Me and Motorcycling (Part 8)

Well, I'm still busy, and procrastinating: Saw a couple of high school buddies that I haven't spoken to for the (this can't be a real number) 28 years since I graduated. I did a little bike tour to the Niagara Region, where I went to high school, to coincide with one of my friends making an infrequent trip back from Europe. It was pretty nice to get away for a couple of days, and very cool to see my friends again. It was kind of surreal being back in the old stomping grounds. I kept wondering where the muscle cars and mullets were; and then I would remember that it wasn't the 70's any more... anyway, on with the story....

Epiphany and Conclusion

The first lap was a pretty slow one, and I looked for those reference points that I could identify, while trying to keep my bike to the appointed line. After two slow laps, Peter picked up the pace and I immediately ran into trouble, having the first "incident" of the day.

The Nelson Track is laid out roughly like this: You come off the front straightaway onto corner one, which is a long, fast sweeping right hander, and off that onto a short straight chute. You have to brake hard there to turn sharply into a long looping right hander, front suspension fully loaded, and transfer the load to the rear smoothly, as you bend the bike into the corner. I quickly grow to love that corner entry for its demanding nature, as it's the one that requires the highest braking and corner entry forces, and you can really feel the bike suspension "working", in a way that never happens on the street. It is a totally cool sensation, but I'll come back to that later. I find that corner itself to be technically challenging throughout much of the day, as the "line" through here doesn't follow the configuration of the curbs, which confuses my main reference point.

If you follow the curbs through here, you actually turn two corners, whereas the ideal line just ignores the curbs and loops through in a smoother, wider arc that is much faster, but you just have to "know" the line, because there is little to refer to. Peter has already explained that this is one of the psychological factors that separate the Pros from the Amateurs at that track, and we are all determined to "get" it (although I secretly fear that I never will). We all eventually do, me last of all.

Anyway, this is not where the difficulty lay, but in the bend immediately following. That corner features a change of surface, from asphalt to concrete, with the change happening at the point that the bike is at maximum right-hand lean for the corner. On the street, this change in surface would likely mean the immediate loss of traction. Although the rest of the group made it through fine, this was too much of a psychological barrier for me, and my brain couldn't make it around that corner at our slightly brisker pace of 40km/hr or so. Later in the day, I would be blitzing through here at what felt like 90km/hr, but just now, that slower speed was too fast. I stood the bike up and rode it straight off the racetrack and into the grass, the bike bucking and jumping under me as I carefully reduced the speed. Finally I got it stopped without falling over. I rode back onto the track and rejoined the group, who had stopped and waited for me. I explained what happened, and we continued on.

The next corner, corner five, was the one that I would come the closest to disliking. It was a hard left after a mild downward change in elevation, and became off-camber at the apex, which meant that it sloped to the outside. At the same point, the corner began to decrease in radius. You would have to fight the natural tendency of the slope and tightening corner to push you to the edge of the track as you exited; but at the same time, because of the sideways slope, feel as if you had less traction for doing so. I would remain slower through this corner than I should be for the entire day; and the short straight following would be one of only two places (the other one being the front straight) on the track that the other two would be able to pass me at, later in the day. A proper corner entry and exit is crucial to being able to put the power down at the right time, and therefore to developing greater speed on the straights.

This short straight leads to a pretty non-descript right hander. Well, nondescript after corner five, anyway. This corner requires almost as much braking as corner two, and as much precise timing on the dive into entry. This then leads through the kink of the chicanes to the last corner before the front straightaway. This last corner is a tight right-handed hairpin, the inside of which I find too bumpy and rutted on my first few attempts. The Pros go through here at high speeds and truly impressive rates of lean, but it's clearly too much for my stock suspension. In addition, this is the one place on the Nelson track where you can ride into a wall, even if it is covered in hay bales. I settled for riding the long slow way around, coming out beside the wall and riding along side it for much of the straight, and consequently required the whole straightaway to build up sufficient speed again for the entry into corner one. At least that long front straight gave me a chance to rest and catch my breath.

I had spent the two months previously working out in preparation for this day. Motorcycle racing doesn't require a lot of physical strength, but it does demand a high degree of physical fitness and endurance. As you brake going into corners, you have your arms straight out in front of you, muscles resisting the force of braking as if you're doing a 2G pushup. The rest of the way through the corner you are in a squat, standing on the balls of your feet on the pegs, and supporting most of your weight with your legs; and you flow as smoothly as you can from one position to another, which also requires some effort. Imagine walking in a squat for several kilometres, stopping every 100 feet or so to do a couple of quick pushups and some Tai Chi (from the squat), and you get the general idea. I had spent a lot of time on a stair machine and doing other exercises in preparation. The first couple of laps were easy, but it became quite gruelling as the day wore on.

We started off pretty slow, as I said, and increased the speed as we went. This meant that I had much less time as the speed increased, and every corner entry soon became a flurry of activity, wherein I frantically tried to get everything done in time to safely turn in and make it around the corner. Then something happened that turned the day from merely really exciting to the most awesome experience of my life: I became more and more frantic/frenetic as I went faster and faster, and finally, hard on the brakes and approaching corner two wayyy faster than I had at any time previously, time suddenly slowed right down.

I felt that peculiar sensation of time dilation, as if I were in the middle of an accident, although I wasn't. Suddenly I had plenty of time to finish braking the bike and heel it over into the corner. I could feel every nuance of the suspension flexing beneath me, and the effect of small shifts in my weight on the steering. This slow-motion experience continued as I rode, only diminishing slightly as I achieved a new plateau of speed, and returning in full force as my brain caught up to my new level of achievement. The first time after that we pulled in for a break, I babbled excitedly, trying to explain this awesome feeling to Iain as he nodded and grinned knowingly. I had arrived.

I now understood how people were able to pilot high-performance machinery in demanding circumstances, and why they wanted to. I understood why people wanted to grab a race car, or bike, or airplane and go as fast as they could, pushing themselves to do so. This feeling was an absolutely awesome rush, and I had never felt anything like it. I was afraid, every time that I pulled off the track, that this feeling had disappeared for good. But every time that I returned to the track it would come back even faster. I realized as well that this was why racing was so special, as you can never go so fast for so long on the street that your brain clicks into this secret hidden extra super special gear. The closest that you can come on the street, is the few milliseconds of flight that you have before bouncing off the Chinese restaurant; or those fractions of a second that feel like minutes as your car skids across the patch of ice towards the oncoming garbage truck. This is way cooler.

I now had all the time in the world to concentrate on my riding and did so, rapidly getting better, even as the improvements became smaller and harder to achieve. I worked on developing as much smoothness as I could, particularly in the transitions where you are shifting your weight around the bike. The reference points began to come at me fast and furious as I had more time and awareness to process external factors. The extreme clarity with which I was now receiving input meant that a tiny crack or pebble could now serve as a reference point towards speed and track position.

The more reference points I added, the smoother I became, as when the film goes from 10 to 29 frames per second. That meant that I could spend even more attention on the handling of the bike, and go even smoother and faster. I was now taking full advantage of my bike's handling superiority, and basically owned corners one through five. If I made it into corner one first no-one was passing me until two thirds of the way down the straight after turn five. And that was basically because their bikes both had a lot more power than mine. I was still not the fastest person on the track, but I was definitely the most improved, and now holding my own.
The one exception, of course, was Peter. As fast as we neophytes were getting, he would still zoom up beside one of us in a corner and point out with shouts, hand gestures, and exaggerated shifts in position, the attitude that we should be in relative to the bike to go even smoother and faster. As soon as we were arranged to his satisfaction he would zoom away in a blur of colour, instantly appearing a third of the way around the track, beside the next rider. Every time that I witnessed this, I shook my head in disbelief.

I absolutely fell in love with corner one, which was the fastest one on the track. I would come zooming up the left side of the straightaway (taking a breather and resting my trembling legs), winding up through the gears until I reached the flag tower on the left. At that point I would chop the throttle to make the bike squat and load the tires, helping turn-in. simultaneously, my right knee was popped out as an airbrake, and my weight now shifted smoothly to the right side of the bike to encourage the bike to turn in more. I would bank the bike over like a fighter plane, at just the right angle to intersect the right hand side of corner one at just the right arc, and dive in, rolling the throttle back on.

I would soar through the corner at about 140km/hr, continuing to roll the throttle on smoothly; as my body hung off the right side of the bike, suspended by my legs and centrifugal force, skimming inches off the ground. As the bike passed the apex, I would begin to rotate it up straight for the short chute and roll the throttle on the rest of the way. If I had done everything right, I would come out of corner one faster than I went in, getting slingshot up the chute. I would in fact be able to hit the rev limiter in top gear, which meant that I was going faster than 190km/hr, which was REALLY fast for this short section of track. And then I would have to get on the brakes REALLY HARD in order to slow in time for the corner. It was a thrill ride. The entire physics of riding on the track was way beyond what was possible on the street. And I was loving it.

Ninja-boy was the first one to go down, two thirds of the way through the afternoon. This was to be expected, as he had good bike control, but the fearlessness of youth. He started charging the corners aggressively right from the start, and worked his way right to the limit. Once he discovered where his limit was he backed off and extended it a little at a time, as the rest of us were doing. Near the end of the day, I was very sore and tired, and had very little energy left. Iain had had to hold the bike for the last several breaks so that I could dismount, as my left leg and right hip were very sore, due to remaining traces of the accident and the level of physical exertion throughout the day. Nonetheless, this time when Katana-boy went roaring past on the front straightaway I put my head down and gave chase.

I had finally gotten a decent drive out of corner five, and was rapidly catching him, knowing that I would make up a bunch more of the distance under braking. Just as I got close enough to let him know that I was there without "showing him the wheel", he suddenly straightened up his bike, ass-end kicked sideways, smoke coming off the back tire. He got it straightened up and rode straight off the back corner just as I flashed past, diving into the corner entry to the chicanes. I did a couple more laps and then pulled in to see what had happened. He had apparently missed a downshift just as he started braking, and was carrying too much speed to make it around the corner. He fell as the bike hit the dirt, but wasn't going very fast at that point.

We all stopped around this point to take a long break, by mutual consent. We had now been riding at high speeds for most of the day, it was about 4:00 in the afternoon, and we were bone-weary. Peter decided to go for a little blast to clear out the cobwebs while we rested. He put on a display of wheel-spinning virtuosity, sliding his bike around the corners in two-wheel drifts, wheelies and stoppies that had us all gaping and grinning in astonishment. Walter clicked his stopwatch as Peter went around for the second time, doing a clean lap, clicking it a lap later and saying nonchalantly that it was an unofficial lap record. After that, we were pretty much done for the day. Although we could still use the track for the next hour, none of us had anything left physically. And besides, none of us wanted to desecrate the track after viewing that last performance. Katana boy's bike wouldn't start anymore anyway, as the fuel filter appeared to be clogged, or something. EVERYONE's eye's were rolling by this point.

We all packed up our tools and bikes and made ready to leave. We were debriefed by our instructors and welcomed into the racing fraternity. When Iain and I discussed the day later on the drive home, we concluded that it was too bad that we didn't know Ninja-boy's name. We were quite sure that we would be hearing his name in future race reports, otherwise. We just hoped that he would grow up a bit in the meantime. Katana-boy? We figured that he would go really fast for a couple of years, crash a lot, and quit racing. When we analysed my riding, we concluded that once I had come up to speed I was quite legitimately "fast", and could be proud of my performance.

I had no intention of continuing on with racing, other than in occasional random daydreams, but I had a real sense of achievement as we left the track that day. We had arranged for Iain to drive ahead of time, as he had assured me that I would be incapable of doing so. I understood what he meant immediately upon our entry to Highway 401, as my sense of time and speed were still greatly skewed and would remain so for several days. Sprawled out in the truck seat, exhausted, I looked at the traffic crawling down the highway at an interminably and artificially slow speed, and reflected on the best day of my life.

One lesson that I have carried forward from that day is that there is always room for improvement. I guess that means I'm about due to repeat the experience, and the Concours is just the wrong sort of bike. Hmmm, I wonder where I can find a Hawk GT that's in nice shape, cheap....

Me and Motorcycling (Part 7)

The Wardrobe Incident

Well I'm still in procrastination mode, so I should at least drop another chapter in the continuing saga. I'm about to hop on the (Kawasaki ZG1000) Concours and go touring for a couple of days; so I'm procrastinating getting ready for that as well....

They turned their attention to our gear. Ninja-boy, as you'd expect, was in a good-quality one piece leather racing suit, and had all new gear. Katana-boy's gear was well-used, but serviceable. It wasn't of the same current generation as Ninja-boy's, or as heavily protected with padding and body armour, but would hold together in a crash. It would just hurt more.

They frowned when they looked at my leathers: It was a new suit (the insurance had replaced it, and also paid for part of the cost of a new helmet, as the old ones had both been damaged in the accident.). But it was a sport riding suit for the street (plain black), and two piece, so that I could forego the pants and wear jeans if I desired, on the street. I was also wearing a full set of body armour and a back protector underneath, courtesy of Iain, but this was not good enough.

They explained that the zipper which held the two pieces together would let go if I crashed as it wasn't sturdy enough, and that wouldn't be good at all. They just looked at each other and thought for a moment, as my heart started sinking. Then the marshal asked if we had any duct tape. Iain and I both quickly responded "Yes!" as all four of us relaxed with huge sighs of relief. "Ok, just tape them together real good" he said. Iain rushed to comply, as they continued checking my gear. Once again, duct tape saved the day! Red Green would have been proud….

My racing boots and gloves passed muster, and they approvingly noted my cautious handling of the helmet, and asked me to remove it from the carrying bag so that they could inspect it. I was handling this helmet cautiously for a couple of reasons: Firstly, this was the best helmet that I could possibly afford. It cost $800 and was close to the top of the line. I saved a couple of hundred dollars by getting a plain (bright bright red, so it was visible) helmet, without race-replica graphics.

I tried different brands in that price range, and settled on an Arai Quantum S, for the simple reason that it fit my face and head perfectly, with or without glasses. This is very important, as a snug fit is very important for safety, but if there are any pressure points, the helmet will not be comfortable. This quality of helmet was not an indulgence: If you are a serious street or track rider; or simply want to give yourself the best life -- and quality of life -- protection that you can, the helmet is the one thing that you can't skimp on. Get the best one that you can, make sure that it fits properly, and treat it well.

This leads me to the second reason for the careful treatment: For something as expensive as a good motorcycle helmet (and you can easily spend $1500, if you want to get fancy), and that is designed to be tough enough to protect your head and brain from horrendous impacts, they are very, very fragile. A drop from a height of 4 feet onto concrete or pavement is enough to put a small crack or scratch into the gel coat of the helmet (the layer just underneath the paint and primer, where the true construction of the helmet begins). This is enough to make that flaw a weak spot, and compromise the ability of the helmet to take a major blow later, when that might mean the difference between life and death, or more severe injury than otherwise. A racer who dropped his helmet onto the ground and damaged it would immediately throw it away. While probably crying about the cost. The same, of course, occurs when a helmet is even lightly damaged in a crash. It has served its purpose but is now compromised, and is no longer a piece of safety gear, but merely a fashion statement.

Fit is also extremely important, as I stated earlier, so you don't let other people wear your helmet, as this also compromises its ability to protect your own noggin, by subtly altering the fit and padding. Walter carefully examined the helmet, looking for imperfections of the type that I mentioned, while Iain placed a wide swath of duct tape on my back, joining the two halves of my leathers together. The helmet passed muster, and the duct-taping received the thumbs up. It was now time to get onto the track. I placed my helmet back in the bag, laid it carefully on the bike seat, and zipped my jacket against the chill. Peter walked over and picked up the helmet, casually strolled over to the pit wall, and placed it there. I got his point: The bike seat was a less stable platform, and a casual nudge would have been a dumb way to blow $800.

We followed Peter out onto the track, and I immediately started looking for reference points, per my dog-eared copy of "A Twist of the Wrist" by Keith Code. This was pretty easy to do, as we were going at a pretty slow pace. We were, in fact, walking. Peter walked along the line that we would later navigate with our bikes, pointing out braking points, changes in surface and camber, and other points of note. We were on a modified configuration of the Nelson track (just under 2km), with some kind of car school happening opposite, on the Fabi track configuration (just over 2km).

Shannonville Motorsport Park has a very flexible track layout, and can be used in about 6 different main configurations, from a ¼ mile drag strip to a 4km road course. We were in no danger of making a wrong turn and ending up on the wrong track. Even with my sense of direction. I pretty much gave up on reference points, as I couldn't figure out what I would reliably be able to detect at speed.

We finished walking the track, and returned to our bikes in the pit area. It was finally time for the main event. I fitted my earplugs and put on my helmet, and mounted my bike (my hands shaking slightly from excitement), as the others did the same. The plan was that we would follow Peter at a moderate pace for a few laps, and then he would begin to increase the pace as we became more familiar with the track layout.

Peter started his bike first. It burst to life with a deep musical whooping sound, immediately identifying it as the Alpha Bike of this particular pack. I had checked it out earlier, and it truly was a thing of beauty. A brand new GSXR 1100-based superbike, it was a gleaming white and blue, and covered with sponsor decals. Everywhere the eye lighted, expensive custom parts made of "unobtanium". Trick, light racing wheels shod with racing slicks; huge braced swingarm in exotic alloy; exhaust can made of titanium, and much, much more. This bike was easily worth ten times the value of any of the others, and was capable of performance on a whole other level. It was unlikely that any of us neophytes could even ride it around the track, other than in lurching, embarrassing fits and starts. If our bikes were eager Huskies, raring to get to the track, his was a Great White shark, eager to devour all competition. It didn't need the number one plate to make that evident. The deep, chesty whooping sound as he blipped the throttle made it abundantly clear.

We fired up our bikes. This required four attempts and some frantic fiddling by Katana-boy and his brother. Iain and the marshal looked at each other and rolled their eyes. We formed up in a loose line behind Peter, and made our way onto the track, as Walter gathered up his flags and made his way to the infield. He would use different flag signals on us throughout the day, and expect us to react accordingly. A mistake or missed signal would result in a gesturing over to the side of the track on the next go-round, and a pointed correction, which we all wanted to avoid.

The first lap was a pretty slow one, and I looked for those reference points that I could identify, while trying to keep my bike to the appointed line. After two slow laps, Peter picked up the pace, and I immediately ran into trouble, having the first "incident" of the day.

To be continued....