My Summer Vacation...

or: How I rode 4 different bikes on my Force5 tour of the eastern CLASS schools.

by Joe Kerr

As a Force5 member, I had a great deal on CLASS schools, and I decided to ride all of the eastern schools in 2006. We worked out a deal for Reg to transport my bike in the CLASS truck, and I ordered a couple sets of Dunlop Qualifier tires. All I had to do was fly in, trying to avoid airline colds, and ride.

Joe on the SuperHawk - thanks Ian.

I own several bikes, four of them sport bikes good for track days, and I decided to take the oldest, my 1998 SuperHawk. It had sport-touring tires on it, but it’s only 104 horsepower, and gets that power to the ground in a friendly big-twin style, and it was equipped for traveling so I could take small trips between Road America, Grattan and Mid Ohio instead of flying home. Plus, I had bought the SuperHawk after I moved to California from Chicago in 1997, and I’d never ridden the eastern tracks on it, so a different bike would add to the experience.

The schools at Road America were fun, and I got to see several riders I remembered, and who remembered me, from when I lived in Chicago. Road America was the first track I ever rode, and it’s where I got my track-riding habit.

My slight concern for my “high mileage” tires was removed when Reg rode his VFR 800 solo around me in the famous carousel, sitting basically center seat, barely keeping the lower half of the bike from scrapping the track. He was riding on the new Dunlop Qualifiers, which are only one notch sportier than the tires on my SuperHawk. GP-style tires are great confidence builders, but today’s street-sport tires are fantastic.

Joe stops for a picnic and a picture in his Old Kentucky Home.

In the short week between Road America and Grattan, I rode down to Kentucky, but my cousin who was going through chemo-therapy for lung cancer wasn’t up to visitors, so I enjoyed the ride and did a big loop through Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio and back into Indiana, where my big twin started becoming a small single. I didn’t want to be caught out in the countryside with a broken bike, so I headed for the nearest city where I found a Honda dealer.

I called Reg to ask if he had a bike to rent, but he was nice enough to let me share one of the CLASS F4i’s with  15 year old Christian Hardin, the son of one of the CLASS Instructors who was flying cross country to ride Grattan. Reg’s only request was, “Don’t crash it!” He needed it for some of the upcoming schools where it was rented to students. It was really great of Reg to trust me and Chris to ride his bike safely and “bring it back alive.”
 

One of the fun things about sharing a bike with Chris is that we become tire-warmers for each other. The 600 is a perfect size bike for the curving Grattan track. There was another 600 being ridden by a young racer, Jonas McCluskey, a very nice guy who was fast and smooth and really fun to watch as he flew past us. I would have loved to follow him to watch him ride, but he was way out of my league. I later learned he had placed 16th in the AMA Formula Xtreme race the week before at Road America.

After Grattan I flew home Tuesday morning to get my Ducati ready for shipping to Mid Ohio by Federal Motorcycle Transport. It had some lightly used Dunlop GP tires on it, so I did oil & filter, a quick polish, and got it to the shop for pick up Wednesday morning.

I recovered from my first airplane cold in time to fly to Mid Ohio, which was repaved this spring. Without the distracting concrete patches it was a joy to ride. I’d forgotten (or maybe never even noticed while trying to ride inside this patch and outside that patch) how many elevation changes there are on this track. The only distraction now were the new “tiger teeth” which were built really high supposedly to keep cars from running off the track and throwing dirt around. When the flag lady talked about a car “launching” off of a berm our first morning, we didn’t understand until we went out on the track and saw them. Fortunately, by AMA race weekend they had been ground down to a reasonable level.

At Mid Ohio I met a Force 5 rider who was also doing several of the eastern schools, Dave Brooks. Dave split his riding time between an ‘04 Honda 1000RR and a new Suzuki 750, which traveled in a van behind his truck from his home in Kentucky. We had met while talking to other students in the CLASS HQ motel parking lot, and we joined up with Jim and decided to try the steak joint across the road. The meal wasn’t much, but the conversation was great.

After Mid Ohio, I flew home and Reg and Gigi took the CLASS transporter to Instructor Stuart Beatson’s home in Virginia where it would stay until the Virginia International Raceway schools two and a half months later in September. Stu, a Service Manager, knows his way around bikes, and was kind enough to change my tires. I installed a set of Dunlop Qualifiers on my expensive Ducati 999R. When I say these are good tires, I’m not joking.

Dave Brooks and Fred discuss suspension (?)

Dave was also at VIR, and we joined Jim and a whole bunch of Instructors and friends at the Plantation Clubhouse Saturday night after helping set up the CLASS operation. VIR was strict about not letting the next day’s track renters into the paddock until the weekend’s sports car club had completed their day, so we finished late and the Plantation’s staff graciously agreed to work overtime to feed the large group of us.

Our two days were comfortably cool, usually less than 80º, but the eastern humidity still affected the west coast “dry heat” crowd. We had a brief shower at the end of the Tuesday lunch break, but the track dried out for the last few sessions.

Just over two weeks later I was at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, Alabama. Again we were blessed with great weather, even the humidity wasn’t too bad. But late Sunday afternoon after downshifting from 3rd to 2nd for the “Alabama Coaster” corner, my Ducati was making strange, disturbing noises. I pulled off in the grass on the corner’s inside, out of the impact area, and Instructor Gery Torok stopped to help. The engine had died. We rolled my bike down the grass a short distance and parked as close to the fence as possible. It wouldn’t start when we timidly tried the ignition. It was a dead Duc.

Gery gave me a ride back to the classroom area, and I figured that was the end of my riding at Barber, but Dave came up to me and said I could use his Honda if I wanted. Dave had ridden in the A group with me for five days on three different tracks, and although he’s a very good rider, he’d also seen me pass him and pass other students in front of him. This was something I was able to do, as I always explain, because I’d taken 160 CLASS schools and 200 total track events. Even an old fart like me who’s no athlete and hasn’t much innate skill or even courage, when you take a bunch of schools (and all the classrooms) you eventually pick up some things. Dave was willing to trust me with his very nicely set-up litre bike, and I suddenly had a ride for the Monday Barber CLASS.

Dave is a good 6 inches taller than I am and he weighs more, but his suspension set up was excellent, firm but compliant just like I like it. The only adjustments I made were on the levers, making the brake and clutch engage closer to the grip to suit my smaller hands.

Dave sounds like a small town guy from Kentucky, but he’s a pretty smart guy. He’s semi-retired, and still does some kind of computer security work for banks. Rather than spend several hundred dollars on a custom map, he explained that he downloaded about ten maps for his Power Commander looking for the most linear possible. He ended up combining the first part of one and the second part of another to create a very smooth throttle with no sudden peaks, something that made this powerful bike really easy to ride. Which was especially important to me, because I sure didn’t want to crash Dave’s bike!

Being able to ride a great track like Barber on a big twin one day and an inline four the next is a cool experience. I hope you also have the opportunity some day... but not because your bike stops running.

At the end of the day I polished the Honda, filled the tank and said a huge “thank you” to Dave. I’d not only been able to meet new friends through Force 5, I’d been able to ride all of the eastern CLASS school days--thanks to Reg and Dave-- even when my own bikes suddenly failed me. You meet a lot of nice people riding motorcycles!

Joe Kerr