I took an Adv course at Off Route Adventures in Fort Collins, CO. I figured the group would like to hear how it went. http://www.offrouteadv.com/
If you’re pressed for time here’s the take away. The course is worth your time & money, if you’re fairly new to adv riding (read back roads and trails) and are ‘just trying to keep up’ with the more experienced folks you ride with. If you’re that rider that breaks the rear wheel lose on most curves and has a decade or two riding experience you may want to hold off for an advanced course. If you’ve been riding on pavement forever and want to venture off the beaten path this is a good choice for you as well.
We’ve all poured over videos on the internet to learn this technique or that, having someone there to coach you along real time makes all the difference in the world.
Tery (owner/instructor) does not have facilities nor provide meals that keeps the cost low which I liked. Not to mention we hit some local places for lunch which was nice. To put it in perspective the cost is on par a couple of farkles we all add like crash bars, luggage racks, foot pegs etc. It was a 2 day course in the Fort Collins area of Colorado. For those of you coming from outside Colorado the scenery cannot be beat, we even needed to negotiate right of way with cattle being moved by ranchers on horseback.
I’ve never taken a motorcycle course other than the basic motorcycle safety course that most folks take to get their license. I’ve been riding for about 26 months total and rode a Yamaha Super Tenere, now on to the meat of the course.
Topics covered:
Threshold breaking. This is a non-issue for a Super Tenere, I’ve never grabbed a fist full of brake on a gravel road but this gave me additional confidence.
Curves! Next we went over to how to deal with curves on gravel roads, this has always been my weakness. We learned techniques for manipulating the handlebars and counter weighting. Tery was keen on explaining the need to keep you weight over the contact patch (where the tires meet the road). We also learned how to stay seated or to stand in the curves. Given we were on back roads in Colorado we had plenty of curves to negotiate including a number of decreasing radius curves. This part was a huge help to me, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come around a curve to see a truck pulling a trailer taking his ½ of the road out of the middle section.
Then on to low speed drills. We did the dreaded figure 8 in a box as well as a few other shapes. Through repetition and coaching this is where I learned balance is everything. For me it was like a scene from the Karate Kid, balance Danielson….. The outside foot pointing we all see in videos was an eye opener, when I felt like I had that puppy cranked WAY over I’d like down to see that it’s angled much at all. Driving the outside knee into the tank was a key for me. All this stuff translated over to handling the bike on curvy gravel roads. I notice and improvement as soon as we moved on to the next training location.
In addition to moving down gravel roads we hit a few narrow 2 track trails. Some were wet/slick and rutted up with some steep grades. Not super hard but not a cake walk either. These were done after we did our slow speed balancing drills and curves on gravel roads to practice guiding the bike by weighting it as well as steering it.
Continued
If you’re pressed for time here’s the take away. The course is worth your time & money, if you’re fairly new to adv riding (read back roads and trails) and are ‘just trying to keep up’ with the more experienced folks you ride with. If you’re that rider that breaks the rear wheel lose on most curves and has a decade or two riding experience you may want to hold off for an advanced course. If you’ve been riding on pavement forever and want to venture off the beaten path this is a good choice for you as well.
We’ve all poured over videos on the internet to learn this technique or that, having someone there to coach you along real time makes all the difference in the world.
Tery (owner/instructor) does not have facilities nor provide meals that keeps the cost low which I liked. Not to mention we hit some local places for lunch which was nice. To put it in perspective the cost is on par a couple of farkles we all add like crash bars, luggage racks, foot pegs etc. It was a 2 day course in the Fort Collins area of Colorado. For those of you coming from outside Colorado the scenery cannot be beat, we even needed to negotiate right of way with cattle being moved by ranchers on horseback.
I’ve never taken a motorcycle course other than the basic motorcycle safety course that most folks take to get their license. I’ve been riding for about 26 months total and rode a Yamaha Super Tenere, now on to the meat of the course.
Topics covered:
Threshold breaking. This is a non-issue for a Super Tenere, I’ve never grabbed a fist full of brake on a gravel road but this gave me additional confidence.
Curves! Next we went over to how to deal with curves on gravel roads, this has always been my weakness. We learned techniques for manipulating the handlebars and counter weighting. Tery was keen on explaining the need to keep you weight over the contact patch (where the tires meet the road). We also learned how to stay seated or to stand in the curves. Given we were on back roads in Colorado we had plenty of curves to negotiate including a number of decreasing radius curves. This part was a huge help to me, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come around a curve to see a truck pulling a trailer taking his ½ of the road out of the middle section.
Then on to low speed drills. We did the dreaded figure 8 in a box as well as a few other shapes. Through repetition and coaching this is where I learned balance is everything. For me it was like a scene from the Karate Kid, balance Danielson….. The outside foot pointing we all see in videos was an eye opener, when I felt like I had that puppy cranked WAY over I’d like down to see that it’s angled much at all. Driving the outside knee into the tank was a key for me. All this stuff translated over to handling the bike on curvy gravel roads. I notice and improvement as soon as we moved on to the next training location.
In addition to moving down gravel roads we hit a few narrow 2 track trails. Some were wet/slick and rutted up with some steep grades. Not super hard but not a cake walk either. These were done after we did our slow speed balancing drills and curves on gravel roads to practice guiding the bike by weighting it as well as steering it.
Continued
