[Trip]

Originally Posted by Avatard

Nah, a lot of cats (Rossi included) still ride pocket occasionally just to stay sharp. It requires reaction times about 5x quicker than that of a big bike. When you get back on the big bike, it's almost like you can do no wrong, the bike seems so big and lethargic...it almost telegraphs its balance and motions by comparison. Feels like slo-mo. It's actually cool as shit, and can boost your confidence and control on the big bike like a motherfucker.

Don't laugh before you try it, is all I'm sayin'.

I'm not talking about $150 China toys, I'm talking about all handcrafted Italian billet handmade racing parts, extreme 2-stroke pipe tuning, and thus tiny 2-strokes with positively evil powerbands. The power-to-weight is just sick.

Most of the real open class shit starts about about $3500, and is almost all handmade.

It's all real racing shit, just very small, and the "small" is what teaches faster reactions. The example I always use: You can balance a broom on your hand, right? How about a pencil? The smaller lever telegraphs its direction faster, and makes you need to react faster...in this case, too fast to counter-balance. Small bike makes similarly insane demands on your balance. It's a huge challenge, actually, and teaches you to be so goddamn subtle with your weight, it's fucking silly.

You can laugh, but that shit taught me a lot.

Skip the mini bikes, we had a nice polini and blata try and race with our suped up fiddies and they were just in the way. Get yourself a mini motard if you want fun.