Stay Upright
I did an advanced road course with Stay Upright. It was great. I heartily recommend it.
Our course was at the Driver Training centre near Queanbeyan. This is a bit different to your average race track, because it's meant to simulate a typical road. It's much tighter and more vertical, so there are a lot of blind corners and rises, and changes of surface. It's a pretty good simulation of the kind of country roads we get around here.
The Stay Upright teaching technique is superb: one instructor demonstrates while the other gives a narrative.
I learnt a few interesting tecniques: in particular to blip the engine before moving rather than after to get a smoother shift, and to hold the shifter while letting the clutch out to guard against false shifts. The second is going to take a bit of practice.
I did most of the day with Steph on the back, which made things a bit harder and more tiring but it was a better approximation of how I often ride. In particular it's pretty good to do a flat-out emergency stoppie from 120 with some extra weight on.
The ZX-12R is not constitutionally suited to low-speed manuevers. Anything below about 25km/h requires slipping the clutch. You don't want to do your U-turn test on it. It is such a perfect two-person sportsbike though.
My tyre was nicely shagged at the end and so was I.
posted Mon 26 Jan 2004 in /motorbikes/courses | link
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