http://www.rawhyde-offroad.com/intro2adv.html
"Intro to Adventure" training will include:
- An introduction to dirt riding techniques and the top mistakes people make.
- Body position for effective off-road riding
- Throttle, brake and clutch techniques
- Weight-shift techniques for steering
- Balance techniques
- Turning technique using counterbalancing
- Obstacle avoidance
- How to control front and rear wheel skids
- Hard Acceleration technique on dirt and gravel
- Hill Climbing
- Descending steep hills in a controlled manner
- How to ride in Sand and Gravel
- How to recover from a stall on a steep hill.
- How to turn around, fully loaded on a steep hill.
When I first learned to ride a motorcycle, it was as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal. We did a lot of this type of off road training. We even learned how to clean the carbs, change a tire, and some other maintenance stuff. It was a 6 day class, the first 3 days being the MSF Beginner Rider Course and the last three days being maintenance and trail stuff. It was so awesome! I think we may have been one of the last PCVs to have motos. The bikes were Suzuki TS125s.
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| My 1st bike in the terrain I traveled more often than not. |
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| I inherited this red TS after Kristen completed her service. It was brand new when she got it. :-) |
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| Pretty amazing to think of my time there and how fortunate I was to have that experience. :-) |
I'm sure not much of what I learned back then, or even experienced on the little TS125, transfers to the 650GS with side cases and a trunk. :-) Even fully loaded, I'm sure the 125 didn't weigh as much as the GS. But, I know the GS is quite capable of being an off road monster. And I want to test that out on mine. Maybe I can convince the hubby to take the class as well. They have rental bikes. There's a class just a couple of weekends before our anniversary. Hmmmm.....
Loved seeing the pics from the peace core.
ReplyDeleteThe adventure course sounds interesting. In course environments I lose all my nerve and get performance anxiety. Gives me butterflies just thinking of it, but it sounds really neat though.
You should post more pictures and stories from your Peace Corp experience. I regret not learning to ride on dirt when I was younger as it seems to be a great skill to have. You probably have a good head start from your previous experience riding on loose surfaces. It's taken me quite a while to no longer get nervous when the back wheel starts to slide sideways on gravel.
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