Doing a double and feeling the pain. Track and dirt in one weekend.

This past weekend was an awesome one. I hinted about it as much in my last post or two. This post will detail juts how awesome it was. Through hard work, practice, coaching and some good, old fashioned luck, I made great improvements in my riding. I became even more focused on my goal of becoming an amateur motorbike racer and took some serious steps forward toward that end. I met some great people and went home sore, but happy. Enough with the foreplay, lets get to it!

To start the weekend, I took a day off work to get out to Chuckwalla for another TrakDaz track event. It was the track day before the CVMA racing round 4 race weekend. I was expecting a very crowded paddock and was surprised to find it more empty than I'd imagined. I got up at 3:15 AM and was out the door by 4:00. Three hours later I was setting up my gear for what looked like an awesome track weather day. The air temp was cool and crisp. The sun was out and the smell of race fuel was fragrant. After the normal start of briefs and instructions, I went out for my first session. I wanted to evaluate my recent suspension changes and get my tires warmed up. To my relief, the changes proved to make the bike very stable and confidence inspiring. I have discussed my track days many times so I won't into this one in too much detail. I improved my lap times by another 3 seconds and am now in the 2:44's. I diced it up with several bigger bikes that were fast on the straights and slow through the corners. I beat them on the brakes and by the end of the day I had made many good passes. By 8:00 PM I was home, unloaded and ready for bed after a glass of red wine. The weekend couldn't get much better... or could it?!

Well it did! The government shut down put a damper on things Saturday as I wasn't able to ride with a  good friend. We had planned to get together and I had an awesome ride planned for us. I set out Sunday morning to put that all behind me make the most of the motorbike weekend. I was scheduled to attend the Eric Bostrom High Performance Flat Track Camp. In the picture above you can see the bikes we would be riding for the day. Powerful beasts of an unimaginable 10 horsepower lined up like thoroughbreds bursting from the gate. All of the bikes had the number plates of past champions from American road and dirt racing. With a bit a history to start the training, the day looked to be epic.

And how could it not? Buried in the hills of Southern California with scenery like the picture above, how could you go wrong? I set out on some excellent twisty roads just minutes from my home and ended up at a large property with its own track. I was ready to work on bike control and confidence with a famous American professional racer. The morning was cold and I was dressed in shorts. None of that mattered when we mounted ourselves up on the bikes and got to work. After some coaching on what we would be working on for the day and getting our gear on we went right to it. I was sweating within 20 minutes of firing up my engine. Within an hour I was sore. I would have to work hard to keep up with Eric and the other students of the class so I could make the most out of this experience.

Here is a shot of the track. It was a small, flat track type course that was easily configured to have left and right hand turns. Within a relatively tiny space we had a track with a jump, a sweeper, some hairpin turns and several types of apexes. The surface was fast and loose and turned out to be very challenging with respect to the bike's controls. The small size of the track and the drills Eric was  having us practice kept the action fast. All of the lessons were based of concepts directly applicable to a road race course. We worked on trail braking, late apexing, corner entry and traction management. Eric would rip around the course and give individual coaching as he saw fit based on our riding. Sometimes he would pull one or all of us off the course to go over some finer points of the drill or to just congratulate us on making improvements. When he coached, you could tell that this was a person that had as much passion for riding motorbikes as I did. I soaked up the lessons and concentrated on putting aside any doubts in myself to push my riding forward.

Here was the bike I rode for the day. It is a 2018 Kawasaki KLX 140 dirt bike. A step above a small tire, pit bike, but large enough for the 5 grown men that would be riding them for the day. They had electric start with a 5 speed gearbox. We only got into 3rd gear within the confines of the tight and twisty track. I mentioned the low power that these engines had. Don't be fooled by the small number. The amount of power was enough to get us at speed enough to challenge our new found techniques from Eric's lessons. With third gear coming quick, we were dancing all over the controls to put the bike where it needed to be within the corner. Passing our class mates was encouraged as a way to keep us mentally sharp and on our game a skill that would translate to racing at speed on a road track. Eric would come out of nowhere to show us just how slow we were. Many times throughout the day I would get a face full of roost as he zipped by. Far from discouraging me, I used the feeling of getting passed as a challenge and would chase after him all the while watching how he controlled the bike so I could copy and learn.

To give us even more of a challenge, take a look at those back tires. Yes, those are street tires and not knobby tires on the back. This was one of the key aspects to the class. Dealing with the loss of traction and trusting the bike to do the work. With the back end stepping out on us, we had to learn patience when getting on the gas and how to use the throttle to control the bike's chassis dynamics. The front knobby tires helped us to learn confidence in our brakes when decelerating straight up and down. Trail braking and direction changes were also heavy on the curriculum. After a much needed rest break, I was the first one out on a freshly watered track. Patches of wet mud awaited me and acted like ice under my tires. I drifted both ends of the bike through several corners until the track came in and really provided an unbelievable amount of traction. At one point I think the rear stepped out to about 45 degrees from straight ahead. I smoothly and calmly backed off the throttle enough to get it to comeback in while I added body position and steering input to keep the chassis in a stable configuration. I took pride in the fact that I kept my handlebars off the ground the entire day.

The family that races together stays together. In this case the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. That is Eric on the left with his dad on the right. Eric's dad is a well known flat track racer from Northern California. He showed us that he still has it even at the ripe young age of 76. These two were banging bars and giving no quarter. I was watching from the sidelines as my legs were so burned from the hours of riding that I almost couldn't get my shoes on. Watching them slice and dice their way through the track and trees gave me the hope that I could still be doing this for another 30 years. As I watched and stretched my ever tightening muscles, I reflected on the lessons I learned from this day. I can't wait to apply them to my road track riding. I feel like my braking confidence will grow tremendously and I will shave even more time off my laps around Chuckwalla.

Well that about wraps it up for this post. I have something in the works over the next few months that will be big for the blog. After chatting with Eric and reluctantly departing we had a few more email exchanges. I will be expanding my race plans with a new acquisition as soon as I can plan the year's finances. For me it will prove to be a defining point in my motorbiking passion. As always I'll try and document every step along the way for you the readers. Until then, ride safe!

Blue