Keeping one step ahead

Staying Ahead Of The Pack

As most of you know well, I never quite grew up after university and so motorcycles have remained a significant part of my personal life as well being a significant professional activity. So nowadays, the question naturally arises, how do I provide myself with a “continuing professional development” opportunity without killing myself in the process! Some of you may well remember my serious crash back in 2004 while I was testing an instrumented large Harley-Davidson motorcycle, in order to record and quantify it's weave stability characteristics...........that engineering exercise won me a 3 day vacation in the intensive care unit of a large hospital in Tucson Arizona!

So back to the drawing board for continuing professional development courses.... and I found it! For the past three years I have been attending a two day riding camp taught by the Keith Code California Super Bike School. Keith Code is one of the foremost motorcycle racing coaches in the world and he has coached racers up through World Moto GP level. Keith has developed, over a 30 year period, a detailed analysis of high speed riding techniques for motorcycles and methods for making motorcycles change direction quickly. This school sounded to me like just what the doctor ordered for professional development. So, off I have gone to the Nevada desert near Las Vegas for two intense days of coaching at the Las Vegas Speedway complex at the end of October each year. I know the school is called the California Superbike School, but Keith and his crew of mechanics, track managers and track coaches put on schools all over the world including in Europe (UK) and the Middle East as well as in California.....so why Las Vegas for me? The flights are cheaper from St. Louis...and it does not rain in the desert!

The school's format is intense; two days starting at 07:00 am and going through 5:00pm with alternating periods of one hour in the class room followed by one hour on the track throughout both days of the camp. Talk about wiped out at the end of the day......! The focus of the school's classroom work is on techniques of turning the motorcycle and making it change direction quicker, a lot quicker! Then it is out onto the track to practice what has just been lectured about.

In previous years the motorcycles used for the track periods, with about 15 bikes on the track at any one time, were Kawasaki Ninja 600 motorcycles set up for production racing. These bikes were light and fast, having about 100 hp and running around on Dunlop Q2 dual compound track day type tires. Here is a photo of me (my number is 12) doing my 'homework':

This year, however, was different for two major reasons. BMW decided to help sponsor the California Super Bike School and so the bikes used this year were the incredible BMW RR1000S; 193hp motorcycles equipped with fly by wire throttles, racing traction control and racing ABS brakes. The bikes weigh only 430 pounds and with that much power it is rather like sitting atop a cruise missile, lifting the red switch protector and pushing the “Launch” button,​when one opens the throttle. Wow! The other novelty for me this year was that I took my 23 year old son Matthias with me to the course. Now Matt has ridden since he was about 12 years old, but never competitively and he always seemed more interested in performance car driving. This year changed all of that; we were placed in the same riding group but different levels; I am a level 4 rider and he started off at level one and moved on the second day to level two. Finding ourselves on the track together, both mounted on rocket ships was interesting to say the least; however, we both demonstrated great maturity! (Yeah, sure….if we are both so mature, what were doing at a motorcycle racing camp.......!). We decided to both observe each other as we worked on improving our technique and we raced around the track probably touching near 130 MPH down the straights (the instrument clusters had tape over the speed indication area). I elected to ride behind Matt first and then him behind me; basically father and son flying F-4 fighters in low level formation flight!! Coming around one particularly challenging corner, leaned over in excess of 50 degrees, dragging my knee on the track and with Matt's rear wheel in my sights, both of us accelerating hard to over 90 MPH just before braking hard for the next right hander, I had the happy thought........not in a million years would my father have been caught dead participating in such a venture with me, wonder if Matt realizes?! Then...opps..... I almost missed my turn in point for the next corner; back to keeping my old mind on matters at hand! Below is a picture of Matt hustling through one of the gentler corners:

Well, suffice it to say that I, over the last three years of this kind of training, have become a lot quicker and have mastered many new techniques of motorcycle control; Matt, being a young one, picked up quicker on the techniques and is now at my level of riding. We both seem to be equal on the track; if I am in front of him he can not get passed me (Not bad for an old fart, as my kids call me....), but if he is in front of me then, I can proudly say now, that I can not get past him!

Hope that this finds you well and we will have to meet up before next year and my next effort at putting some fun into Continuing Professional Development courses!

Cheers,

Mark