Nearly happened to me a few months ago! Was riding my husband’s R7 and had the perfect storm of terrible stopping conditions: 1. Wasn’t accustomed to using the front brake on that bike (warped rotors had made the front brake useless for months, this was my first ride with the new rotors) 2. New shortie stunt levers were TEEENY tiny and had a way different feel than I was used to 3. Wasn’t paying attention and had to emergency brake to a stop sign 4. Yanked the front brake, rotated the handlebars, and put my foot down in WET GRAVEL 😭. Foot started slipping 5. Luckily I had the strength to hold it up partially tipped over until my husband could get to me to pull me back up to center!

This is so cool! You are a really beautiful rider!

Okay! Robert said it so I won’t go crazy, but gloves and a helmet even at low speeds!! I’m looking at your Tuning Fork video, here’s what I see. 1. Video 1 - Your pace is great coming into the exercise. I see you lose some momentum around turn 1, which sets you up poorly for the right handed u-turn. I’d like to see you: - Keep your eyes up and looking through the turn as if you’re going to continue in a circle (green line). It looks like you’re looking in the direction of the red line. - You come into u-turn #2 a little crooked, which makes the turn awkward and you end up putting the foot down. Just continuing through turn 1 a bit more to ensure that you’re lined up a bit straighter in turn 2 will make worlds of difference (black track) - I like turn 3 Video 2 - same issue Video 3 - beautiful pace and countersteering in turns 1 and 2, you just lose momentum in turn 3 Overall - good job! This is a technical drill that takes some effort to get right.

Congratulations! I see that you stepped up from a 500 to a 900 - that’s a very exciting jump that definitely comes with a learning curve! I’ll weigh in since I added a new bike to my garage 2 weeks ago, and have been going through the motions to learn it very well. I took a day or so to just ride the bike in the neighborhood (partly because it wasn’t registered yet, partly to get to know it 😂), then took it to the lot to work on some basic skills - think the kind of thing you’d be tested on in the MSF so that I understood the throttle sensitivity (going to be very important for you going to that specific bike!) front and rear brake performance, friction zone, and balance of the bike. After 2 days or so I added in the DDFM drills and did additional research on the bike if I was struggling with certain rides. This was interspersed with more spirited riding on the road. TLDR; take it slow and use DDFM to really get to know the bike AFTER you fully understand the balance, braking, and throttle sensitivity.

Super cool content! I like that you can see the speed variations on this view. What did you notice was very comfortable, and what do you think needed work? Great to see that you got to go out and practice!

@Chris Bennett Ironically enough, I worked on Tuning Fork last week, and I did a few things to prep that helped a lot. For context, I was on my Aprilia, which is brand new to me and is a sport bike. 1. I reviewed content on how to do low speed work specifically on a sport bike. One of my frustrations with low speed demos is that instructions may be geared to bikes with LOTS of handlebar mobility/other bike-specific things. 2. I reviewed content specifically on countersteering on a sport bike (I love MotoJitsiu for step by step explanation on how it should feel, etc) 3. I practiced really aggressive countersteering on a circle to figure out just how far I could lean the bike without dropping it, and realized I needed to be going much faster (10-12mph) through the exercise. 4. From there, Tuning Fork was a breeze (with planning to make sure I was lined up well for the right hand u-turn) @Elad Best is absolutely correct about the throttle control!