Anyway, back to the articles. The first one was called "Physical Motorcycling: Handling the Truth", and dealt with handling and turning. The first thing that jumped out at me was their description of pushing on the handlebars to turn the bike (countersteering, more or less). Even though we're all probably doing this next bit subconsciously anyway, it was neat to read about it -- while we ride, we're not really pushing the relevant grip forward. The main thing instead is to push the grips at a perpendicular angle. The author, Paul Kuhn, uses the example of a clock face -- if you're riding a bike whose grips are at the 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock positions, you may push the grip directly forward in order to steer. However, most sportsbikes' grips are more at the 8 o'clock and 4 o'clock positions. In order to put force on the bar at a perpendicular angle to the grip, you're not really pushing the grip forward at all, but outwards.

Here, I made this horrible illustration to sort of show what I mean. Notice if the grips are at 9 and 3, the red arrows point directly forward, but if the grips are at 8 and 4, the red arrows point outwards. The arrows are the direction in which you should be pushing the bars to make a turn.

The other point along these lines is to make sure you're pushing out, not down. Sometimes I push downwards onto the bar, since my shoulder is obviously above it, but that doesn't do anything but push force downwards. That won't help my turn.

The other cool article was in their "Proficient Motorcycling" section. It's the sixth part of their "Sportsriding Series", and focuses on shifting. I've always been really smooth and precise with my upshifts, but on the SVS, the downshifts are occasionally "lurch-y" and rough. Today on my commute, I tried applying the tip in the article, and lo! It worked! I need to practice more to smooth the downshifts out completely, but the bike didn't lurch once! Incidentally, I'm talking about downshifting while maintaining motion, not downshifting through the gears while coming to a stop.

So, what is this magic trick? Again, something incredibly easy. Squeeze the clutch, and right before you step down to downshift, quickly roll on and then partially off of the throttle. It's the rolling on the throttle that's key -- that way, even when you roll off the throttle a wee bit, you're still in a higher RPM range than you started with. If you just roll off the throttle and then shift, you'll lurch, because rolling off the throttle decreases the RPMs, and the engine will suddenly have to quickly increase RPMs in order to make up the difference -- at a constant speed, a lower gear will rev at a higher RPM than a higher gear. By rolling on the throttle first, you're more likely to match RPM speed with what the lowered gear is expecting. If the RPMs are already in the right range when you let out the clutch again, the result is a smoother downshift without the annoying lurch as the RPMs suddenly have to jump up a bunch.

In the same vein, the article gave a good reminder about not downshifting in a turn -- get your downshifting done before the turn, while you're braking in preparation. Since downshifting uses engine braking, which in turn transfers weight to the front of the bike, you might end up sliding out the rear wheel for lack of traction. That's hard to control when you're upright, and almost impossible when leaned over in a turn.