Stuart’s GoldWing Blog

Limited relevance but it is a nice picture! Hardknott Pass last week; it focuses the mind on safety very effectively!

Riding in a group doesn’t absolve any individual rider of the responsibility for handling his own bike safely at all times and this must be his top priority.  But when you are part of a group it helps if everyone does their bit to care for other riders in the group whenever they can too – and of course everyone usually does this, which is what makes the companionship of group riding so valuable and group riding so enjoyable.

So there is a potential conflict between being part of a group ride and also concentrating sufficiently on your own safety, so you need to avoid any situation in which you might feel pressure to sacrifice your own safety because you are thinking of the group. And it’s not just the leader and Sweeper who are at risk, as the following sad story illustrates. continues………

There's more than one way of dropping off

Drop Offs are a way of marking a turning point on the group’s route so that the riders can make the turn reliably, even when they are not in sight of each other as they approach it.   Dropping Off means that a rider stops his bike near the turning point where he can be seen by other riders as they approach in order to indicate the direction to turn.

Even if a group has radio communication between every bike, using a drop off system is the only reliable way to keep a group together, because even the best bike-to-bike radios only have a relatively short range.  Drop Offs cannot be used on motorways and nor, strictly speaking, on Clearways and Red Routes, but on all other roads a drop off system provides an excellent way of keeping a group of bikes on route.

Using a drop off system has the great advantage of liberating riders continues………

A Staggered Formation works well on motorways but don't forget to make room to allow other road users to cross your lane to enter or leave the motorway

The time-honoured way of keeping a Group Ride together, or at least getting them all to stay on route so they can meet up again at the next planned stop, is a system of marking turns on the route by getting a bike to halt at a turning point, so that the other bikes will know which way to turn. In other words a “Drop Off” system. There are several variations on drop off systems and I will come back to that subject in more detail later, in a future Article in this series. This one concentrates on motorway group riding, when of course drop offs cannot be used because it is both illegal and highly dangerous to stop on a motorway – so a very different approach is needed.

A short hop on a motorway in your home locality for your regular group of rider presents relatively little difficulty, although there are potential problems, so there is little need for elaborate planning. But the principles of group riding on motorways are the same however long or short your journey might be, and if you are part of a group which is trying to make a ferry deadline to get back to UK you might face quite a long motorway slog across what is in some parts of Europe quite a complex network of motorways. And then you really will need to give some thought to how to keep your group together.

The only reliable way I know of keeping a group together on motorways requires each rider’s willingness to keep up, willingness to keep a reliable eye on the bike immediately behind (so no swapping around the riding order, so no overtaking) and an understanding of what to do if the bike following you drops back or disappears altogether – which is to slow down, keep it in view for as long as possible, so the Leader gets to know by the knock on slowing down of the whole group that something is up. Of course if you are touch with the Leader by radio you can tell him that way, but not all bikes, and not even all GoldWings have bike-to-bike radios.

Slowing down deliberately should have a fairly rapid continues………

An extreme test of group riding skills -start of the 7,000 bike Wirral Egg Run!

Group riding is popular among Wingers; it can involve anything from two or three bikes going out for an afternoon in their local area to an adventurous European tour for a dozen or more bikes and sometime huge group rides like the Blackpool GoldWing Light Parade, which has involved over 300 bikes.  Large parades like that one require a special type of planning which is beyond the scope of this Article but the other two examples are fairly common, indeed I will be doing both types this coming year, so it’s worth considering how those can best and most safely conducted.

Is there a best way of doing group riding?  Some people seem to think so; they have their continues………

25 ft diameter turns

I suspect that most Wingers get anxious about turning the bike in a confined space, for example doing a U turn is something most of us will try to avoid if we can reverse direction by different means. Even when you have acquired what you think is the necessary skill, if you forget the basics or make a poor assessment of whether a turn is viable or not you can easily end up dropping the bike, as I did with my brand new 2008 GL1800 in Germany last Summer.

Somehow there’s always an audience when you do this sort of thing and on this occasion there was also audience participation by one of the bikers present which, together with the sight of me rolling down the hill out of control for a few yards after dropping the Wing, would have provided excellent spectator value if anyone had been watching. continues………

Parking Lot Practice

Once it gets moving on a reasonable road surface, a GoldWing handles easily and you wouldn’t necessarily know your on a big bike – except of course for the comfortable seat and riding position, and other home comforts.  But at slow speed and especially on uneven or loose surfaces, a GoldWing becomes, in the minds of many Wingers, a frightening great beast, just itching to fall over and cause embarrassment or worse.  Most Wingers will have had a dread of slow speed riding, especially when they were new to GoldWings, including me.

Although its a skill which you have to keep reminding yourself to get right, and it also helps to give yourself some structured practice every so often, to keep up your skill level, I have found it possible to develop reasonable confidence with low speed riding.  And I’ve discovered – not least because I can do it – that confident slow speed riding on a Wing is within the capabilities of any rider who takes the trouble to learn and then to practise occasionally.

This article aims to help you learn how to avoid those buttock-clenching moments when you worry and wobble as you approach an awkward junction. continues………

I remember the first time I met an Advanced Motorcyclist, or rather a man and wife pair of them, shortly after I had bought my first Wing and probably at one of the first Lancs & Lakes Wings Meeting I ever attended, some eight or nine years ago. Their exalted status was mentioned as I was introduced to them by Bill Squires; he clearly felt it was something worth mentioning but at the time I had never even heard of advanced motorcycling. continues………