENT!!! 8. Passing the leader- On a pre-scheduled group ride, do not pass the leader unless you have already discussed it and set it up to happen, or you are waved by. If you still decide that you have to pass, do not necessarily expect that the group will follow you. If you want to lead a group ride, simply call one out and schedule it. 9. Gear- Please wear your gear, dress for the crash. If you are riding on a ride I am leading, wear a helmet and jacket at a bare minimum. If you are unable to come up with the needed equipment, call or pm me, I have extra gear if needed. I pick up enough chunks of people when I am at work, I do not want to do it when I am at play unless I really have to. It is your personal choice of what gear you wear, but it is my personal choice as to whether or not I will ride with you. Don't dress for the ride, dress for the slide. STLAR, as a group, cannot emphasize enough that you need to ride at your own pace. Do not try to keep up if you are not comfortable and capable of doing so. We will not leave you behind. Our groups can be very diverse. Do not ever feel pressured to keep up. I want everyone to have fun and to do so at your own pace. No one will be left behind, no one will be ridiculed for the speed they choose to ride. Everyone has their own comfort level. Stay in it.

http://www.ridemyown.com/articles/safety/handsignals.shtml Motorcycle hand signals are important for all riders to know and understand but especially when riding in a group. (When riding in a group the signals should be relayed back through the group.) START ENGINES With your right or left arm extended, move your index finger in a circular motion. LEFT TURN Raise your left arm horizontal with your elbow fully extended. RIGHT TURN Raise your left arm horizontal with your elbow bent 90 degrees vertically. HAZARD LEFT Extend your left arm at a 45 degree angle and point towards the hazard. HAZARD RIGHT A Extend your right arm at a 45 degree angle and point towards the hazard. HAZARD RIGHT B Extend your left arm upward at a 45 degree angle with your elbow bent to 90 degrees and point towards the hazard over your helmet. SPEED UP Raise your left arm up and down with your index finger extended upward. This indicates the leader wants to speed up. SLOW DOWN Extend your left arm at a 45 degree angle and move your hand up and down. STOP Extend your left arm at a 45 degree angle with the palm of your hand facing rearward. SINGLE FILE Position your left hand over your helmet with your fingers extended upward. This indicates the leader wants the group in a single file formation. Usually this is done for safety reasons. STAGGERED or SIDE-BY-SIDE FORMATION Extend your left arm upward at a 45 degree angle with your index and pinkie finger extended. This indicate that it is safe to return to staggered formation. TIGHTEN UP Raise your left arm and repeatedly move up and down in a pulling motion. This indicates the leader wants the group to close ranks. TICKED OFF Extend your left arm straight out with your elbow bent 90 degrees. Carefully extend your middle finger to clearly demonstrate your dissatisfaction with the other guy. NOTE: It is not recommended you do this when you are alone. Special thanks to graphics from: Ann Arbor Hog Chapter

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pace Yourself -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- by Nick Ienatsch Copyright © June 1993, Sport Rider Magazine -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The street is not the track — It's a place to Pace Two weeks ago a rider died when he and his bike tumbled off a cliff paralleling our favorite road. No gravel in the lane, no oncoming car pushing him wide, no ice. The guy screwed up. Rider error. Too much enthusiasm with too little skill, and this fatality wasn't the first on this road this year. As with most single-bike accidents, the rider entered the corner at a speed his brain told him was too fast, stood the bike up and nailed the rear brake. Good-bye. On the racetrack the rider would have tumbled into the hay bales, visited the ambulance for a strip of gauze and headed back to the pits to straighten his handlebars and think about his mistake. But let's get one thing perfectly clear: the street is not the racetrack. Using it as such will shorten your riding career and keep you from discovering the Pace. The Pace is far from street racing ? and a lot more fun. The Pace places the motorcycle in its proper role as the controlled vehicle, not the controlling vehicle. Too many riders of sport bikes become baggage when the throttle gets twisted — the ensuing speed is so overwhelming they are carried along in the rush. The Pace ignores outright speed and can be as much fun on a Ninja 250 as on a ZX-11, emphasizing rider skill over right-wrist bravado. A fool can twist the grip, but a fool has no idea how to stop or turn. Learning to stop will save your life; learning to turn will enrich it. What feels better than banking a motorcycle over into a corner? The mechanics of turning a motorcycle involve pushing and/or pulling on the handlebars; while this isn't new information for most sport riders, realize that the force at the handlebar affects the motorcycle's rate of turn-in. Shove hard on the bars, and the bike snaps over; gently push the bars, and the bike lazily banks in. Different corners require different techniques, but as you begin to think about lines, late entrances and late apexes, turning your bike at the exact moment and reaching he precise lean angle will require firm, forceful inputs at the handlebars. If you take less time to turn your motorcycle, you can use that time to brake more effectively or run deeper into the corner, affording yourself more time to judge the corner and a better look at any hidden surprises. It's important to look as far into the corner as possible and remember the adage, "You go where you look." DON'T RUSH The number-one survival skill, after mastering emergency braking, is setting your corner-entrance speed early, or as Kenny Roberts says, "Slow in, fast out." Street riders may get away with rushing into 99 out of 100 corners, but that last one will have gravel, mud or a trespassing car. Setting entrance speed early will allow you to adjust your speed and cornering line, giving you every opportunity to handle the surprise. We've all rushed into a corner too fast and experienced not just the terror but the lack of control when trying to herd the bike into the bend. If you're fighting the brakes and trying to turn the bike, any surprise will be impossible to deal with. Setting your entrance speed early and looking into the corner allows you to determine what type of corner you're facing. Does the radius decrease? Is the turn off- camber? Is there an embankment that may have contributed some dirt to the corner? Racers talk constantly about late braking, yet that technique is used only to pass for position during a race, not to turn a quicker lap time. Hard braking blurs the ability to judge cornering speed accurately, and most racers who rely too heavily on the brakes find themselves passed at the corner exits because they scrubbed off too much cornering speed. Additionally, braking late often forces you to trail the brakes or turn the motorcycle while still braking. While light trail braking is an excellent and useful technique to master, understand that your front tire has only a certain amount of traction to give. If you use a majority of the front tire's traction for braking and then ask it to provide maximum cornering traction as well, a typical low-side crash will result. Also consider that your motorcycle won't steer as well with the fork fully compressed under braking. If you're constantly fighting the motorcycle while turning, it may be because you're braking too far into the corner. All these problems can be eliminated by setting your entrance speed early, an important component of running the Pace. Using all of the available lane while entering the corner (square line) provides a number of benefits. It allows you to brake while upright, see farther through the corner and use a later corner apex. With a later apex, you can get on the throttle earlier as you stand the bike up out of the corner. The low entrrance line (dotted line) forces you to lean over even after the apex and is a major contributing factor to overshooting a corner. Always give the centerline some room; stay right except to pass. Since you aren't hammering the brakes at every corner entrance, your enjoyment of pure cornering will increase tremendously. You'll relish the feeling of snapping your bike into the corner and opening the throttle as early as possible. Racers talk about getting the drive started, and that's just as important on the street. Notice how the motorcycle settles down and simply works better when the throttle is open? Use a smooth, light touch on the throttle and try to get the bike driving as soon as possible in the corner, even before the apex, the tightest point of the corner. If you find yourself on the throttle ridiculously early, it's an indication you can increase your entrance speed slightly by releasing the brakes earlier. As you sweep past the apex, you can begin to stand the bike up out of the corner. This is best done by smoothly accelerating, which will help stand the bike up. As the rear tire comes off full lean, it puts more rubber on the road, and the forces previously used for cornering traction can be converted to acceleration traction. The throttle can be rolled open as the bike stands up. A tire has a given amount of traction that can be used for cornering, accelerating, decelerating or a combination of these. A tire that's cornering hard won't have much traction left for acceleration or deceleration. Imagine a linkage connecting your rear tire to your throttle hand. As the tire stands up from full lean, your throttle can be rolled open; the tire's traction used for cornering can now be converted to acceleration traction. This magazine won't tell you how fast is safe; we will tell you how to go fast safely. How fast you go is your decision, but it's one that requires reflection and commitment. High speed on an empty four-lane freeway is against the law, but it's fairly safe. Fifty-five miles per hour in a canyon may be legal, but it may also be dangerous. Get together with your friends and talk about speed. Set a reasonable maximum and stick to it. Done right, the Pace is addicting without high straightaway speeds. The group I ride with couldn't care less about outright speed between corners; any gomer can twist a throttle. If you routinely go 100 mph, we hope you routinely practice emergency stops from that speed. Keep in mind outright speed will earn a ticket that is tough to fight and painful to pay; cruising the easy straight stuff doesn't attract as much attention from the authorities and sets your speed perfectly for the next sweeper. Using your brakes entering a corner, or trail braking, takes a delicate touch on the lever. As the bike leans in and the tire begins cornering in earnest, there won't be much traction left for braking. Imagine a connection between the front-brake lever and the front tire: as the tire goes to full lean, all traction will be used for cornering; grabbing the front brake at this point will lock the front wheel. GROUP MENTALITY Straights are the time to reset the ranks. The leader needs to set a pace that won't bunch up the followers, especially while leaving a stop sign or passing a car on a two-lane road. The leader must use the throttle hard to get around the car and give the rest of the group room to make the pass, yet he or she can't speed blindly along and earn a ticket for the whole group. With sane speeds on the straights, the gaps can be adjusted easily; the bikes should be spaced about two seconds apart for maximum visibility of surface hazards. It's the group aspect of the Pace I enjoy most, watching the bikes in front of me click into a corner like a row of dominoes, or looking in my mirror as my friends slip through the same set of corners I just emerged from. Because there's a leader and a set of rules to follow, the competitive aspect of sport riding is eliminated and that removes a tremendous amount of pressure from a young rider's ego — or even an old rider's ego. We've all felt the tug of racing while riding with friends or strangers, but the Pace takes that away and saves it for where it belongs: the racetrack. The racetrack is where you prove your speed and take chances to best your friends and rivals. Riding fast everywhere hurts our image, your license and eventually your bike and body. Set realistic freeway and city speed limits, stick to them and save the speed for the racetrack or dragstrip. I've spent a considerable amount of time writing about the Pace (see Motorcyclist, Nov. '91) for several reasons, not the least of which being the fun I've had researching it (continuous and ongoing). But I have motivations that aren't so fun. I got scared a few years ago when Senator Danforth decided to save us from ourselves by trying to ban superbikes, soon followed by insurance companies blacklisting a variety of sport bikes. I've seen Mulholland Highway shut down because riders insisted on racing (and crashing) over a short section of it. I've seen heavy police patrols on roads that riders insist on throwing themselves off of. I've heard the term "murder-cycles" a dozen times too many. When we consider the abilities of a modern sport bike, it becomes clear that rider technique is sorely lacking. The Pace emphasizes intelligent, rational riding techniques that ignore racetrack heroics without sacrificing fun. The skills needed to excel on the racetrack make up the basic precepts of the Pace, excluding the mind-numbing speeds and leaving the substantially larger margin for error needed to allow for unknowns and immovable objects. Our sport faces unwanted legislation from outsiders, but a bit of throttle management from within will guarantee our future. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- THE PACE PRINCIPLES Set cornering speed early. Blow the entrance and you'll never recover. Look down the road. Maintaining a high visual horizon will reduce perceived speed and help you avoid panic situations. Steer the bike quickly. There's a reason Wayne Rainey works out — turning a fast-moving motorcycle takes muscle. Use your brakes smoothly but firmly. Get on and then off the brakes; don't drag 'em. Get the throttle on early. Starting the drive settles the chassis, especially through a bumpy corner. Never cross the centerline except to pass. Crossing the centerline in a corner is an instant ticket and an admittance that you can't really steer your bike. In racing terms, your lane is your course; staying right of the line adds a significant challenge to most roads and is mandatory for sport riding's future. Don't crowd the centerline. Always expect an oncoming car with two wheels in your lane. Don't hang off in the corners or tuck in on the straights. Sitting sedately on the bike looks safer and reduces unwanted attention. It also provides a built-in safety margin. When leading, ride for the group. Good verbal communication is augmented with hand signals and turn signals; change direction and speed smoothly. When following, ride with the group. If you can't follow a leader, don't expect anyone to follow you when you're setting the pace. http://www.micapeak.com/info/thepace.html

Sheesh. Give me a minute or two already. (I'm uploading and trying to setup a new one right now. The error messages should be gone now, right?)