1991, first time riding a motorcycle... After a 15 minutes instruction course near the barn from which we extracted the 200 cm³ bike, off we were in Idaho's mountains. As a 15 years-old French person, the whole experience was exhilarating and it wasn't long before I started to relax and open the throttle a bit on the dirt track...
As an avid mountain bike cyclist back in France, I hung to what seemed familiar - which worked well enough until the first sharp bend came... It came way too fast, I panicked, cycling reflexes took over, I shifted my weight back and pressed both handle levers hard - getting the (to a cyclist) very unexpected result of both disengaging the clutch and thus losing all engine braking while locking the front wheel hard (why did they put the front break where the rear, which helps me control slides, is supposed to be ?)... I was catapulted, followed by the bike... Nothing broken - just bruises, rashes and the flattened ego of a lucky idiot.
As a daily cyclist, being a motorcycle passenger on big engines always terrifies me: I'm on two wheels, with bicycle-like positions and trajectories... But everything happens monstrously too fast, my instincts for braking and acceleration are all out of calibration, so I always feel that we cannot possibly survive the next turn !
So, yes - I recommend not mixing bicycling and motorcycling.
As an avid mountain bike cyclist back in France, I hung to what seemed familiar - which worked well enough until the first sharp bend came... It came way too fast, I panicked, cycling reflexes took over, I shifted my weight back and pressed both handle levers hard - getting the (to a cyclist) very unexpected result of both disengaging the clutch and thus losing all engine braking while locking the front wheel hard (why did they put the front break where the rear, which helps me control slides, is supposed to be ?)... I was catapulted, followed by the bike... Nothing broken - just bruises, rashes and the flattened ego of a lucky idiot.
As a daily cyclist, being a motorcycle passenger on big engines always terrifies me: I'm on two wheels, with bicycle-like positions and trajectories... But everything happens monstrously too fast, my instincts for braking and acceleration are all out of calibration, so I always feel that we cannot possibly survive the next turn !
So, yes - I recommend not mixing bicycling and motorcycling.