A Weekend at the California Superbike School

During a weekend at Keith Code’s California Superbike School last March, I learned how to be a good passenger. No, I didn’t chicken out and beg my Riding Coach for a ride, but I did learn that being a chicken isn’t such a bad thing ... a boneless chicken that is. You see, Keith’s curriculum is designed to develop the skills necessary for becoming a “less busy” rider. The idea is that once a good line is chosen and a turn properly initiated, the bike will do all the work involved, providing that the rider maintains good throttle control. The rider becomes, in a certain sense, a passenger - someone who is not “busy” making adjustments throughout the corner.

Throttle control is key and thus appropriately the first skill addressed in a full day of alternating classroom seminars and corresponding track drills. Following a few warm up laps, the first drill consisted of 10 laps around the track in one gear (fourth) with no brakes allowed. This tuned students into their “sense of speed” and provided the riding coaches the opportunity to rate students’ throttle control. The lessons built from there with encouragement to avoid the brakes, and in subsequent drills students worked on turn entry with the assistance of points marked on the track in yellow tape. These points occurred way deeper in a turn than I would have chosen, but that was the whole point. A person’s survival instinct screams, “Look out! You’re heading straight for the dirt! Turn now! Turn! Tuuurrrrnnnnn!” The faster you go, the louder your little friend screams. Part of the art of cornering is to overcome this instinct with knowledge put into practice.

That’s only what we worked on before lunch. After a short break, the tape was removed and students picked their own reference points for turning which could be a mark in the pavement, a skid mark, or some other such thing. The skills continued to build and the students began concentrating on looking through the turns, while keeping the bike heading toward the chosen turning point. Yet another drill addressed the need to “get the steering over with” early in a turn, preventing the “busy” rider’s need for adjustments through the corner. The carefully structured lessons culminated in an understanding of the primary elements of effective cornering.

Aside from the obvious benefits of improving throttle control and choosing an effective entry point for smooth cornering, the single best reason I can give for completing Level One is simply to be eligible for Level Two. For students who have advanced to this stage, the emphasis shifts to visual strategies as Keith’s seminars address the tough problems of receiving and processing visual information. For example, he explains the effects of target fixation, “a major barrier to smooth flow riding.” Track exercises are specifically designed to help the student come to terms with this problem and effectively handle it along with “other pieces of the visual puzzle.”

Best of all, Level Two riders have the opportunity to experience “The Lean Machine,” which in this editor’s opinion is nothing short of a work of genius. Representing Keith’s solution to “the most feared part of motorcycle riding - traction and trusting your tires,” this device is designed with two outrigger arms which are shock dampened to taper off possible high sides. It can be leaned over to a 50° angle and flicked side to side. For those who have yet to make friends with extreme lean angle, it provides the opportunity to see that is takes more than you think for the tires to give way under normal conditions. Additionally, since the Lean Machine is ridden in circles on the skid pad, it offers the effect of a corner without end, allowing the student the time to experiment with body positioning ... an invaluable opportunity that doesn’t exist on the street. As for results, the photo speaks for itself. Usually, parents are concerned the first time their child scrapes her knees, but my Mom was proud.

My weekend at the Superbike School provided a lot of food for thought. By the end of the second intensive day, I was pushing the envelope to sensory overload, but I came away from my track time a changed rider primed for exponential improvement. Being prone to daydreaming, I’ve been experiencing a multitude of visual flashbacks lately. Perhaps the most endearing image is of Andy Ibbott, their top British Riding Coach, zinging past me flapping his elbows. He was reminding me to relax, get the steering done in one movement and then let the bike do the work in the corner. When all is said and done, boneless chickens make better passengers.