Adjusting to the bike riding experience

If you are coming from four wheels to two for the first time, the differences can seem daunting.

Cars deliver their responses to you through a myriad of different systems that use complicated electronics and hydraulics for power steering, servo-assisted brakes, fly-by-wire throttles and semi-automatic gearboxes.

You are cocooned in an air-conditioned cabin with your favourite sounds, drink and snacks handily nearby while you move through our crowded road network in a seemingly endless conveyor belt of other vehicles.

A bike is a much more visceral experience, where your body position and the tiniest movement of your hands can move you from the vertical to a 30 degree lean angle in fractions of a second.

Even learner-legal motorcycles have a power-to-weight ratio that allows them to out-accelerate most cars from the lights.

A bike’s acceleration is so, so much better than a car from a simple twist of the right wrist on your throttle hand that it can catch beginners out. But that direct connection also makes it precisely controllable.

Braking too, can be an assault on the senses if you are not ready for it. In a car you are strapped in and the vehicle’s attitude doesn’t change that much.

On a bike the weight transfer forward is much greater as the front forks compress and as you aren’t strpped in, you feel yourself tipping forward onto your hands.

And as you are using your right hand to do most of the braking through the lever to front wheel you will have much more precise feel for what’s going on under you. 

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