Parking Lot Practice - Milestone? or Potential Tombstone?

[jonathan180iq]

To answer your question, you weren't on the verge of going down. You hit your peg for the first time and did the fancy "drag it like a boss" and probably had a smug look on your face as soon as you heard it hit.

What would happen next is that the peg would start to fold up and towards the rear of the bike, as it is designed to do. With your feet in the proper position, you would have felt more and more pressure on the outside of your foot as the peg trapped your toes between the asphault and the frame. The only risk of falling at this point comes from a decrease in speed. That added outside pressure on the foot is just nature's way of telling you to punch the throttle.

Bike are gyroscopes. They're horrible and unbalanced when not in motion. But spin a little faster and they become almost impossible to push over but much easier to maneuver and flick.

In a real life situation, you are limited in how much speed you could have added by the trajectory needed to stay on the road. But as long as you don't overshoot the apex and keep wheels on the asphault, you have found the butter zone of the turning radius. The next thing to do is to see how quickly you can make that peg-dragging, controlled, U turn... Just use your head and don't get too cocky. Bike are awesome - but also very humbling.