Motorcycle Canyon Riding; High Speed Turns with Rocks in the Road

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As motorcycle street performance bike riders get more proficient they find them selves searching out more and more challenging highways to ride on. In fact eventually they find two or three and really like to let it all hang out and test their skills. As a young man living close to the Malibu Hills in California, I found myself bonsai?ing thru the canyons about three times a week. Eventually I met others doing the same. Being self-employed like a number of the high-performance riders, sometimes I would ride mid-week, evenings too, when there were little or no other cars on the road.

Indeed I would ride with full racing gear and literally become one with the road. Was what I was doing illegal? Well, I doubt that the speeds I was riding at would be considered anything less than a Two-Point Reckless Driving Ticket, although as I got better and more proficient, I certainly was not reckless driving, more like precision performance riding. Later, I took in on the track, grew up a little bit and raced against even better riders.

In doing all this, which I cannot say I condone it in hindsight and today there are more cars on the road and the bikes are even faster and more maneuverable, which is good and bad; in that you can have more control for safety, but are tempted to go much faster. Nevertheless more than once I had come around the corner and had my pulse and adrenaline catapult into hyperspace when there was debris on the highway, no where to go, no time to slow down and well you get the point.

My advice to younger riders is learn the fundamentals and although you should not play at this level too often, I know the reality of testosterone youth. Here is the deal; if you set up the turn and are doing everything right, you can still have things go wrong and make it thru.

So learn to do it right, take some SuperBike professional classes and take every turn seriously. This way if you end up hitting a rock you may hurt the bike, but you should be able to stay on it without crashing or taking a free fall on the cliff side, where no one will ever know you took a flying leap on a drop off and are resting on the other side of the canyon wall, ten feet from the bottom of the creek. The Helicopter Evacs do not need your business, nor do you want to spend the rest of your life in a wheel chair. Consider this in 2006.