New Rubber

I have new rubber. I'm very pleased with it. I have gone with an Avon Venom 170/80/15. I spent about 6 days researching tyres, until Parky and I had an afternoon kip (as we are wont to do) and I spent 90 minutes dreaming about tyres. I awoke feeling not the slightest refreshed and decided it was time to make a decision and get it over with. I must say that it was an all consuming task. I have now had 5 different tyres on this bike and 3 have been abject failures, one was okay and now I have one that is byooooootiful. Each of the rear tyres have led to fishtails away from traffic lights in rainy weather and underpant-change-necessitating rear wheel drift when wending ones way downhill, on dry road, through the twisties (even up to a week after the last rain) and encountering a stream of runoff. This has lead to rear wheel drift through the runoff and semi-religious instances of near hi-side on a 538 pound machine on a 12% decline.

For the clan of 'motorcycle-jargon-differently-abled-persons' (of which i am, for the most part, a member) a high-side consists of sliding (usually around a bend) in a rear wheel drift over a patch of something unexpectedly slippery (in a straight line, or due to excessive speed on the entrance to a bend) with the result of your two wheels becoming rather more perpendicular to the direction in which you are travelling you would like.

This does not yet constitute a 'high-side'. One has only now begun the 'pant wetting' or given previous experience at high-siding the 'pant filling' portion of the 'high-side' experience.

Allow me to recap. You are wending your way down a mountainside on dry road. Given that it is Korea, the upcoming corner might be anywhere betwixt a 90 and a 180 degree curve. All of a sudden you encounter runoff from a long distant shower which is still making its way out of the granite. Your front tyre makes it smoothly though the curve, but your rear is in danger of overtaking it. The feeling is kinda funky before the clincher; your rear wheel regaining grip.

We have all seen the video footage of people taking a stack a 100 miles an hour, bike slips out from underneath, person (with full protective gear) slides 100 metres before getting up and walking away seemingly unencumbered by the goings on. This person was a) sliding and b) didn't get much air~time.

A high-side is what happens next, your rear wheel regains grip but the angle of your dangle means that there is no way in hell your bike is going to right itself. Physics dictates that the path of least resistance is flopping your clockwise (for example) travelling bike onto the left side of the tank. Remember that you are not travelling very quickly because of the sharp curve of the corner that you have entered. The rider is shot, like from a shanghai, directly into the air, with almost no forward propulsion. The rider rises, balletic, into the air and proceeds to fall (at 90 degrees to the ground) and lands with an almighty thud, shattering whichever bone happens to hit the ground first.

The high-side happens to people who are inexperienced, overly eager, and who skimp on their tyre spending. This is the only way i can explain spending $300 (Australian) on a rear tyre. But if you have ever experienced a high-side, you will agree that it is money well spent.