My first track day, July 8, 2007 (woo-hoo!)

My new Baby has been such a challenge -- she handles so differently from any other bike I've ever ridden that I registered for an Advanced Riders Course taught by Turn2 Adrenalin Rentals and had my first track day up at Mosport on July 8.



The photo on the right is of the Lucky No. 5 -- the Suzuki GXR 600 I rented for the day. It felt much lighter than Baby and was a lot of fun.



When I got Baby in April I never dreamed I'd be zooming around a track and learning to hang my butt off the side of a bike to corner. It was intimidating -- the first time I tried it I thought for sure I was gonna drop the bike on the turn -- but it actually works.

The trick is to perch on the pegs with your toes to make it easy to switch your weight. That means you lose easy access to the shifter and your rear brake, but you don't use the rear brake as much as the front and if you're not trying to be a hotshot you don't need to shift that often...




Here's me standing by the fence beside the drivers' development track we rode at Mosport.










Below a map of the track. We ran it counterclockwise. No. 7 turn in the bottom right-hand corner was a bitch. Looping into the inner track at No. 10 turn and following it around to that tight No. 8 turn was a gas.



















And here's a Google satellite map of the course:
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=44.048116,-78.675585&spn=0.01,0.01&t=h&q=44.048116,-78.675585



This is my instructor, Dan Sippel. When I told him I'd dropped Baby on my foot and I couldn't ride for two weeks until my tendons healed, he took some time teaching me a new braking technique that would help prevent that. If you hug the dips in the side of the bike with your knees (that's what the dips are for) and scoot your butt way back on the seat, you have to straighten your arms to reach the handlebars, which forces you to hold the handlebars at a 90-degree angle to the frame. That helps guarantee a straight (non-wobbly) stop, even from a fast speed. It's the wobble at the end that made me drop Baby on my foot, so this was a very useful thing to learn.




The gent on the right in this photo on the right is George Budacki, owner of Adrenalin Rentals, which started the Advanced Rider Course this month. The class I took on July 8 was their very first one.


Here's my fellow students and our instructors digging into lunch at the track.