3 Days Of Playing in the Dirt!

Oh boy, do I have a story to tell. After a month of doing nothing on my motorbikes, I finally have something to write about. Between rotating family illness, major disruptive work crisis and preparations for my upcoming transfer to Japan, the Yamaha has sat in the garage waiting for new tires. You may remember that I wore the rear tire down to the cords on my January desert trip. I did start the bike a couple of times, but could tell she wasn't happy being parked. The only other motorbike related activity was my race in early February after a four month flat track break. I made up for all of that non-saddle time by doing a three day orgy of dirt riding and racing. I attended Danny Walker's American Supercamp when they visited my base. I then followed up all of that training by racing the following Saturday. Read on to see how it all went.

The SoCal rain did not give us a break for the class. This is the scene of the main training area Danny had requested from the Base Safety Staff. We have been having a very wet winter this year. Usually that is a good thing, except when you are trying to do some motorcycle training. Undaunted Danny and his crew pushed forward with the class. For those that don't know, American Supercamp is a high performance motorcycle training course designed to get you used to motorcycle control in low traction situations. Danny started his racing career as a flat tracker, so many of the techniques are flat track focused. This is perfect for my riding, but it is just as applicable for hardcore, street only, cruiser riders. It is similar to the Eric Bostrom Flat Track course I took last year when I started flat tracking.

The Supercamp team found the last patch of dry dirt in the training area and set up a small dirt oval. We did lots of drills and tons of laps on that small track. Left turns. Rights turns as you see here in my helmet cam screen grab of me under the watchful eye of professional Moto America Superbike racer Cam Petersen, just one of the awesome trainers helping us out. We did work riding one handed going in both directions around the track. Figure 8 turns were one of the more difficult drills. Trying to transition my butt from one side of the seat to the other in a figure 8 the size of a standard parking lot stall was a challenge! 

On day two, Danny's well groomed big course was the scene of another mud bog as the rain fell again overnight. We didn't have much classroom work to do so after a few words of wisdom, we got to it. If you are going to practice motorcycle control in low traction situations, you can't beat muddy ground and a street biased rear tire! Here is my gear before and after my first session. Riding that little bike in the deep mud must be like trying to wrestle a full grown greased hog into the truck to take him to the butcher when the hog knows it! I was pretty whopped after a couple of sessions. Unsurprisingly, when I relaxed and applied the techniques from the first day I found that I could predictably handle the bike. Don't get me wrong. I ate plenty of mud and fell over a few times. I did get better each session with fewer spills as the day went on.

The track came in pretty well with all of the laps we turned. By the end of the day it was a fast little "J" shaped TT style track only missing the jump. We continued to do drills similar to day one's drills, but it now had the added difficulty of both left and right turns in a varying degrees of radius. One interesting twist was that down the long straight, they added cones for us to slalom through. Every cone we hit was worth a 10 push-up penalty. We did a braking drill from a race style start that was good for me, but I'll get into that later. As the day wore on I could feel the techniques becoming easier to implement. Not quite automatic, but faster for me to realize that I was doing something wrong. Getting yelled at by Danny was fun. He doesn't pull any punches when letting you know you are doing something wrong. At one point he was hitting guys with a shovel. If that doesn't get you to break a bad habit, I don't know what will. At the end of the two days of training I felt very comfortable on the bike and would highly recommend any type of rider find the next Supercamp and sign up!

My Supercamp experience was on a Thursday and Friday. The very next day was the second round of the 2019 SCFTA season. I was really looking forward to having the race right after the training. I figured what better way to put my lessons into practice then to get out there and race. As per my usual I was a bit nervous Saturday morning. It wasn't as bad as my first race of the year. I was also getting over a cold and at least one of my kids was sporting a mild fever. My wife knew how important the race was to me and gave me her blessing, but the family was not going to be joining me. A tour of the pits showed some more cool bikes like this twin framer and the Triumph Hooligan class bike. It was a good showing of riders and the weather was really nice.

After all of the feedback from the Racer Coaches about my body position on the bike, I made a modification to my seat to get me in the correct spot. Being a bit more rear on the seat is something I've gotten feedback from a couple of other fast riders at the track. Danny and his team also wanted me farther toward the rear tire. This is opposite of what both Johnny Lewis and Eric Bostrom taught me. Who is right? All of them! It is important to get a variety of feedback and to try it all out to see what fits you best. I can say that after trying out being back on the seat, I like it better this way. I can ride the brake a bit for chassis control. I also got better drive out of the corners and was able to steer the bike better through my turns when getting the bike's direction changed. The next thing I need to do to really get the most out of this adjustment is to change out my handle bars. I have a spare set with a different bend that I have been waiting to install. Now is the time.

Right from the practice session I could feel that all of the previous two days work would be paying off. The track was a bit dry-slick and I had to watch how soon I could get on the gas coming out of the corner. The track developed a line that was different from what we practiced in Supercamp. No problem, the principles are the same. My Vet 35+ Novice heat was first. Nothing to talk about there as the rest of the Novices were much faster than me. I did work on my form and set my goals for my next race. My next heat was my Open Beginner race. Right away something was different. The pack was slower as a group and I stayed with the pack for all of the 6 laps. I was harassing the rider in fourth and tried to squirt through on the inside a few times. Too much throttle too soon meant I was losing drive on the exit. We finished a close fourth/fifth and I was determined to get around him in our main event.

The Vet 35+ Main was up after the break and track prep. Even though there were only 4 riders listed for the main, five of us lined up for the race. As before, right from the start the pack left me in the dust. The front runners were already through turns 3/4 by the time I was getting on the brakes. If you look at the pictures above you can see that not all was right with the world on this first lap. Looking at some video taken by a friend, the P2 rider took a high line while the P3 rider took an inside-out line. Unfortunately this meant that P2 and P3 crossed with P2 hitting the front wheel of P3. P3 went down in a high side crash in front of P4. P4 ended up using P3 as a launch ramp and she got thrown over the handle bars. All this happened in front of me. I saw what was happening and tried to get to the inside. I had the space to get through, but was hard on my brakes and I target fixated a little on the P3 bike in my way. I ended up gently low siding into the downed P2 bike. I quickly got up and got off track while the paramedics took care of the other riders. We ended up restarting the race without the P2 rider and I just worked hard to not get lapped even though the rest of the riders were almost half a lap ahead of me.

For my Open Beginner main I was ready to race! All through the night I was getting better and better at implementing the body position and techniques from Supercamp. 4 of the scheduled 5 riders lined up for the main. I was in position 5 on the outside right next to my position 4 rival from our Beginner heat. I got set on the line, brought my revs up and focused on the light. When the green came on I let go of the clutch and pointed myself at turn one. After a tiny drag race I made it into turn one ahead of the other rider. The other two guys got a good jump us the two of us. I held on trying to listen for the sound of his two stroke and aiming to get a smooth entry into turn three. Again, Danny Walker's advice was going through my head as I smoothly applied the brakes and calmly got the bike slowed, turned and pointed down the front straight. I couldn't hear the ring-a-ding of the two stroke so I quit trying to find him to concentrate on what was ahead of me. By the end of lap 2 of our 10 lap event I was secure in my race position and started to hunt for second. Little by little each lap I was getting closer. By the end of the race I was putting good pressure on the P2 rider. In the end he got me, but I felt like I had taken the the top step of the podium!

A great three days of riding and racing. I am so pumped to do it again. I may have time for one more race in April before I have to pack up everything and move to Japan. I will be trying to edit some helmet cam video to show the highlights from the all of the dirt track action. Come back again for more amateur, wannabe, motorcycle race content. Ride safe friends!

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