New Shoe's & Stay Upright Adventure Training

A couple of weeks back I pulled the trigger on some rider training. The first time since the 90's and in this case long overdue. I'd realised on this ride, that I had no idea what I was doing off road and needed some proper training especially on the big Fat Africa Twin. It's a good bike but man its heavy and intimidating off road when things get technical & sketchy. My skill level off road is pretty low, so time to do something about it.

Before attending the course I had better do something about my front tyre. After the last ride in November doing the Omeo Highway twice and riding the Snowy Mountains twisty tarmac, the front tyre was chewed out on both sides due to hard cornering in the heat on the knobbies. They don't like it on a heavy bike.

Bridgestone AX-41

The Bridgestone AX-41 lasted for 9,857 kms but it was pretty well cooked for the last 2 thousand of those so probably good for 8k. It handled well on road and offroad. I've read some reviews saying its a bad off-road tyre, but I didn't find any problems with it.

On Friday I had an RDO, so I took the tyre up to Tyre for bikes and decided I'd try a Continental TKC80 tyre. I'd heard good thing about them, so let's give it a try. Yes they put the tyre on for me.

Overnight we had rain, with showers forecast for the morning and afters. Well that's just great.

I had booked rider training with Stay Upright Adventure school, which for Sydney is held at Macarthur Motorcycle Club just outside Appin. I'd got up at 6am and it was lightly sprinkling, which soon stopped before I had to get underway thankfully.

Macarthur Motorcycle Club has 4 purpose built motocross tracks and an Oval track with internal course and a couple of short adventure bike routes. We spent most of the day on the Oval track/internal course, then some down hill drills between the motocross tracks, then late in the afternoon we spent time on the motocross track as well as riding through the tree lines on the adventure course. It was a great variety.

I was the first person there at 8:30am with a 8:45am start time. I must have been keen! There were only 11 students today, but a good mix of younger and older people. It seems most people had hired the CRF250s to ride. There were a couple of Ktm790,890 a BMW F700 and a Transalp. I had the heaviest bike. I considered hiring but decided on learning the drills on my own bike because I know it well. I didn't want to be learning new skills and trying to learn a new bike at the same time. Gives' me more time to focus solely on learning the drills.

Our instructors were Steve, Matt and Wayne Clark. All very experienced ex racers and all round great blokes. They were easy going and would answer any and all questions. They started the day out with a series of drills, body position, hanging onto the bike, Clutch and brake control and turning the bike on tight technical bits using all these technics. With direct feedback of what  your doing wrong I found this was great and a lot of things fell into place for me. Constantly getting to practice each drill over and over re-enforcing the lessons I got a lot out of it.

We did braking drills, locking the back wheel, locking the front wheel. I really sucked at this as my bike has ABS on the front you can't turn off but I did manage some mad skids with the rear. I couldn't tell if the front was locking or not. The surface was really grippy as it was damp from the rain but as the day progressed it dried up and it started getting hot and steamy. It was only about 26°C but standing around and riding at low speed was hard work. We were sweating like pigs. I was glad that we stopped for lunch around 1:30pm. They supplied a subway platter and fruit which was perfect.

After Lunch, Wayne had some hill climbs and descents for us to practice. This was also really good, doing different types of hill descents brakes, no brakes, engine braking, no engine braking and clutch control sharp turns down the hill. I surprised myself with this. Definitely couldn't have done this at the start of the day. They then moved us onto the motocross track that had some pretty steep jumps we had to ride up and down. I was pretty nervous on them but it all ended up ok.

The only thing I didn't attempt was the stalling on the steep hill and then rescuing the bike. Not everyone did it, most of the people on 250s did it but I didn't want to risk that if I didn't have too. The steep hills climbs with no run up were hard enough on the big bike. We did some more drills on the jumps on the oval course including short starts and quick stops on the crest of the jumps etc. All of this was excellent as I have never really done any of this before.

Strangely enough one of the people on the course was married to a friend of ours from our High School days, who my brother was in his class at school and I was in his sisters class. What are the odds of bumping into them here? We had a catch up for about 15 minutes before going our separate ways.

I was pretty well knackered by the time 4:30pm rolled around, my legs were aching and i was pretty tired, the heat really took it out of me. I thanked all the instructors individually they did a great job and had the patience of saints those guys. I said to them "I'd learnt more in one day on the bike than I have in the last 3.5 year of ownership". That put a smile on their faces.

I'd highly recommend doing one of Stay Uprights Adventure courses if your in the same boat as me, with lots of road riding experience but very little off road experience. I learned lots and it was worth every cent. It was a great learning environment. I've no affiliation with Stay Upright, they just provided a great service.

I might try a follow up course in the next 6 months as a refresher.