I spent this weekend completing Off-Road Adventure Academy's Level 1 Adventure Skills training just outside of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta. I registered for this course back in February, and it served as one of the anchors around which to plan this trip. In summary, it's a 2-day weekend affair aiming to upgrade rider skills to safely ride a big adventure bike on unpaved, reduced-traction surfaces, and on offroad terrain that might be encountered on a typical 'fire roads' type of trip. |
In a few days I will hopefully have access to a few video clips to illustrate some of the drills, but in the meantime, here's the type of stuff we did:
- Balancing your bike, walking around it, holding it up with a fingertip, then with your eyes closed
- Tipping your bike over, then practicing picking it up. (Kind of fun to see $200k of machinery being variously tipped over in a wet grassy field.)
- Taking your bike for a walk, to practice clutch control while walking along beside it.
- Turning drills... lots of turning drills. First, in a seated position, focusing on 5 elements of technique in a building-blocks sequence.
- Turning drills... more turning drills, now in a standing position, also focuing on the elements. Picture weaving back and forth through pylons. This is all at low speed... in Badger's case, just idling in 1st gear, so 13 km/h.
- Follow-the-leader laps around all sorts of terrain features around the training field site (ditches, slopes, uphills, downhills, sidehills, did I mention turns and more tight turns?)
- Hill descents, going down a goat trail on a semi-steep grassy hill, controlling speed with front brake only.
- Uphill starts, controlling the transition from rear brake holding to forward motion under engine power.
- Intentional front wheel skids while holding throttle, with the ABS switched off. (Yes, really).
All in all, I feel like I definitely improved my skills, and came away better equipped to be in harmony with and to control big bad Badger. Some of the skills were things that I have already spent umpteen hours working on and felt like I could do quite easily (e.g. hill starts), whereas other skills offered some real breakthroughs that were very exciting to experience (e.g. all those tight turns; so much progress beyond my now seemingly feeble attempts in the parking lot at home), and lastly some instructions were different from past things I've been taught elsewhere, which kept the brain in gear from a healthy skepticism perspective, and called for some experimentation to try different things (e.g. What, you want me to ride front brake all the time when riding slow, and never touch the rear brake? Huh??)
All in all, a worthwhile undertaking, and I think I'd look for their Level 2 course in a year ahead. I think there's a lot of value in being able to do this type of course on your own bike.
Best part of it all: Everybody else had to boogey home after the course finished to get back to work, whereas I'm going on a 2-week bike trip. Hee.
Days total: 133 km, 17h45m Trip total: 1,810 km | Start: Rocky Mountain House, AB. End: Rocky Mountain House, AB. Soundtrack: Instructor's instructions, instructor's feedback, radiator fans. |