Applying lessons learnt from skiing to the bike

[heather matthews]

Traversing off camber wet rooty trails involves tipping the bike away from the slope to maximise the contact patch but having your weight on the slopeside pedal and that pedal not necessarily being all the way down so as to avoid pedal strikes. Your centre of mass is over the contact point and your body and bike move in order to maintain that relationship.Fore and aft,laterally and up and down.That's what I was told back in the days of fully rigid bikes and I'm sure it must still apply especially as our bikes are much lower longer and slacker than they used to be.

 

[geargrrl]

COM stays over bottom bracket these days.

 

[SallyCat]

Traversing off camber wet rooty trails involves tipping the bike away from the slope to maximise the contact patch but having your weight on the slopeside pedal and that pedal not necessarily being all the way down so as to avoid pedal strikes. Your centre of mass is over the contact point and your body and bike move in order to maintain that relationship.Fore and aft,laterally and up and down.That's what I was told back in the days of fully rigid bikes and I'm sure it must still apply especially as our bikes are much lower longer and slacker than they used to be.

Tipping the bike away from the slope--whoa, that's really helpful! To now, I've dealt with off-camber, wet roots by saying things like "@#$%^&*(@#$!!" and finding a flatter, less-rooty trail. I can't wait to give that technique a try!

 

[heather matthews]

I was

Tipping the bike away from the slope--whoa, that's really helpful! To now, I've dealt with off-camber, wet roots by saying things like "@#$%^&*(@#$!!" and finding a flatter, less-rooty trail. I can't wait to give that technique a try!

I was just trying to illustrate a different technique not teach you to suck eggs. Plenty of times I've seen riders slide out when traversing on slopes that are wet and rooty. I've done it heaps myself so thought it was worth mentioning!!!

 

[SallyCat]

I was just trying to illustrate a different technique not teach you to suck eggs. Plenty of times I've seen riders slide out when traversing on slopes that are wet and rooty. I've done it heaps myself so thought it was worth mentioning!!!

Oh, gosh, I'm so sorry, I think my response came across wrong! I genuinely thought your advice about riding off-camber wet roots was helpful, and I am looking forward to trying it! I had a really bad time one day at a bike park that had that exact condition on many trails and it was a bit frightening and gave me fits trying to figure out how to handle it. So I am in earnest when I say thank you for your comment, I am very much looking forward to having a strategy for wet roots rather than just being anxious and avoiding them.

Thank you, and again I apologize for being unclear.

 

[heather matthews]

I'm sorry too for getting the wrong end of the stick. Being originally from the UK, sarcasm is sort of ingrained into our bones and sometimes we see it where it actually isn't. When I first moved to NZ I had to relearn humour and banter too. We use the same words but don't speak the same language sometimes. As my son puts it"Ooops,my bad!"

 

[SallyCat]

Ah, no problem! I'm a big fan of British comedy (Alan Partridge, Mock the Week, QI, the YouTube video of the guy chasing his dog, Fenton....) so I can see how the different cultural approaches to sarcasm and irony could be tricky. Thanks for understanding!

 

[KathrynC]

I'm sorry too for getting the wrong end of the stick. Being originally from the UK, sarcasm is sort of ingrained into our bones and sometimes we see it where it actually isn't. When I first moved to NZ I had to relearn humour and banter too. We use the same words but don't speak the same language sometimes. As my son puts it"Ooops,my bad!"

As a fellow Brit, I entirely get this! I have a close collaboration with a research group at UPenn and it is amazing how often things get misinterpreted in interactions with them, mostly through culturally different senses of humour. The worst was when I sarcastically said "oh yeah, we can just do x" in response to solving some difficult problem and a poor intern thought I meant it was genuinely going to be easy and got so frustrated with himself over it that he almost quit. It's almost easier to collaborate when there is a language barrier because everyone takes more time to check that everything has been interpreted correctly!