[adouglas]

I was thinking about this thread on my commute home last night. That's one of the cool things about skill discussions... you can go out and see if what you were thinking aligns with what you actually do.

I have a typical suburban commute, which often involves things like conga lines of cars doing the start/stop accordion thing, creeping forward waiting for lights to change, etc. It's SO much fun... sometimes I work late just to be able to actually ride home.

You're not really riding. It's more like the first MSF exercise where they have you duck-walk the bike across the parking lot to learn about the clutch friction zone.

Naturally, in a situation like that the "keep it in gear with the clutch out" thing does not apply because you might be going 2 mph for a few seconds, stopping for a few seconds and repeating.

So yeah... depending on circumstances, I do pull the clutch in and hold it, but it's really only in those high-density, near-zero-speed scenarios. With no traffic, I tend to act as previously stated.

Same situation (embedded in a line of creeping cars) I also drop it into neutral and sit up quite often. No real point in being ready for immediate action when nobody's going anywhere.