Military Sport Bike Rider course

[RJ2112]

Being that I am a military retiree working on a military base, I decided riding my bike to work was mandatory. Signing up for the ERC course was a little more complicated than I thought it should be, as I could not register for the class as a contractor.... I had to do so as a retiree.

Seems even though the DoD and Navinst are clear on the matter, they will only provide on base training to active duty, and civilian navy personnel. Contractors do not fit the prerequisites. However, retirees are allowed on a space A basis.

When I registered for the ERC, the ESAMS site asked me what kind of bike I was riding. When I used the pull down menu to select sport bike, that led to a requirement to attend the MSRC upon completion of the ERC.

The time came, and I managed to consume another vacation day to take the class.

Having now attended the BRC, ERC, and the MSRC, as well as Team Oregon's Advanced Rider Training..... I have to say the MSRC was not as valuable to me as the ART was.

The ART used a closed course, go kart track as the training range. As you would expect, the course was a LOT more technical than what could be done on the typical football field sized piece of asphalt the MSF instructors are working with.

The techniques to go fast by being smooth were explained and demonstrated much more effectively on the ART layout. Combining multiple compound turns on changing elevations, using a course line that could be as wide as an automobile lane was much more effective than the little cones, and occasional painted lines in a parking lot.

Rather than using 2 instructors that had to use flash cards to describe what was going to occur, ART employed at least 8 individuals to monitor and instruct a class of ~14.

Learning to stop hard in a turn, learning to use late apexing for corner entry, and learning to handle multiple turns by correctly identifying the appropriate line to stitch them together smoothly were all far more effectively taught, IMHO.

The MSF's target audience for the MSRC is quite obviously 20 somethings. There is much to be learnt there, but it's more about the mental aspects than the riding itself, and that comes up short in comparison to the ART.

 

[FinalImpact]

Tell me a bit more - how'd you end up doing the T - O ART? Were you living here?

 

[RJ2112]

I was living in Oregon at the time. I'd gone to work for Intel FT, and had purchased the FZ6 to celebrate.... that was in August, and I romped on the bike harder and harder as I got to know it. Commuting from Rainier, to Hillsboro took multiple routes, typically over Cornelius Pass. During the day, I got to the point where I could confidently run that at quite a good clip.

I found out to my cost that my night vision was not as good as I thought a few months later, when I crashed into the one corner that did not at the time have the arrow indicators showing which direction it went. A button hook right. I went for a left turn, and didn't know there was a problem until I had the far fog line coming up at ~ 40 MPH 90 degrees to my direction of travel.

As a result of that crash and the healing process, I signed up for a training course the following spring. I'd already done BRC years before (1986), so something different was called for. ERC on the same range as BRC did not appeal. ART is almost a track day....

Team Oregon had already split off from MSF by that point. My understanding is that this was due in part to the foot dragging of the MSF for implementing something like the ART.

ART is taught at two locations. Ronler Acres a little south of Wilsonville, and a go kart track at the Southern end of Oregon. The instructors alternate between the sites.

You spend a reasonable amount of time in the class room... probably totals about 2 hours of the 8 hour day. The drills build skills, and the large number of instructors allow for many repetitions of each one. Instead of only 2 launch points, with the # of instructors on site, we had at least 4. Much closer to 1:1 instruction.

The day built up to lapping the go kart track in both directions at pretty good speeds. The max speed allowed was essentially the fastest speed the slowest rider could circulate at. Ground clearance on the cruisers in the class were the physical limit.

That got so frustrating, I took a few laps on one of the instructors' ST1300, riding back seat. Pretty impressive, dragging hard parts on both sides 2 up on one of those....