A Day with Lee Parks
In June 2005 I had the pleasure of attending one of Lee Parks' Total Control classes in Troy, New York. This account is not an attempt to summarize the class, to present what you'd get if you took the class. It's just what stuck best with me, a novice in the realm of speed and racing and hanging off a motorcycle.Lee and I were both guests of Bob Colandrea, owner of the Capital Area Motorcycle School which is run out of Hudson Valley Community College in Troy. (After Bob's too-early passing later that summer, the site is now run by Bob's wife Barbara and son John.) It promised to be a hot day, over 90, and as I suited up to ride to the site I asked Lee what was to be the uniform of the day? "Shorts, tank top, sandals, I presume?" Lee looked at me, wearing my full Aerostich suit, leather gloves and riding boots, full helmet, and shook his head in answer to my question. "Nope, you're wearing it." And we did, every time we got on the motorcycles.
Relax and Work with the Motorcycle
The session started in the classroom. Lee asked each of us to write our names three times on our course handouts. Then he asked us to do it again, but this time to grip the pen tightly, tense up our arms and shoulders, really strong-arm the process. Finally, he told us to compare the three relaxed signatures with one another, and the three tense signatures with one another. The relaxed ones were all very similar. The other three were wildly different from one another, different lengths, slopes, everything. The lesson is obvious: To be consistent, you can't be tense.Beginner Mind
"When you're in a clothing store and you take a jacket off the rack to try it on, you don't have to buy it." Riding techniques are the same. Try what we're telling you to do. Don't prejudge them. You don't have to adopt them forever. Just try them with an open mind and evaluate the result."Get comfortable being a little bit uncomfortable."
To illustrate another point, Lee told us of one of his experiences. He has been a singer for many years, and had sung the national anthem hundreds of times at various events, though with stage fright every time he gets up to perform. When he was asked to sing for 24,000 people at Road Atlanta, he claimed to be almost paralyzed with fear. But the memory of those many previous occasions in which he had successfully dealt with the fear to deliver a satisfying performance, allowed him to rise to this bigger occasion.The lesson: If you're always in your comfort zone, when the time comes that you're edged out of it, you may not be able to deal with your fear. But if that untoward occasion — a little faster than you thought into the curve, say — represents just a slightly closer approach to the limit than you're accustomed to, then you're much more prepared to handle it without panic. I think Lee's summary is brilliant: "Get comfortable being a little bit uncomfortable."
Throttle/Brake Transition
The first range exercises include what has improved my riding the most over the year or so since I took the class. The skill is to transition from throttle to brake and back to throttle. The goal is to do it without bouncing the motorcycle on its suspension. If done jerkily, what you'll see from the front is the headlight pitching down and then up. Done smoothly, there will be little or no visible change in the attitude of the bike.My own technique, and that of most riders I know, involves smoothly rolling the throttle off, smoothly squeezing the front brake (and rear also, of course), then releasing the brake abruptly, allowing the front suspension to rebound with a pop. I had read that it should take as much time to release the front brake as it took to apply it, but it was here that I saw just how much difference it makes to the smoothness of a corner entry. More than a year later, that's the item that I'm working on the most.
Putting It Together in the Corners
Sessions on the range alternated with sessions in the classroom. The culmination of the range exercises was a big figure-eight around 40-foot circles, hanging off the while. (The riders on the Gold Wings and the big cruisers just leaned the upper body off.) I never quite touched my knee down, being too stiff and keeping my knees close to the tank. The ideal is to drape your body on the motorcycle as lightly as a cloth, never applying more force to anything than absolutely necessary.Back on the Street
I had the next day off and rode about 250 miles on eastern New York back roads. I did not find much use for hanging off. In the first place, one major reason for shifting the body to the inside of the turn is to increase clearance. If parts aren't dragging then this is of little or no importance, and my Bandit leans over a long way before a footpeg touches down. In New England and New York, it is rare for the visibility limit to be greater than the lean limit. That is, if I'm leaned over so far that ground clearance is a factor, I'm going so fast that I won't have time to deal with a hazard such as sand or a pedestrian at the side of the road. Still, there were a few places where the road curved around a corn field with good visibility and I was able to hang off. It felt smooth and fast, but I have no way of knowing whether it was faster than I would have been just sitting firmly in the saddle.But the day-long practice in brake-to-throttle transitions certainly paid off for me. Really, if you're like most people and just let go of the brake lever rather than easing it off, you have no idea how much smoother your corner entries can be. Going fast requires traction, and being jerky robs traction. To be fast, be smooth.
If you're a rider with some experience, looking for techniques to be faster and safer, this course will not disappoint.