+1 for Akira Slide
cha-cha real smooth
The timing on the bottom left panel was so flawless; it’s reminiscent of standup comedy
fresh prince vibes
When I was a kid I had a friend borrow my bike and watched him do this (slamming on the front brakes and being flipped over the handlebars), fortunately he wasn’t injured, but I was mad because the front reflector broke off. In retrospect, it was worth it because I learned the easy way that you definitely should not do that.
Also that the default design of bike brakes is probably less safe for left handed people, since the front brakes are commonly on the left, but it’s important to put more pressure sooner on the back brakes.
In some countries bicycles and motorcycles have the front brake on the same side (right side). In Germany and USA I think it is not that way, but I change my bicycles to match my motorbikes - any other system may lead to unintended results. BTW - you should mostly be braking with your front brakes, I think you have have seen trouble from weight distribution shifting forwards.
The civilized world has the front brake on the right, front brake on the left is a north America thing.
Also that the default design of bike brakes
In UK it’s opposite I think
Pretty sure you’re right. Except somehow the bike I learned on only had the one brake. Right hand, but back wheel, contrary to the default. Fairly sure it wasn’t from outside the UK, but it had belonged to a relative so maybe they moved it?
When I got a bike with brakes for both wheels, my instincts nearly catapulted me over the handlebars more than once.
Except somehow the bike I learned on only had the one brake.
Common for BMX to only have the one, typically on the back for skids (and possibly for stopping kids firing themselves over the bars)
You always engaged the rear hard BEFORE even thinking of bringing the front in.
Should’ve learned the power of the front brake from doing stoppies.
I mainly just braked with the front but I knew just how hard to brake without turning it into a stoppie
Rear brake is more useful for skids than braking lol
I’m not sure you appreciate how literally technically correct you are.
The harder you brake in the front, the more the weight shifts forward. At the point you start to do a stoppie – when the front brakes are applying maximum force to the road – the weight on the rear wheel drops to zero and thus the stopping force it’s applying drops to zero as well.
In other words, the rear brake gets less useful the harder you try to brake.
For maximum deceleration, the main thing you need to do isn’t to try to use the rear brake more, but instead get out of the saddle and stick your butt as far back as you can, shifting the weight back and making it as hard to get to that point of rear wheel liftoff as possible.
See also: https://bike.bikegremlin.com/813/bicycle-braking-technique/
Oh I know the physics, I just also have the practical experience to back up the theory :)
I also drive cars and work on them and on literally every car I’ve owned, front brakes are beefier for this reason. They need to dissipate more heat because they will be doing most of the work. In fact, EV manufacturers have started doing rear drums because on an EV, rear brakes do so little work, disk brake calipers will just seize from rust.
Once when I was a kid, I was an avid, if not particularly talented or intelligent, bike rider. During that timeframe, I saw some professional bike riders; I think they were racing, but I might be misremembering. The point is, I observed that many or all of them had their elbows on the handlebars. I did not notice that their bikes were designed to support this.
As such, the next time I went riding, I figured “hey, the pros probably know stuff I don’t. I’ll try their methods!” then placed my elbows on the handles.
I had just about long enough to think "now, how do I steer … " before I crashed.
That sounds like triathaletes, or possibly a time trial road race.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t say. I just remember the visual and the event and, honestly, I didn’t even remember those until this post sparked my memory.
Precisely so.
Congratulation, kid, you just achieved the Akira Yeet.
I still have a scar on my left hand from when I tried this when i was 10. The handbrake handle basically dug into my hand as I trebuchet’d myself across a carpark next to my house 🤣
one time i was riding full blast then got distracted and slammed straight into the wall.
I bought a little folding ebike. Wanted to get across a four way stop quickly so leaned forward to pedal hard instinctively. Went over the handlebars right in the middle of the intersection in front of everyone. Good times.
did something like this with a friend, not on purpose, we were going downhill and the road was a bit wet, we slammed the brakes before a curve (like we used to do) and we just slid over the asphalt on our asses like idiots.
We didn’t get hurt, just some bruises, but if a car had been coming from the other side it could have been dangerous, the visibility was not good since it was a 90° curve with some high walls
still have the scar on my knee from doing something like that as a kid. landed on a broken coke bottle that embedded a shard in my knee
Kaneda: “that bike’s too big for a kid like you!”
It was one of those situations where the bike was way too small for me. Lol. Head-over-handrails.
[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.
…wrong brake. Back brake and a shallow turn causes the desired effect. Had a blast at the same age until i wore my tire through lmao
