So why, if I take my hands off the handlebars (doesn't matter which bike) while riding, the bike veers off immediately, not always to the same side...I am shit scared of letting go the handlebars because of it....
Mine is very much more basic and the more I read of others abilities and antics the more I realise I am not cut out to be an accomplished motorcyclist and shall just remain a very basic, get from here to there rider.
So firstly, I applaud (applaud? is that what I mean? I'm sure I could phrase that better ..) your frankness on a forum that often turns into a pissing match and a cock measuring competition ..
The hands on handlebars thing ....
Being relaxed on a bike is .... well ... it's probably one of the most important things you've got to be able to do. You know that!
I have never been skiing. If I went, and I was on the nursery slopes at ski school, I'd look like Bridget Jones and I'd be as tense as a tense thing. I'd be locked rigid and my instructor would gently be saying .. 'you need to try and relax'! I know that! (But I wouldn't be able to do it). I know that all of these sorts of sports from skiing to horse riding to ice skating to surfing .... the eureeka moment happens the penny drops and suddenly it all makes sense when you relax and just let it all happen. (with a fair bit of technique thrown in too .. ).
There might be a number of reasons your bike doesn't travel in a dead straight line if you take your hands off the bars, from shaft drive having an effect to say the camber on the road. But ... being able to take your hands off your bars at a reasonable speed (not at walking pace - you'll just fall over !) is actually something you should be able to do. Lets put that another way - if you
can't take your hands off your bars at a reasonable speed, then it demonstrates a huge amount of bad tension and probably a lot of stiffness in you, that will in turn feed itself into your steering.
That stiffness - in your trunk, your torso, your shoulders, your hips, thats half the reason that your bike control is by your own admission, not great. Whilst stiffness and tension it's not necessarily the reason for your bike not travelling in a straight line, (when you take your hands off the bars), being very relaxed and using your body weight and moving it about can go a long way to keeping your bike (no hands)
in a straight line. (squeeze the tank with yer knees, move yer upper body weight about ... ).
So should you practise this?
Yeah!
In another thread on here somewhere, somebody was talking about an instructor getting their students to ride over planks of wood in a corner to demonstrate how stable their bike is. There was an outcry
Whilst I have never done this, and am not likely to, and ... yeah ... that probably is a bit daft, have I got people on a quiet road to stand up and ride? Ride with their left hand in their lap for three or four miles of a nice twisty lane? Ride no handed ?
Yes I have. And they've been the riders who are clearly battling tension and stiffness in (in particular) their arms.
Your arms can be little steering dampers, and they can fight the steering and slow it down. Worse still is when both arms fight each other and you wonder why it's such a struggle to flick the bike about over that small roundabout and through the twisty lanes.
So riding your bike with just one hand down a twisty quiet lane, will teach you so much about how it steers, how you have an input on that, and how, through tension, you can fuck it up yourself !!
Getting your bike up to a reasonable speed and taking both hands off can teach you the same with your body weight, how you can use it to your advantage, how it can work against you when you're tense.
If I went skiing, I would like to hope, that a good instructor would teach me a good technique, but would also play some games with me and get me relaxed. Maybe something a bit inventive that made me see how my body weight and what I did with it, can make all the difference. Maybe some games teaching me
how to relax ..
Don't settle for 'just basic'. Anybody can improve. Identify your weakness's (so I'm guessing in this case, slow speed control, a bit of tension), and deliberately go out and tackle those in a safe environment, and in a sensible way. (That was the health and safety umbrella going up .. ).