How I learned about Gyroscopic Precession.

The year was 1972 and I was only a few short years out in the real world. I was part of a team competing in a 6 hour motorcycle endurance race on an oiled clay track in Western Sydney.
As an employee of Yamaha at the time, I had access to a pretty quick 250cc motocross bike, the first silver tank YZ250A. We fitted it with Carlisle dirt track tyres and the front end from an RD350, so we had power, grip and brakes, though a little short on smarts.

On that hot summer day, the oiled track got stickier and sticker and the amount of grip had to be experienced to be believed. We were running quite competitively, though neither we nor the lap counters had any idea how many laps had been done. The rumour was they would calculate the laps from the empty Fosters cans outside the scoring shed, and apply a formula of 4 laps per 'tinny', and then award the race to the team that protested loudest. And after 6 hours racing in the Australian summer sun, no-one cared either way.

In the early afternoon, I was locked into 'endurance' mode, lapping at about 8 tenths and starting to daydream a bit (One reason why extroverts don't make good endurance drivers). On the long left hand sweeper leading to the back straight I was getting seriously feet up sideways at the top end of 4th gear, with a fair bit of countersteer applied so I could keep the power on hard. As the grip improved I noticed I was lifting the front wheel whilst still in the corner, yet the countersteer was still allowing me to control the slide. Unthinking, I was leaning on the front wheel gyroscope to balance the bike. It felt neat at the time.

I noticed a photographer snapping at the exit of the corner and decided I would get really sideways with the front wheel lofted for him. It worked beautifully.

For some obscure reason, I thought it would make a better picture if I froze the front wheel spokes for him, and I ignored the little warning bells in the back of my head as my finger squeezed the brake lever. This immediately rang a very loud bell, one that was still ringing in the ambulance when I woke up a half hour later. Thirty years later, people still remind me of the biggest crash they ever saw, but I missed it because my eyes were closed, as was my sphincter.

That was my practical lesson on gyroscopic precession =]

Any experts out there care to postulate on the events immediately after I squeezed that front brake ?

I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy !