First off I'll introduce myself, my name is Tom and I've been watching these discussions for awhile but never registered until recently. My question is this, I can ride narrow stuff decently (the narrow side of a 2x4 for about 12 feet) but it takes me a god awful long time setting it up. :down: Do any of you have advise for the ever annoying setup time or just to practice it more. Thanks Oh yeah, and I do have a website, it ain't much but I have a couple pictures up there and a video. Don't get too much webspace at school but it's better than nothing. www.rpi.edu/~ligont/
Welcome to the site! I can't really say I have any suggestions, but I do know that it just came to me after time :\ Keep practicing and you'll keep improving. Bill
yeah just keep the practice up. the more you do someting the better you'll get at it. also try riding on all kinds of terrain, try new moves, anyhting you do will help your skill level overall.
i find if i take a 1/2 pedal runup onto a narrow object it is much quicker then putting my front wheel on and pivoting my rear around untill nicley aligned. not always an option though. As for hosting, that Bill fella is prety nice.
The usual practice till you get the hang of it answer is pretty bad in my opinion. Try the following trick. When you begin to go onto the 2x4 just modulate your front brake. I am not sure about the physics behind this, but if you are loosing balance and begin to apply the front brake the bike will become a lot more stable. So you can actually slowly pedal while holding down the brake. Hope that helps. Also lowering your center of gravity (ie getting your ass closer to the top tube) and getting closer to the stem helps a lot too. (watch people riding on rails in videos). Hope this helps
I found that if I hit my brake at all while riding narrow things, I'm much more likely to fall right there. Then again I'm not so great at this anyhow, wait til you see me eat shit riding a train track in Kevin's next vid. I was gonna hop off to the left but my tire slid off to the right and I was moving along at a decent speed :\ It should be funny anyhow. Bill
works like magic for me everytime Gives you a chance to get things under control and get going again. As long as you don't stop the wheel things should be groovy. I will look forward to the new vid. One of these days I need to get a camcorder as my digi cam makes "phone camera quality" (AndrewT) movies.
Yeah Roman I feel like when I'm pedaling against resistance it's easier to distribute how much weight I put on my power foot without increasing speed. Not sure if that's exactly what it is, but that's my $0.02
I use the front brake trick all the time. It seems to work for me but only when I'm not going really slow. I remember reading something that described the physics of how applying the front brake causes the bike to stand up, but I can't quote anything. I may have read that in a motorcycle magazine years ago.
Thats exactly what I am talking about. I read about this a long time ago on motorcycle.com In traffic one can drag the front brake and gas the engine to go really slow in a straight line w/o putting down feet.
Very close, but not quite, you drag the rear brake, this is to cause tension in the drivechain the whole time while still going slowly. If there is no tension it jerks like a bitch every time the chain engages and disengages.
I ride on curbs mostly and parkin blocks whenever I see one when riding around. Looks kinda stupid, setting up to ride on a strip of parking blocks, but it's good balance drills. Curbs are great, especially at like a school or something cause they curve around, bend, etc...it's teaching me to ride bending skinnies and how to adjust. That and the fact they're like 2-3 inches wide, helps you out. Parking blocks are great cause they're narrower, and if you get on the sloped side, you have to re-adjust your balance... LOL, over analytical is I.... :greddy:
On your 2x4, try coming to a complete stop and then pedal again, then stop, pedal, and so on. If you can get that consistently, you can handle anything.
