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Originally Posted by GapJedi
The concept of feel (in regards to motorcycle operation) is the merging of a number of sensations. Effort, resistance, push, pull, pressure, and tension are some of the words that may describe some sensations of feel. Vibration, oscillation, rise, fall, tilt, and lean are some more. More of the merging concept comes from the fact that you feel things via many parts of your body. Your hands, feet, thighs, knees, butt, etc all give you indicators of what is going on. Your sense of hearing and sight also play large roles in letting you know what is going on. So the “feel†of your motorcycle is more than just sensations of touch, it is your total awareness of your motorcycle within an environment.
Some of this awareness involves judgmental aspects of the sensation such as the 1) the strength of the sensation, i.e. barely feel it or really notice it, 2) the length of a sensation, and timing between sensations, i.e. split second or multiple seconds, and 3) the order in which the sensations occur. But the glue that allows you to develop a “feel†for your motorcycle is the expectation. You are well onto your way to having a sense of “feel†when you know what sensations you expect, how strongly you expect them, the length of time you expect them, the timing between them, and in which order you expect them.
So back to cornering; what are some of the “feels†that one could develop? If we use terms from the previous diagrams, we should have Tip-in or Tip-out feel, Linear feel, Lateral feel, and Rotational feel. So lets add some sensations to the judgmental aspects list, and just think about Tip-in and the first part of corner entry for a moment.
The strength of the sensation:
Bar Effort: Are you using a little effort, medium effort, or a lot of effort
Steering Resistance: Do you notice little, medium, or a lot of resistance
Push/pull pressure or muscle tension: Is this similar to items a, and b?
Suspension vibration, general motorcycle oscillation: Do you make mental note of suspension movement and general vibrations of the motorcycle.
The length of the sensation and timing of sensations:
How long do you put a specific effort level into the bars before using a different effort level?
How long do you expect to sense steering resistance? What does it mean if the resistance is noticeably different than you expect?
How long do you expect to feel the suspension compress or stay compressed? Are you expecting to feel ripples in the pavement or a shudder from the motorcycle? If so, will the timing of these sensations be rapidly changing or slower changes with noticeable pauses in between them.
The order in which the sensations occur
Is your effort plan, easy, harder, moderate, and back to easy, or something else?
Do you expect the steering resistance to be similar to your effort?
Do you expect the front end to rise, then fall, fall then rise, bob up and down? Do you expect to feel smooth pavement or maybe a big jolt after about 2 seconds?
This was just an example of some thoughts that could be processed by your brain during only a few seconds of corner entry. Did you notice the “Do you expect†phrases in many of these sentences? I will pause here and let you decide what some of the things that this phrase is implying. A clue is, if you know what to expect, does that mean you only expect one set of things to happen?
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