Practice session: Feeling for the limits of the Blur
Posted: Mon Jul 14, 2008 3:12 pm
So yesterday I did something I haven't done since my early days of scooter riding. I scooted out to a big parking lot and did some practice. On previous lot missions, I've practiced panic stops and slow turns. For this visit, however, I went out to the lot with the express purpose of practicing evasive maneuvers. This particular parking lot is especially great because it only has parking stripes painted the surface, so no physical obstacles. This makes it ideal for choosing a point or path I want to curve inside of, but it's ok if I don't make it. I got a great feel for the edge limits of the scooter and the way it scrubs speed in a deep turns. I even scraped the center stand just a touch. That was satisfying.
So yeah, practice is great, and now I feel a whole lot more confident about swerving maneuvers and the brake-then-swerve (not brake-AND-swerve) coordination. But more than anything, now I have a much better feeling for the handling limits of the Blur and I just couldn't help but smile from ear to ear. The Blur just has no business handling as good as it does. It's just amazing.
I rode off and zipped around the SW suburbs of Minneapolis for about an hour with my new-found appreciation for how deeply I could chuck the Blur into corners. It was just SO much fun. So yeah, had to share the love.
So yeah, practice is great, and now I feel a whole lot more confident about swerving maneuvers and the brake-then-swerve (not brake-AND-swerve) coordination. But more than anything, now I have a much better feeling for the handling limits of the Blur and I just couldn't help but smile from ear to ear. The Blur just has no business handling as good as it does. It's just amazing.
I rode off and zipped around the SW suburbs of Minneapolis for about an hour with my new-found appreciation for how deeply I could chuck the Blur into corners. It was just SO much fun. So yeah, had to share the love.