Sounds like you were close in visualizing your path and that helped. But I usually try to focus on my path and look beyond the vehicle in front of me. Unless you were exceeding your turning ability your rear tire should not have been "skidding out" so maybe you were going to fast for the conditions. Would need more info but it sounds like you still had some lean angleleft although you did say it was wet.As you said There is always room for improvement.

 

The road was empty, the car in front of me was about 100 ft away
Thanks anyway for the warning on looking beyond the car directly in front of me. I always do that on a road with trafic. I did it for years as a "cager", and always have been well aware of the littlest movements of cars and bikes around me that could forebear a change in direction or weird maneuver without warning.
I was surprised to see how many people learned to do this only when riding a bike and rarely paid attention when they were "just" driving a car.
As for lean angle, yes, I guess I had _a lot_ of lean angle left... first rides, rookie and everything. The rest of the road was dry, but the crease was not, being somewhat in the shadow (when you go around drifting on a 360 hp car you learn to pay attention to such details)
As for "room for improvement", I have so much the whole forum could park their bikes in it and throw a party...
Up to now I've logged a fat 27,3 km of riding on my HD, and an estimate 48 km of riding on the Suzuki ER5 of the riding school...


PS: who's the gal in your avatar? Does she have a riding jacket painted on her? It looks so from the picture.

 

Hu...I say Fu*k it. Aim for the cagers door and gun it. Then jump. If enough of us do that.....people will start avoiding us at all cost.

 

I think most riders still do not learn this. That is why many riders miss turns and run into guard rails and stuff. If you look far enough ahead and read the road you automatically slow down and set your bike up for the turns ahead.


I found the girl in a body painting forum, thought it would make a cute avatar.

 

Lots of great information here. One thing that hasn't been specifically mentioned is developing the habit of using both brakes everytime, thus creating the muscle memory that allows the rider to apply both brakes for maximum effect in an emergency. In other words if you routinely use both brakes to stop all the time it will be automatic when you really need them.

 

Actually it has been mentioned.
Maybe notin those specifics, but that is what the regular practice of good threshold combination braking is all about.

 

The only way is practicing BEFORE you need it. After... it's too late.
When the **** hits the fan, you'll be scared, and scared people revert to "ape mode". You'll do what you usually do or fall back on the old "all brakes full force!" default mode. It's true on a bike, on a bycicle, on a car.
Now, this is a problem for me because, driving sports cars, I've trained to detect brake locking and release them. On a car without ABS this is the correct thing to do. I can usually act within a few tenths of a second (included the time the brakes require to let go) because I don't even have to think about it. Unfortunately this seems the WRONG thing to do on a bike... but it's a well ingrained automatism for me. I'll have to re-train for the bike... and it won't be easy. Much harder than it is for somebody that starts with a clean slate.
Bad habits are harder to break than good habits to build.
Any advice?

 

Maybe we're thinking the same thing but saying it differently. For normalstreet riding I agree you should have the habit of using both brakes. However there are circumstances where I don't use my front brake and that doesn't equate to using "both brakes everytime".