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Pine needles: slippery when dry!

P

PowderToastMan

Out of Powdered Toast
Joined
Feb 3, 2013
Location
Sunnyvale
Moto(s)
CB1100
So I got up and geared up for my usual weekend morning ride this morning, and got no further than the first corner of the driveway to leave my apartment, before losing the rear wheel at about 5 or 10 mph and taking a little spill. I was only leaned over ever so slightly, and didn't give harldy and gas, but I guess it didn't take much.

The culprit: In the last couple days, our driveway got totally littered with these mofos:
snnioh.jpg


I know that they would be big trouble when wet (and have thought about this specifically last year when the same thing was there), but didn't really realize they'd cause me any grief when bone dry!

Picked myself and my bike up, went back to my parking space, went up to grab a wrench to adjust my mirror that got knocked loose, and continued on my ride after a quick once-over.

No big deal save for a few little scuffs.. I bought my bike to ride, not to worry about every little scratch. So I will replace the few scuffed pieces at my leisure. And no sense beating myself up or letting it hurt my pride that this happened, because shit happens sometimes!

Second time around that same corner with the same pine needles, drama free. I know what I did wrong so I don't think I'm looking for any insight, just leaving this here so somebody else might learn from my error!
 
PowderToastMan said:
Second time around that same corner with the same pine needles, drama free. I know what I did wrong so I don't think I'm looking for any insight, just leaving this here so somebody else might learn from my error!
Click to expand...

I did a lot of winter night rides on wet goat roads covered with pine needles. They weren't that slippery.

So what did you do wrong that caused you to go down under much better conditions (day time, dry pavement)?
 
Hmm. Well now I'm wondering if they're actually less bad when wet because they could stick to the pavement rather than sliding around freely.

The only thing that I can think of is that I should simply nurse it around that particular corner more and stay more upright, regardless of whether those needles are there or not.
I'm always gentle on the throttle, so it really took a lot less to lose traction on that spot than I thought it should.
 
Them are Redwood fronds. Just noticed a bunch on my dappled road. Early fall with the drought. Lots of sun too. Contributes to the dappling which is another thing to take into consideration.
 
Yup, we got some redwoods here.. I should have figured that's what they were. Whatever they were, bad for traction.
 
FRICTION CIRCLE

Can't use tire friction in this case because the plant crap was between tire and roadway... apparently there is a very low coefficient of friction between the roadway and this plant crap which means the friction circle got real small... acceleration and leaning all require friction.... in this case apparently more than was there..... Best rule of thumb... any time you have to cross over anything that gets between the tire and the roadway... try and keep the motorcycle upright and braking or accelerating smooth, even and progressive.
 
^^^^Wot he said^^^^
 
Agreed! I realized that after the fact and confirmed it when I went back to scrape my foot around those little suckers later.
Another lesson learned the hard (but not really that hard) way :)

Another part of it is the complacency. This is the last place I would have expected to take a dive, so I really wasn't in defensive mode at all.
 
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