oliver said:
Great post, Saad. Very, very informative for newbs like myself.
You are definetly
NOT a newb. chronoxdragoon had posted the Tao's of life:
1) you dont know
2) you learn
3) you think you know
4) you realize you really dont know
5) when you know you dont know anything, that's when you know.
I would expect you are somewhere between 4.5-5.0. (I'm probably hovering over 0).
I'm sorry if I missed it, but what kind of tires do you have? I'm guessing they're relatively new since you mentioned the pips...?
Yeah, the rear tire is about 3 weeks old. It has 350 'easy riding' miles on it. The sides have pips still.
I don't know the exact name of the tires but I'll get back to you on that. I got the tire replaced from Santa Clara Cycle Accessories. The new tire was the only tire they had in stock for my bike (130/70). Sales rep told me that the tire is "cheap" quality and recommended a different "grippier" tire with slightly different dimension (140/80).
However, he changed his recommendation when I informed him I was a total newbie. The wider tire was going to make my bike 'lean' faster and could be hazardous for someone who hasn't mastered his/her bike yet. So, I ended up installing the 130/70 tire.
Maybe Chris was on softer and/or healthier tires and he had just a bit more traction available to him
I don't know the quality of Chris' tire, but I do know that he is an expert when it comes to riding sport bikes. He probably would have been able to avoid the slip even with my bike.
One of my bikes has Dunlop 208s and the other has Pirelli Diablos.
The reviews on the Diablos look great. I'm gonna get them on my bike (even though I have 3000+ miles left on them).
Thanks for all the great info :thumbup . AND once again, I'm not trying to pass the blame of my crash to my tires.. I was still going much faster then I should have and I'm happy it happened now.