[couple edits] One time, I pulled the front brake to see what would happen on ice. What happens is you suddenly learn that steering the front wheel is the only thing that keeps a bicycle balanced. Once it skids, you have no steer, and whatever tilting momentum you had at the time is now permanent. Sliding on the ice was actually quite nice [compared to grinding into pavement].
I didn’t really understand it at the time, but it set the groundwork for a future understanding when I got into motorcycling. Having the front wash out and tipping into a “low side” crash is much more common on motorcycles, as it’s much easier to get to the limits of grip. Same deal with balancing: you’re constantly doing minor movements of the [bars] to keep you upright. It’s not the gyroscopic effect, it’s not your body moving; you’re steering with tiny corrections on a mechanism with geometry that makes it work intuitively and with self-correcting steering.
Every time you want to go left, whether you know it or not, you start with a little motion of pushing the bars right. Even if you ride with no hands on the bars, your body shifts to force the bars the opposite way first. The bars and wheel go right, the tires roll to the right, the bike and body fall left, your arms and/or the geometry pull the wheel and bars left. Bam, you’re now leaning and steering left while still in balance.
Every bicycle and motorcycle works like this. What makes it a skill worth honing is that once you decouple the “countersteer” motion from the entire turning process, it allows you to have much, much better control over the machine. In motorcycles, it’s really valuable to be able to command more or less lean when you misjudge a turn. Something I try to explain to every new rider because bicycles and motorcycles just make it intuitive with the steering geometry, but motorcycles have much larger consequences without any real escalation in required skill beyond general road testing.
[couple edits] One time, I pulled the front brake to see what would happen on ice. What happens is you suddenly learn that steering the front wheel is the only thing that keeps a bicycle balanced. Once it skids, you have no steer, and whatever tilting momentum you had at the time is now permanent. Sliding on the ice was actually quite nice [compared to grinding into pavement].
I didn’t really understand it at the time, but it set the groundwork for a future understanding when I got into motorcycling. Having the front wash out and tipping into a “low side” crash is much more common on motorcycles, as it’s much easier to get to the limits of grip. Same deal with balancing: you’re constantly doing minor movements of the [bars] to keep you upright. It’s not the gyroscopic effect, it’s not your body moving; you’re steering with tiny corrections on a mechanism with geometry that makes it work intuitively and with self-correcting steering.
Every time you want to go left, whether you know it or not, you start with a little motion of pushing the bars right. Even if you ride with no hands on the bars, your body shifts to force the bars the opposite way first. The bars and wheel go right, the tires roll to the right, the bike and body fall left, your arms and/or the geometry pull the wheel and bars left. Bam, you’re now leaning and steering left while still in balance.
Every bicycle and motorcycle works like this. What makes it a skill worth honing is that once you decouple the “countersteer” motion from the entire turning process, it allows you to have much, much better control over the machine. In motorcycles, it’s really valuable to be able to command more or less lean when you misjudge a turn. Something I try to explain to every new rider because bicycles and motorcycles just make it intuitive with the steering geometry, but motorcycles have much larger consequences without any real escalation in required skill beyond general road testing.