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- Ready for Freddy? Freddy Spencer Racing School, that is. Ready to hang off your bike like a howler monkey, and leave your John Hancock on the pavement of a racetrack with your kneepads, at 100-plus mph? Think so, tough guy?
What you need first is to learn total control. Yeah, in the machismo department, but also Total Control ARC (for Advanced Riding Clinic), a workshop based on motorcycle guru Lee Parks' curriculum that teaches (in one day, no less) everything from the practical physics of suspension and traction to techniques for handling high speed and tight-radius turns.
Parks knows bikes. He has been racing since he was 14, and spent about five years developing the course, and accompanying book, "Total Control, High Performance Street Riding Techniques," published two years ago by Motorbooks International.
And Parks says his class is meant to augment, not compete with MSF workshops to develop beginner and experienced-rider competence. "It's really meant to fill the gap between the MSF Experienced Rider Course, and track courses such as Freddie Spencer’s," he said. "I decided to develop the course when I was editor of Motorcycle Consumer News, and we were getting emails from riders asking about courses beyond ERC, that could prepare them for track days."
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- The one-day class teaches, at low speeds and in a completely safe environment, the physical and mental skills racers use to keep their tires on the pavement in fast turns and straight-aways. But the class is much more than a prelude to a track day. Parks, who flew out from Southern California, where he runs a motorcycle apparel company, to teach the class in upstate New York, makes it clear throughout the that good skills on a track expand skills needed for a safe ride to work.
We met on a windy, brisk spring day in a parking lot in the middle of some seriously beautiful Hudson Valley farming scenery. I never knew the month of May to be so cold. It may have been that I swore I would never consider a track day until “Hell freezes over”. Well, there we were to take the famed clinic, expecting to learn corning techniques at sluggish speeds of, say, 60mph. try about a third of that!
I was equipped with a Honda 599, compliments of American Honda, a bike with which I have familiarity from previous press events; hence I knew it to be a user-friendly machine and my choice for this school. Also available to me was a 1989 Honda CB1 from the MotoSavvy stables.
It was only the fourth time the course has been taught in New York, so Parks was on hand both to teach it and help launch the flagship NY Total Control program, which will have three locations in NY under the supervision of Christine Firehock herself an instructor who's been teaching her own beginners course, Christine's Kickstart, and school, American Motorcycle Driving School, since 1986.
We got there late, so we missed the donuts. But we got to chew on a month's worth of knowledge crammed into eight hours, and a leap in riding competence light years ahead of where we'd started at 9:00 am. No problem, partly because Parks, a Chicago native and a child of educators, is a gifted teacher who keeps it entertaining while hammering home the main message: performance riding is[cut this comma] physically, about managing traction with body positioning, braking, accelerating and choosing the perfect lines; and mentally about managing fear, and the consequent tendency to forget how to concentrate and see.
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- I found the course is so effective because he approaches the subject of performance riding from an almost holistic perspective. He peppers the pedagogy with references to Far-East philosophy – a kind of Zen and the art of motorcycle competence – and anecdotes from Friedrich Nietzsche to motocross star Bob Hannah saying, "I love the mud because everyone else hates it."
"That means trust," he said. "Trusting the bike as if one were a good passenger, trusting the motorcycle to do what it does best." When he mentioned fear, I remember thinking, "What fear? We're in a parking lot doing 20 miles an hour." Yet, there I was, in the midst of a long series of turning exercises, just not getting it, not "seeing" it, feeling more and more embarrassed rolling up to Romy, one of Parks’ NY teachers, waiting for him to say, for the umpteenth time, "Karl, why don't you try doing it a little faster." Faster? I'm taking those turns at 90 miles and hour as it is! All right, ten miles an hour, but it sure as hell feels like 90."
It wasn't until I noticed that, going into turns, I was tighter than a quahog before a clambake, that I figured it out: I was fighting the bike because I didn't trust it. And because I was so concentrated on concentrating, I was missing the basics, like vision: what Parks calls "floodlight" viewing, in which one can look ahead, say at the entry point of the next turn, but see everything. Next time around, I took his and Romy's advice: "look" at the whole picture, don't stare at it. I relaxed my arms, legs, brain, and the bike did what it was supposed to do. Suddenly my speed went up, my trajectory was where I wanted it to be and I was having a damned good time.
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- Another big part of the course was a mind-warping discussion of that most arcane of subjects: suspension. It's a topic most would rather pretend doesn't exist. But it's a critical function in performance riding where up and down motion ruins momentum. I learned things I never knew and frankly never wanted to know: the difference between sprung and unsprung weight. I can now ask someone that without expecting to get slapped.
Did you know that the suspension spring itself is actually half sprung and half unsprung? Go figure. And then there are the little bolts on top of the forks. You know, the bolts that you thought were ornamental, added to give your GSX-R a sexy industrial postmodern look. Well, they actually do something. Yes they are for preloading the suspension. Or maybe you knew all that, but were afraid to touch anything.
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- If you are thinking of attending a track school or spending a day at the track, or even if you simply want to improve relations with your motorcycle, this class is well worth it. Racing aside, even if your muscles ache after you ride and you have the nagging feeling that you are working twice as hard as you should when you ride - that you're not so much riding your bike as fighting it - this course is for you too.
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For more information about how you can get in control go to - 2005 CALENDAR OF EVENTS and sign up for the next Lee Parks' "Total Control Advanced Riding Clinic” in your area.
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Lee Parks' “Total Control Advanced Riding Clinic” is offered in New York through Christine’s Kickstart. - For more info go to www.christineskickstart.com
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- READERS REVIEW - LET US HEAR YOUR COMMENTS - CLICK HERE
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