GS, I love you man
but you're going to get somebody killed. Maybe it was natural for YOU but not for most people.
Arright.
Here's what's going on. If you want to corner, you have to lean. To corner right you have to lean right. You do that by cranking the bars left.
What happens is, you "jerk the rug out from under yourself", sideways. The bottoms of your tires go left, you fall right. And then catch yourself by straightening the bars once you're at the appropriate lean angle.
There's a "reverse countersteer" too: if you're already leaning right, cranking the bars hard right will "kick you upright" and rapidly straighten the curve.
The reason you MUST learn this is simple: if you're in mid-corner and come up on trouble, be it a car pulling out, oil slick, gravel patch, whatever, countersteering or the reverse countersteer will let you change cornering angles in mid-corner.
If you don't know how to do THAT, you're going to die if you stay on two wheels long enough. OK? It's a matter of "when".
Gunsmith, you need to go read a book on this stuff. Keith Code's "A Twist Of The Wrist" is widely viewed as the best work on the subject. Until you do, I am asking you please NOT to say what you just said above, because if you spew that on enough forums you're going to kill somebody.
Sidenote: if you're already in mid-corner and you see junk coming at you, if you have a choice between diving inside it by countersteering deeper or going upright and passing it on the outside with a reverse countersteer, you should favor the latter. Reason being, the closer you are to vertical the more braking you have available. At "full tilt boogie battle lean" you have basically no brakes - you're already asking your tires for all they've got with the cornering forces, add even semi-serious braking and you wipe out.
In extreme cases (you're really getting squidly!) you can't even roll off the throttle without unweighting the rear end and risking the rear end breaking loose. In more rational street riding, you can usually feather the rear brake some in mid-corner if you've got the skill to pull out of a mild rear-end slide. This precise control over the back brake is why a lot of fast street riders deliberately weaken their rear brake, so the transition to "feather it" isn't as abrupt. They then use the rear for fine control in mid-corner. I was always able to control a normal rear brake and didn't bother even back 18 years ago when I was streetracing
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Folks, I haven't owned a car in...lesse, over 16 years and I think a bit longer. Bikes only. I know what I'm talking about here: if you can't countersteer get the heck off the street until you can. Go to the biggest parking lot in town and practice until it's natural.
Or take one of the classes because yes, they teach it in EVERY class including California's MSF program. Only gotcha there is, they sometimes teach a "gelded version" called "push on the handlebar that you want to lean towards". This works, and it IS countersteering, but it also leaves you with less stability at the nose. I prefer to teach cranking on the bars with both hands, equal pressure to stabilize the front end but...that in turn is basically prepping you for race or near-race conditions.
Which in an emergency you might encounter...
