Author Archives: Mike

After just a couple weeks shy of a year, I got my WR450F dualsport bike back from the shop. Hooray! Now I have to put on the new tires… rack… new sprocket… new turnsignals… new starter gear… new headlight… then break it in and change the oil before I can start to “really drive it”. Booooo!

Here it is hiding behind the yellow SV650S in front:

Even though I still have some wrenching to do… I’m really happy to have it back!

I’ve been in Toronto the last week due to illness (kidney stones), but Friday afternoon I felt up to a ride. This time through Terra Cotta to the Badlands, outside Cheltenham. I had passed them on a bike before, but didn’t really know where I was at the time. This time I stopped for some pictures (and the obligatory photo of the bike 🙂 )

I wasn’t the only one stopping to look around. There was a car full of clothes and expensive camera gear, with 2 guys taking photos of a model with the Badlands in the background. Then they wanted to take photos of her in the middle of it… but she couldn’t walk out there with the fancy shoes she had on. So she put on boots… everyone trudged out to one of the high spots… then the 2 guys had to prop her up to change back into her 6″ heels. She almost fell over a couple times getting the boots off but in the end she got to pose for the cameras… standing way out in the dirt…

They didn’t seem at all interested in taking pictures of me. I don’t know why… I’m as willing as anybody to flash a little skin for the sake of art… as long as it’s “tasteful” 🙂

I don’t know what that is in Celcius… but for a guy from Toronto it means “damn hot”.

Another weekend in Phoenix, another bike: this time a Kawasaki Ninja 636: my first inline-4 rental: not as comfortable as other bikes but I wanted to try something with a bit more get-up-and-go 🙂 Today it was a trip out to Prescott and back, with a side-trip to Jerome since the roads around there are so much fun!

I passed by lots of fields and ranches, and since I was ready to stop for a drink anyways I pulled over to visit some 4-legged friends. When I parked the bike they were all laying down.. but quickly got up as I walked over to their fence. I think they could smell my leather gloves…

The first curvy bits I hit on the way to Prescott were climbing the hills to a place called Yarnell. The road kept twisting back on itself, so there were several good places to look back down across the plains below… where I was a few minutes ago:

Closer to Prescott the road had more and more corners… many marked as low speed (but you could still get around them much faster 🙂 ) – many had guardrails since if you strayed only a few feet off the road you’d be falling for quite some time before hitting bottom…

This bike felt a lot different from my SV. For everything you read about sport 600s I was expecting something with a lot more bite… but at low RPM it’s very docile: it doesn’t pull hard at all: my SV “feels” much stronger driving at less-than-highway speeds. But at high speeds it was a different story. When my bike was running out of steam, the 636 was just at the bottom edge of it’s powerband. Without listing exact numbers… on the 636 I was 25km/h over the highest speed I _ever_ reached on my SV and was still accelerating. If my jacket hadn’t been flapping in the wind so hard that my glasses were rattling around in my helmet I could have let it go faster: wow!

Now my two trackdays made sense: on a SV650S I was pulling away from other riders on 600s coming out of corners (mind you, this was the beginners group)… but they would blow my doors off by the end of the straights. If you can get used to revving the guts out these things they can really move!

After passing through Prescott on my way to Jerome… I found more friends!

I took a look down a couple short dirt roads… just to see what I could see. But I didn’t really have the bike for riding on gravel, so I only have a couple pics of the surrounding hills… and what must be the most remote mailboxes in Arizona!

Finally I turned around in the rest area just outside Jerome, then made my way back to the I17, then South back to the hotel in Phoenix. Another day of exploring, and home safe…

Since I had so much fun at FAST in Shannonville, I decided to see if there was something similar in Phoenix. I lucked out, since the sister company of where I’ve been renting bikes on weekends was having a track day at Firebird International Raceway his weekend. A quick signup online and some money sent by PayPal was all it took to reserve a half-day session and bike.

Unlike the event at FAST (which was 99% rental bikes and training-oriented)… this was a regular “track day” with 4 tiers of riders: beginner (my group), superstreet, intermediate and advanced. The main difference in the beginner group was no passing on corners… and more instruction. 99% of the bikes were owned by the riders, and once the gates opened at 5:30am the lot quickly filled with bikes of every class and construction: from ratty-looking trackbikes lashed to the back of pickups… to amateur race teams with their own covered areas, generators, and flawless racebikes up on stands with tirewarmers all ready to go.

Since I was there for a half-day, I got to ride 4 15-minute sessions, with some classroom training in between each session. Apparently a typical beginner group has about 6 people in it… this time we had closer to triple that, which meant that the track was crowded so very rarely did I get to ride without somebody directly in front of me… and the little air-conditioned trailer that we had class in was well beyond capacity (standing room only: you can see it in the background of this pic):

You can see some of the AZTrackday.com rental bikes below: I was on #92, another SV650S, only this one had rearsets on it (basically the pegs are mounted higher on the bike and father back so you have to fold yourself up a bit more to ride it) and race slicks for tires…

This will be the last time I rent a SV650 for something like this… or I need to move out of the “beginner” group at any other trackday I attend. I was on the only SV rental there… and there were many times I could have passed other beginners in the corners (not allowed) so instead I had to pass on the straights which isn’t the bikes strong point. Almost every other bike in my group had a 50%-250% power advantage… so even if I have to slow down to keep from passing a larger bike in a corner… he would walk away from me on the straights… and I’d just end up on his ass again when I caught up to him in the next corner.

I’m by no means a fast rider… other than a couple short parts of track on a couple of the runs I could never judge my own braking and corner speeds and “do my own thing”… I was always behind bikes I rarely had the speeds to pass on the straights. It was a bit frustrating to only be able to get about half-way past a more powerful bike on the straights and then have to back off to get back in line for the approaching corner. Part of this was the sheer volume of bikes on the track… we had at least double the riders as when I was at the FAST course, on a track of similar size.

As much as I like the idea of riding the same model of bike I own so I’m “familiar” with it… it was getting old holding the bike at full throttle along every moderate straight stretch and rarely making it past people that were very s l o w in the corners.

Here’s a better view of my bike:

I had a couple scares today that could have gone badly…

One was a passing attempt that almost went wrong: coming out of a corner I was well on the inside of the bike in front of me, and I got on the gas early enough that I had a large enough speed advantage that I would get around them this time. But… there’s a line you want to be on for the next corner… and the guy in front of me was going to swing wide in front of my bike to be in the right position for that next corner (I knew that). Only I didn’t expect him to swing back my way so soon. Basically I had to move my bike right out to the far edge of the track at full throttle to squeeze past as he was drifting over my way… I was so far over that I was in serious danger of hitting some of the crumbled pavement right at the edge and ending up in the gravel. The guy I was passing didn’t even know I was there, so it’s not his fault.. it’s my responsibility to pass safely… but I’ll tell you what: I was so close to running off the track I was getting my right foot in position to use the rear brake… which would be my only hope of staying upright if I went out into the gravel, then the grass.

But, I had enough speed that I squeezed by him, and by some miracle I managed to lean the bike back into the track and get through the next corner. I’m sure the guy I passed was surprised to see me there: he was riding pretty close to the side of the track… and I came roaring by on the outside… almost in the weeds 🙂

The second eye-opener was following somebody through a 180 degree corner… actually it’s more like 190 degrees split into 2 corners back-to-back … it’s decreasing radius so it gets tighter near the exit: turn #4, here.

I had been right behind another bike for about a lap and we were coming up on the corner… and we both braked before the entrance. I was at a speed I was comfortable with and could make it through safely… then he slowed down again. Yikes! I couldn’t pass him, I was already leaned in a bit and needed to avoid any heavy braking so I drifted to the outside of the track…

…now I’m heading to the outside of a corner that I know will get tighter really soon now… fingers on the front brake but through sheer force of will keeping myself from using it…

…so even though I was freaked out with my arms stiffened up (bad)… all I could do was lean it over farther and ride it out, diving back to the inside of the corner. In the end we both passed through the corner just fine… and really I wasn’t going that fast and could have leaned the bike over twice as far… but it caught me off guard. Something you need to get used to I guess.

Oh yeah, here I am after my last (4th) session… ending about just before lunch:

I could have paid a bit more and continued with 4 more sessions in the afternoon… and it was tempting because there would have been fewer bikes in my group… but I was just a bit tired, and baking hot in the suit. Wearing head-to-toe black leather suit, gloves, boots and helmet in the summer sun, in Phoenix? Half-day is good enough for me… the afternoon was just going to get hotter…

Two other interesting things happened. One, a brand-new bike burnt to the ground… I didn’t see the bike (other side of the track) but everyone could see black smoke boiling up into the sky. Apparently the owner crashed and punctured his gas tank. He was OK, but the bike burst into flames. By the time the safety guys got there with a couple of fire extinguishers it was already a writeoff.

Oh, and a guy crashed right in front of me.. though I barely saw it 🙂

The very last lap of the very last session, I was behind him heading into turn 8+9. We’re on the far right of the track, and we normally dive to the left into turn 8 which points us right at the apex of turn #9. Now, you’re always supposed to ride your own line and not follow the guy in front of you… it’s common for one person to crash and the guy right behind him does too because he’s either following him, or he target-fixates on the guy in trouble and ends up riding towards him. Well, I had been right behind this guy for awhile, and to be honest I was following him a bit… but I knew where I was on the track and knew I had to brake and turn left into turn 8…

…but the guy in front was going a bit too fast (or his brain at least thought it was too fast), and at the last second he tried to straighten out and brake instead of turn. So I’m behind him expecting a turn… perhaps watching where he was going a bit more that I should have… but something suddenly felt “wrong”, and luckily before my brain even realized what the problem was I dove over the track and through the corner as he slammed on the brakes, and as I was looking to my right entering turn #9 (and slowing since my brain was screaming something was wrong)… all I could see was an explosion of dust and gravel as the guy blew right off the end of the corner.

I was going fast enough I didn’t see what became of him… as soon as my brain really registered “the guy in front of my just crashed” my attention was focused on making it through turn #10. Turns out he layed down his bike, a Ducati, one of the most expensive bikes to repair. Ouch 🙁

So a couple minutes later when I pulled into the pit… sweating inside my leather gear and my eyes open just a bit wider after what I’d just seen… it was a good time to call it a day. Right now I don’t have any pics of myself riding on the track… but in a few days Franco’s Sport Photography should have something on their web site (I hope). Today was fun, and made it through without a scratch! 🙂

Another weekend on the road… what to do… what to do?

Well, this looks pretty good: I’ve seen the road to Jerome mentioned many times in the forums. Since I showed up at the rental place with no reservation my bike choices were limited… a huge FJR1300… or a SV650 for half the daily rate of the FJR? As much as I was hoping to avoid the SV and get a VFR or V-Strom instead… I can’t argue with half-price. It’s decided!

The road through to Jerome was amazing: dozens of corners… many 180 switchbacks signed at 15-20MPH (but with all the guardrails… few places to pull over and take pictures 🙁 ):

There were lots of other bikes on the road! And downtown Jerome was crawling with them!

Here’s a pic from a rest area: you can barely see the road crawling along the left hillside (you can just make out a couple of tiny cars to the right of the blue sign):

I came in on top of the town.. Jerome is built into the side of a hill.. so you have to wind down the streets to get out the lower end to the highway: here’s a pseudo-panoramic view looking down:

And finally a view from the bottom of the town looking back up, and a pic of some of the old rail carts and electrics motors from long ago when mining was the booming industry:

After Jerome I looped North through Sedona, and stopped at a bridge just outside town. There were tons of cars there and lots of tourists so it was a good time to stop and stretch my legs and see what all the fuss was about:

There was a great view of the valley and river under the bridge… you could follow a trail down the hill to the river below… there was lots of people playing in the water (second pic)…

…here’s a closer view of all the people splashing around in the sun:

My last stop before heading home (2 hour drive straight South down I17 to Phoenix) was the Oak Creek Canyon lookout point:

Here’s an Easter Egg photo for my mom: the lookout had lots of tables set up with people selling crafts: this is where I bought her Mothers Day gift… since she rarely uses the Internet I should be safe posting the photo now before I mail the presents back to her 🙂

Another long day… about 300 miles in total… time for some sleep…

Last Monday I attended FAST Phase I at Shannonville Motorsport Park… part way between Toronto and Kingston. It’s a racetrack used by cars, gocarts, motorcycles etc… but that day they were running an event where you could get some help learning how to corner/brake/accelerate a motorcycle properly. By the end of the day we were allowed to speed around the track as fast as we felt comfortable, using what we learned in sessions given all day.

I left Toronto around 5:30am to be there by 8am (it’s roughly a 2hour+ drive), and when I pulled in the first thing that caught my eye were the rows of SV650s, and 600cc sportbikes from Yamaha, Suzuki, and Kawasaki:

I stood around the bikes with some other attendees until a FAST employee (the main instructors wife) came over to take us into the main facility to complete registration and listen to a 90-minute safety and theory intro:

Here’s 2 pics showing a panorama view of the track…

…as well as other “critical infrastructure”.

Soon enough we were ready to suit up: all safety gear was included (though you could bring you own if you wanted) then we had “class pictures” of each of the 3 groups. I’m at the back on the right… in the 3rd group of the day… for people who had never done this before (or who were with friends out for their first time)

The day was split into 7 10-minute sessions… with breaks + instruction while other groups were riding. Other than the morning intro in-class we were outside at the track all day. Here I am ready to roll out (#20 bike in the middle)

The first 2 riding session in the morning were instructor-led… meaning each group of 2-3 bikes was following an instructor around the track to get a feel for things… and the bikes switched positions each lap so the leader could watch them and see how everyone was doing.

The 3rd session was right after lunch, and involved straight-line acceleration and braking exercises. You accellerated to one set of cones shifting up a couple gears… then braked and downshifted to the second set of cones, trying to be as smooth as possible. Then an instructor gave you a couple quick suggestions on how to improve… then you tried it again….

The 4th and 5th sessions were the first where we could pace ourselves while instructors watched in turns 2 and 4. Between sessions we would have a break and a mini-class to review skills we should try to practice in the next session, and you got to watch the other groups drive and come in to park

There was one more follow-the-instructor session, then a final chance to race around as fast as we willing to go. In the later sessions they emphasized the importance of body positioning… to hang half-way off the seat with your leg out towards the inside of the turn… unfortunately I don’t have any pics of me in those sessions… which is too bad.. since it would be nice to have some proof I had better form by the end of the day 🙂

I had a great time at FAST: the instructors were knowledgeable and friendly, the safety gear and bikes well maintained… and although my first lap around the track was a pretty fearful experience (learning to trust the bike leaning through tight turns)… by the time I got a couple sessions under my belt I was trying to take every corner every lap a bit faster… trusting the bike and tires a little more each time.

I wish I had another day to just lap around the track. I don’t think it would ever get old (well… maybe after I got overconfident and crashed 🙂 )

We wrapped up with some final personalized suggestion from the instructors, a thanks to the staff, presentation of “most improved” awards… and handout of the certificates saying we passed the course. And the chance to buy some photos of the day (many shown here, special thanks to Flair Photo) and clothing/hats (bought a T-shirt!)

The electronics that would have also reported our lap times was broken, it would have been nice to have the times to compare to later trips… but that’s a minor issue. I definatelty will be going to FAST again! Even if you’re like me… a street rider with no urge to race… it’s worth going to feel how much more confident you become in your riding after just a few hours…