Toes out through a turn

I've been riding a lot with my friends these past few months. I've put down a lot of miles on my own, but it was mostly freeway. My friends are far more experienced, the best rider of our group is also my mechanic.

Last ride he told me that i was leaning too far off my bike through a turn. He taught me that I should lean with the bike, lean my body the same angle as the bike, that sorta thing. Well, I started doing that. Every morning on my commute to work I get on a full circle turn to get on the freeway, I was sitting in cruising mode, my heels hanging off the foot pegs, and I started feeling the ground dragging against my boot.

'WTF!' i thought, 'Am I REALLY that good now, that I'm DRAGGING?!'....sure enough I was. I told my riding mentor about this and he said it was good that I had my foot out, because I could have caught my footpeg or something hard that could have laid me down. Always keep a toe hanging off so you can gauge where you are.

That was the lesson I learned, luckily I didn't learn it the hard way

...but I will need new boots soon if I keep this up.

Call me crazy, but using your toes on the street to gauge the lean angle is an incredibly bad idea. There's just no need to lean the bike over that much on the street. Are you sliding off the saddle into the turn at all? I've taken (SAFE.. good visibility and zero traffic) turns at quite a bit over posted limit without coming even close to scraping toes/pegs.
Impossible to tell without seeing you ride, but I would say either your technique is off (getting crossed up and leaning the bike more than necessary?) or you're just riding too damn fast :BLAA:

Please don't take any offense to what I've said.. be safe out there!

My technique will always need improvement but I know I wasn't getting crossed up, but I'll be honest, I was going pretty damn fast. It's a newly paved freeway onramp, and it's the only time I ever get that low. Sign says 15 but I'm going about 45 so...yeah, heh. I was hauling balls through that there turn.

On any other road, I don't go that fast because there are FAR too many variables, even on the newly paved stretch of angeles crest. This is the closest thing to a controlled condition I've ever seen on a street...but still I was just as surprised as you that I'd actually dragged.

so yeah...I was going way, WAY fast.

trust me when I say, though, that I'm one of the safest riders in the greater los angeles area. I know that's hard to believe when I just said that I took a 15mph turn at 45, but in the canyons I'm at the back of every group, I'm one of the slowest riders, aside from the choppers, or the woefully inexperienced. I've put down 40k miles in the mean streets of LA, and only been in one minor crash. Even though that crash wasn't my fault, I still asked myself "What could I have done better?"

I scraped a footpeg for the second time the other day. I know the first time was from making a turn faster than I needed to. This most recent time though I wasn't leaning far at all - there was just a big'un on the back.

First, your footpeg should have feeler on it. It will touch down first. It should not catch on anything. Notice that your pegs fold up and towards the back. So if you touch down, they give. They're designed that way specifically to avoid catching on something.

Second, if you're dragging pegs on the street you're either:
-too heavy, and preload is set too low
-going too fast (you want to have some extra turning ability in reserve in case you need to change your line)
-not hanging off the bike at all (or far enough)
-or D all of the above

Last, but most importantly, I would not drag my toe. Because if it does happen to catch on something (remember it's rubber not metal) I don't want to break my ankle. If I'm riding at a spirited enough pace to be dragging peg feelers, I have the balls of my feet on the pegs with my toes pointed in. I don't worry about my heel sticking out, because if it makes contact with the pavement, it will just push in toward the bike and won't cause my ankle to do a 180. Watch this guy learn the hard way:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyfiIxf29JQ&feature=channel_video_title"]Grabbed Front Brake in Turn - Buell Lowside Motorcycle Crash Feb 6th, 2011[/ame]

if i'm going around any sort of corner i move my feet so the balls of my feet are on the pegs, that way the only thing that can scrape is the pegs or the sidestand

There ya go. Good call.

I can tell you for sure, I was going crazy fast, and I never go that fast through regular turns, but the point you made about the peg feelers is duly noted. It was a thought that crossed my mind. I always do sit up on the soles of my feet when I'm doing serious riding so that I can get my ass up to make adjustments and avoid taking a shot in the nuts when I hit a bump

When it comes to leaning, I'm constantly working on that balance between leaning too much and leaning not enough. For a while I wasn't leaning nearly enough, and an unexpected sharp turn would ruin my day. Then, for a while, I was leaning too much, where just a simple stretch of road would fatigue me after about 10 miles because I was constantly hanging off...so I backed off. From what you say, maybe it's time to start hanging a tad more. I think now that I'm actually keeping a good pace through the turns, I'm getting closer to finding that equilibrium.

edit: looks like that buell guy ate it because he was pretty much doing everything wrong. Braking, not countersteering, and it looks like a few other things. I half expected the title to be "You're doing it wrong". It looks like he acutally tried to put his foot on the ground well after he started going down. After he wasn't steering properly, after he grabbed his brake. Wow. And he bought a Buell? that was his first mistake...clearly inexperienced for a bike like that.

You haven't lived until those toes catch something on the pavement and flip under the peg. The last thing you hear before you have an "incident" will be the bones in your foot snapping. . . . And you won't be riding for a while. Maybe a little slower is better?

HowduIno? BT and almost DT. And still Mellow

No doubt. I think that's the best approach. It's still a strange feeling knowing that I've finally got comfortable enough to get to that level of riding. After putting down as many miles as I have, I'm still learning my limits. The learning really never does stop, does it?

hanging off the bike a little makes a huge difference in terms of cornering

don't forget that the idea of hanging off is so that you don't need to lean it as much for the same speed.