Posted by Jasmin Doobay | April 18, 2011 | Comments: 0
I spent the weekend riding, which is a fabulous way to get through Saturday and Sunday, but this riding was under the watchful eye of Kim Young from V-Twin Okanagan.
This weekend was my chance for a riding upgrade. I took the Advanced Rider Challenge from V-Twin and spend two whole days brushing up on my skills.
There were 5 of us in the class: Sandra, Gwen, Jeanie, Etta and me. We had a blast together! While I would have had no problem if there had been any men in the class, there was an instant comradarie between the women and we all had a similar desired outlook – to be more confident in our riding.
Two of the women were riding new bikes and wanted to get some experience on them. Two of the women hadn’t ridden much in the past few years and wanted to get back on two wheels.
My excuse was two crashes last year. One at 80km/hour during a demo ride in May and one at 2km/hour going down a steep gravel driveway towards the end of last year’s riding season. Both hurt. Both I recovered from. If there’s one piece of advice I could give from those experiences…full protective gear can save your life.
So we all met up Saturday morning at 9am and spent the day with parking lot exercises. First off was slow speed clutch and rear brake control. Try this…slowly release your clutch and get your bike moving…without stalling and no throttle. Tougher than you think! Now add a cone course and all you can use is clutch and rear brake for control and your speed needs to stay at about 3km/hour. Now line up with 4 other riders and have a slow race…see who takes the longest to move across the parking lot without stalling or putting a foot down.
We added a bit of speed (traveling 7-10km/hour) when starting the next cone exercise of riding a layout using push stearing in a slalom style course. Add in full stops with 90 degree right turns, smooth cornering and then accelerating out of the corner to come to a complete stop with your front tire exactly in the centre of a 4 cone square.
After a break for lunch, we warmed up again with the same slalom course and then moved on to u-turns, emergency braking and emergency steering.
U-turns require the combined use of clutch control, rear brake control and looking where you want to go. Oddly enough I found that easier in the parking lot than I do on the road.
Emergency braking got my heart racing before we even started. I’ve never locked up the brakes on my bike (Kawasaki Ninja 650) and was terrified of what would happen. We started with a right turn, had to accelerate and drive towards a double strip of cones…once your front tire crossed the line of the first two cones we had to apply our rear brake only and stop as quickly as possible. Most of us the first time took all 10 cones to come to a complete stop. I locked up my rear tire and looked straight at the ground. Well, where you look is where you go but fortunately I stayed upright and Kim told me to keep my head up and eyes looking forward to maintain control. Second lap I did much better, again locking up the rear and each subsequent lap got easier. Next we moved on to front brake only. The idea is to apply pressure like you’d shake a hand at the start of the braking and then pull using more strength. First round I stopped near the end of the line of cones again and was told the starting squeeze was right but I needed more strength on that squeeze to stop faster. The 3rd part of the lesson was combining both front and back brake and it blows me away how quickly and in control you can stop a bike when you practice these both together.
Final lesson of Day One was emergency steering/avoidance. This is when you’re riding along the highway and suddenly a box drops off the truck in front of you. Push to the left or right to get around the object and remember to push back the opposite way to get you back on track on the road, rather than into the ditch or on-coming traffic.
Sunday – Day Two – we started in the classroom discussing the theories of road riding. I think the whole group had a pretty clear idea of what to do when, we just had some clarification questions and hit the road prior to lunch, just in time for the hail. I wouldn’t say I’m a fair weather rider but I’m not keen on riding in snow and we rode in snow, hail and rain. Fortunately because of such great exercises Saturday, my confidence level was up and one of the topics of discussion during class-time was the ins and outs of traction. Braking and acceleration increase your need for traction; snow, rain, gravel and sand decrease your ability to get traction. The trick is to find the balance between your speed and the road conditions.
We made many rights and lefts and everyone got a turn to lead, then got the feedback from Kim on what needs work. It was a great experience, minus the rather poor weather conditions.
If you’re just starting out, V-Twin Okanagan has lots of options for training times and if you’re interested in the Advanced Course, there’s one more this season May 7th & 8th in Vernon, but they’ll also do something custom if you want one on one.
You could win either of these courses just by going to their website www.vtwinokanagan.ca and entering!
I come away from these two days of training feeling more confident and really excited about the coming season…now if we could just get some sunshine!
Jazz
Here is a clutter free way to keep the garage clean and have a place to keep your gear. Whether you street ride or play in the dirt – even if you ski, this is the perfect accessory to store your protection investment. The helmet hooker is made in Canada from solid steel. It can be custom designed for any sport to hang your helmet plus it comes with an attachment to hang your gloves and if you mount the hh on the wall into a wall stud, you can add your leather jacket below.
