Are you Right or Left Handed and how does it affect your Motorcycling ?

I didn`t know that front brake thing was so widespread,makes you wonder how these things get started and then become accepted as the norm,I guess if we (GB) were joined physically to Europe we`d be doing the same thing too,maybe the EU should bring out a directive demanding all motorcycles swop their controls over to bring them in line with the pedal cycles we`re all being encouraged to use now,for safety reasons of course.Only joking (slightly) again.
 
I?m a righty, I have a massive stigmatism on my right eye , which gives me great peripheral vision, but  which also makes me a lefty shooter... ball ache with the bolt on a rifle , not so much a shotgun. I am ambidextrous when it comes to tool use  and billiards/ pool or snooker , I suspect that?s just practise, but not writing.  I always hop on the bike from the left because all my bikes that have had side stands lean to the left. What ever foot isn?t on the gear lever is on the floor at the lights. If I have a piece of hay or grass hanging off my lip it?s always in the right hand side.  In Nz I like left hand curves on the road. After 15 years in Spain, I still feel more comfortable and quicker on a left hand curve. On a visit back to Nz last year as someone said earlier , I had to think at a round about for the first 3 encountered, after that it was plain sailing.  The weird thing is , like Clem said batting with his left hand at cricket because that?s how his Dad taught him, my kids are all righties, but because they all sat across from me at the dinner table they all eat as lefties , I guess because they just copied me from their side. 
 
I'm left handed, footed,and eyed. More comfortable turning left on a bike but oddly more aggressive cornering to the right [on the race track at least]. I prefer shifting on the right mostly because my first bike was a Norton and shifting became an almost automatic reflex. Most all of my streetbikes are left shift and I have no issues but on the track I don't trust myself and have converted my racers to r/h shift. Mounting and pushing is usually on the left but foot down depends on the situation. Being a lefty in a right hand world means you have to be flexible and adapt, that's why our brains have developed more than righties!
 
I didn't know there was such a thing as left or right eyed. Both my eyes work the same.  ???

I also didn't know there was a 'correct' foot to put on the ground when stopping. I don't think I have a preferred foot down technique. It depends on the circumstances, like the slope on the road, whether I managed to get the bloody thing into neutral, if I wanna hold the back brake on for some reason ...

I'm reasonably ambidextrous but do most things right-handed. I was a natural left-hander as a kid but a wicked old school teacher used to bash me around the head whenever I picked up a pencil with my left hand, so I was forced to write with my right, which I still do.

Cricket bats are not a useful reference to me (my dad never taught me to play cricket). I dunno which way is right or left handed. Don't most people swing 'em with both hands? I reckon I'd be just as happy swinging the bat either way. The nearest thing I can equate it to is chopping wood with an axe. To be any good at chopping, you need to be able to swing an axe over either shoulder and change hands when you swap sides.
 
My 80-year-old uncle was telling me a while back that the kind saintly old NUNS used to wack him on the knuckles with the edge of a ruler, make it hurt to the max when he tried writing left-handed as a kid as that was the Devils way, thankfully that stupidity has died out I hope. Both he and my Dad were leftys and both did the cricket thing to me, very confusing holding a bat lefty when I was a 6 year old.
 
maybe BS trivia but I'd heard that the difference in 'preferred' directions stems from an evolutionary quirk which is to protect your strong side. i.e. a RHander can dive left (think goal-keeper) and is hesitant to the right. That explains to me the preferred lean on a m'cycle.

for me (a righty) I prefer a LH turn

but ... ambi-footed and always batted right-handedly until I found out I could bat as a lefty. I'd even change sense to screw with or compensate for the bowler or pitcher. Lefty preferred, except for that strange Scottish game (or is it Irish?) chasing a little white ball. Then I'm f*cked LH or RH.

And that 'primary eye' is definitely real and can really screw with the brain until you re-train it!
 
Back when I was young and fit I used to play squash. I could use the racquet in either hand. I'd often swap hands to avoid using a backhand stroke if I wanted to belt the bejesus out of that little black dot. You can put a lot more power into a forehand stroke.

I only tried golf once. I started with 4 balls and lost them all on the first hole. Smacked them all over the place. No idea where they ended up, one of them went into a creek and the rest went somewhere in the bush off the sides of the course. That's when I decided golf wasn't my game. As far as I recall though, you don't have much of a choice as to whether you play right or left handed. It depends on the set of golf bats that you borrow. They only work in one direction.
 
Dellortoman said:
Cricket bats are not a useful reference to me (my dad never taught me to play cricket). I dunno which way is right or left handed. Don't most people swing 'em with both hands? I reckon I'd be just as happy swinging the bat either way. The nearest thing I can equate it to is chopping wood with an axe. To be any good at chopping, you need to be able to swing an axe over either shoulder and change hands when you swap sides.
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Dead right about chopping - but for accurate splitting it's over the RH shoulder.

Ever done any adze work ?  Similar to standing chop at competitions. You need to be able to change hands while maintaining accuracy.
One of our last big boats we built needed quite a lot of adze work on the keel deadwood. At 13 I discovered I had a talent for it.
Much to my mother's horror. "You'll lose a foot !!" Haven't yet.
 
GregT said:
Dead right about chopping - but for accurate splitting it's over the RH shoulder.

Ever done any adze work ?  Similar to standing chop at competitions. You need to be able to change hands while maintaining accuracy.
One of our last big boats we built needed quite a lot of adze work on the keel deadwood. At 13 I discovered I had a talent for it.
Much to my mother's horror. "You'll lose a foot !!" Haven't yet.
Click to expand...
Never thought Id hear about adze work on this forum :)
sorry Greg but my adze is now doing its best Mattock impersonation in the garden shed ::)
You know, when you need a bit of an edge to slice through some roots......
My draw knife still gets used as its intended though, maybe some consolation  :-[
 
"I didn't know there was such a thing as left or right eyed. Both my eyes work the same. "

try this Cam,
go outside and find an upright object, tree trunk fe, about 40 or 50 yards distant, hold up your right arm, extend your forefinger and point at the tree with both eyes open, now shut one eye and see if the tree "moves", if it does, close it and open the other and the tree will not "move", the one that appears to "move" the tree is you lag eye, the one that appears to keep the tree stable is you lead eye, and that is the shoulder you should shoot from, you knew that though didn't you? I am posting it for non believer's really.
CLEM
 
TC said:
Never thought Id hear about adze work on this forum :)
sorry Greg but my adze is now doing its best Mattock impersonation in the garden shed ::)
You know, when you need a bit of an edge to slice through some roots......
My draw knife still gets used as its intended though, maybe some consolation  :-[
Click to expand...

That was probably the fate of most adzes, lol.

Last time I saw a draw knife in use, it was a guy shaping a fairing buck....
 
Legs said:
That was very interesting Clem.
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I just tried it .......... it works. With my left eye only the tree I was pointing to with both open just jumped to the right hand side, with my finger left pointing at nothing but sky.
Interesting alright.
 
Chain alining eye, fork alining eye, you soon learn this as a builder, any type of frame alining eye eye.
 
CLEMTOG said:
go outside and find an upright object, tree trunk fe, about 40 or 50 yards distant, hold up your right arm, extend your forefinger and point at the tree with both eyes open, now shut one eye and see if the tree "moves", if it does, close it and open the other and the tree will not "move", the one that appears to "move" the tree is you lag eye, the one that appears to keep the tree stable is you lead eye, and that is the shoulder you should shoot from, you knew that though didn't you? I am posting it for non believer's really.
Click to expand...

Interesting experiment, Clem.

Gave it a try while I was out and about today. Did it a bunch of times and got a few each side. I think it depends which way I had to move my hand (left or right) to align it on the distant target. Came out left eye dominant about 6 times out of 10.

PS: One of my mates has a glass eye. I wonder which one of his eyes is dominant  :D
 
Vince said:
My 80-year-old uncle was telling me a while back that the kind saintly old NUNS used to wack him on the knuckles with the edge of a ruler, make it hurt to the max when he tried writing left-handed as a kid as that was the Devils way, thankfully that stupidity has died out I hope. Both he and my Dad were leftys and both did the cricket thing to me, very confusing holding a bat lefty when I was a 6 year old.
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Nuns and Dads...., steel ruler when learning the trumpet , he sliced through  the nerves of my little finger can?t feel it anymore , cut the tendons and about 1/2 a dozen other prominent scars on my fingers.  My final move at 15 was tossing the trumpet under the car tire as he reversed... that was the day I left
 
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