[SweetLou]

In MN, to resurface a lot of the roads, they will cover it with tar, and then this really small gravel crap. Then they will let it sit for like 3 or 4 weeks for all the cars to mash it in,then come by with a street sweeper to pick up all the execess. Needless to say, it is in NO WAY bike freindly

[Steve_Guelph]

Cale-Kat suggested a good pointer. I lived in the country and had to deal with gravel every day. Keeping your feet on the pegs creates a better balance point. Another very good point is to keep the engine pulling along. If you ride a Kat the four way flashers are a good safety feature. It keeps both hands on the bar and no waving traffic to pass.

[bedabug0]

dang 9 miles of pea gravel lets see..... i would turn around as soon as I saw it or take another route even if it was 15 or 20 miles cause i know it had to be the worst expirence ever and road riding is kinda fun plus all them cagers on your tail. I would probaly have a nervous breakdown after a mile lol.

[WildKat]

That stuff is all kinds of dangerous. I'd be riding slower too. When you feel that front tire dancing around and then the rear tire at the same time!! Yeah its definately not fun. All you can do is ride it out slowly, dont make any sudden accelerations or stops if you can help and definately take the corners slow. Be careful waving cars past you cuz they'll speed by and fling those little stones all over the place at you.

[md86]

Gravel's fun . Keep your rpm's low , and stay off the front brake . I like 2nd gear at about 20-ish , or maybe 3rd about 30-ish if I'm feelin froggy . And no sudden direction changes . Just stay loose and GUIDE the bike , don't try to CONTROL it . THat's when you end up FIGHTING it , and bad things happen .

[GytRDunKat]

Thanks all for the Responses... I've changed my route to County Road 5 now, which, turns out, has the coolest twisties in my area... It's about 4 miles longer, but man is it fun. Guess I'll take that route till they cover it with pea gravel.... P.S. I would have turned around, but I was afraid to even think about it. In fact, I thought about the next curve, and I think the Kat got mad, and squirreled out on me The front brake was a good point to note, I'll put that in my long list of "From the KR site". I tend to use the front/rear brakes 50/50, so that might have made the ride a little less scary. My back still hurts from being so tense!!

[trinc]

we call it chip seal.

ti

[KansasKat]

I live on a gravel road so I understand your 'delightful' run-in with it. You were correct in playing it safe. I ride on my gravel road for about 3/4 of a mile before it turn to a 'chip-seal' road and then ride on it for about 7 miles. The gravel can be quite an experience, especially if they just graded it. The best bet is to keep your arms loose and go with the flow. If you ride stiff armed the bike will want to dance all over the place. Its tuff but you get used to it after awhile.

[skasner]

If you ride a Kat the four way flashers are a good safety feature. It keeps both hands on the bar and no waving traffic to pass.

You are the second person I've ever heard say "four way flashers"... the other is my fiance Kelli. HAZARD LIGHTS

I'm pretty sure my 99 Kat doesn't have hazard lights. Do any of them?

[The CyberPoet]

I remember doing that going across that back-road short-cut from Tapaco to Fontana Village. It sucked. Glad to hear you found an alternative route, which was going to be my general suggestion...

"Street Strategies - A Survival Guide for Motorcyclists" by David Hough.

He describes a situation where you enter a gravel road and the front wheel starts to plow in the deep gravel. Your instinct is to slip the clutch and reach out with your feet to help prevent a spill. But that doesn't work. He suggests you shift more of your body weight to the footpegs which places your weight lower and allows you to keep the bike more vertical.

I've always thought that was a basically flawed analogy, since your center of gravity hasn't shifted (it's applied elsewhere, but the axis is still just as high -- if not higher from coming off the seat more). I'm butt-down...

My add-in to the above advice: low, low RPM's -- be a couple gears higher up than you would normally be at that speed, so the bike is less twitchy in response to throttle inputs -- plus try to be as smooth as possible.

I'm sorry, but I have to ask. What is pea gravel?

Gravel the size of peas simply spread on the road bed (not tarred in yet). Some states do it, knowing buying a couple extra truckloads of gravel and having the standard traffic smash it into the dirt underneath is cheaper than paying a proper construction crew to compress it down.

Only roads I really hate riding on down here is on the grooved pavement. Makes me clench my jaw a bit on clear days, but makes traction better on those torrential downpour days (June - September; 3:00 - 5:00 every day).

Get rid of tires that have a straight groove running in the same direction as the tire spins and that issue will go away. One of the things that I really liked about the Z4 (predecessor to the Metzeler Z6) is that it has absolutely no center groove; the Z6 has an oscillating one, which mostly eliminates the problem (but not as well as having no center grooves).

I'm pretty sure my 99 Kat doesn't have hazard lights. Do any of them?

Certain European market models had them since time immemorial to comply with local regulations, and the North American models got them in '04 I think.

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

[Yellow2002Kat]

Only roads I really hate riding on down here is on the grooved pavement. Makes me clench my jaw a bit on clear days, but makes traction better on those torrential downpour days (June - September; 3:00 - 5:00 every day).

Get rid of tires that have a straight groove running in the same direction as the tire spins and that issue will go away. One of the things that I really liked about the Z4 (predecessor to the Metzeler Z6) is that it has absolutely no center groove; the Z6 has an oscillating one, which mostly eliminates the problem (but not as well as having no center grooves).

I have the Z6s, but I still grit my teeth a bit when going over the grooved pavement. I've never run into a problem, just the different feeling bugs me - unless it's pouring - and I know you can appreciate that

You know what I really hate?. Riding down the highway and seeing that sign with the car raised on the two driver side wheels followed by the sign that reads "uneven pavement ahead". Not too bad if there are two lanes, but if one lane in either direction certainly not motorcycle friendly .

[Steve_Guelph]

If you ride a Kat the four way flashers are a good safety feature. It keeps both hands on the bar and no waving traffic to pass.

You are the second person I've ever heard say "four way flashers"... the other is my fiance Kelli. HAZARD LIGHTS

I'm pretty sure my 99 Kat doesn't have hazard lights. Do any of them?

My Kat is an 06 and it has 4 way flashers.

[WildKat]

Its even more fun when you go right from that blasted gravel to a freshly scraped road where the ruts run in a wavy design

[The CyberPoet]

You know what I really hate?. Riding down the highway and seeing that sign with the car raised on the two driver side wheels followed by the sign that reads "uneven pavement ahead". Not too bad if there are two lanes, but if one lane in either direction certainly not motorcycle friendly .

The problem, at least in this area, is that you can't trust the sign -- the lanes might be uneven left-to-right or front-to-back (or both). I hate hitting an overpass where the lip of the overpass is like 2.5 - 3" higher than the pavement they scrapped out pending repaving (wham! Damn! thank you DOT). Mix that up with a left/right elevation change from the same thing that keeps wandering back and forth across the lane with a 2" drop and it's scary stuff.

Cheers,
=-= The CyberPoet

[Cale_Kat]

"Street Strategies - A Survival Guide for Motorcyclists" by David Hough.

He describes a situation where you enter a gravel road and the front wheel starts to plow in the deep gravel. Your instinct is to slip the clutch and reach out with your feet to help prevent a spill. But that doesn't work. He suggests you shift more of your body weight to the footpegs which places your weight lower and allows you to keep the bike more vertical.

I've always thought that was a basically flawed analogy, since your center of gravity hasn't shifted (it's applied elsewhere, but the axis is still just as high -- if not higher from coming off the seat more). I'm butt-down...

Hough doesn't recommend coming out of the saddle. He recommends feet on the pegs thereby letting your weight transfer down and lowering your center of gravity. It's the instinct to reach out with your feet, transfering weight up to saddle height, that he cautions against.