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Smooooth
in the Curves:
Pridmore Class Pays
Off
By Signe Johnson
Why
would I pay $650 to ride around in circles for two days?
Does it make any more sense than driving to
Montana on a long weekend to pick up yet another
Beemer, my third, sight unseen but already paid for? Or being just one MasterCard payment away from a balanced
budget and then plunging into debt to snap up the
perfect 1100RS and keep ten or more people
from getting it? Of
course it does.
One
reason I signed up for Reg Pridmore’s class was the
lure of the track.
It was more than I could resist - the chance to
go as fast as I wanted on the RS (“Meine Schwartzie”)
for hours and hours without any cars, trucks, cats,
dogs, cattle, sheep, or DEER.
That alone would be worth the price of admission,
even if I didn’t learn a thing. And I would be able to say things like, “Turn #5 at
Portland International isn’t too bad if you line up
for it by focusing on the outhouse across the field as
you come out of turn #4.”
And
then, of course, there was the curiosity factor. What kind of people would show up on Labor Day and pay as
much as I did to race around in circles together?
Why do these classes fill up months ahead? What’s the big deal? What
does Reg Pridmore, a racer and 90S champion from the
‘60s and ‘70s, look like?
What’s it like to have ten instructors
available at the same time to answer my questions?
Will there be any other women there?
And, the age-old
question, “Am I too old for this?”
The
rational justification for taking Pridmore’s two-day
“CLASS Motorcycle School” was that I wanted to have
more confidence in the curves.
I wanted to pick up some usable skills that would
help me to actually “ride” the bike through curves
as I tried to keep up with Terry on his 11S, rather than
to just hang on and trust fate to keep me on some kind
of line.
The
“CLASS” really paid off for me.
There were about 40 students, mostly all-American
rice-rocket racer-guys, with four or five “racy
women” along for the ride.
There were also one Frenchman and two Italians
with appropriate accents, one of whom (this is true)
took his luggage- and accessory-laden Goldwing onto the
track. To
complete the student roster, a handful of Beemer riders
were there, riding both airheads and oilheads.
I was happy to discover I was not the oldest one;
there were lots of men and women older than I was.
Enough
of the social demographics of PIR
on Labor Day. What
did I learn? I
learned that Pridmore is very much alive and in one
piece, so he must be doing something right in the
curves. I
learned that his training methods are excellent.
He provides simple, clear lessons in a
conversational way, supported by visual aids; and he
means what he says.
Even though I knew Reg must say the same things
over and over thousands of times, it sounded to me as if
he had written the training just for us.
His class combines riding and learning,
alternating 20 minutes on-track with 20 minutes in the
classroom. It
was a comfortable pace for me, with time to snack, drink
water, and eat lunch (graciously provided by Craig
Hansen on Day Two).
I
was aware of the battle between countersteering and body
steering; I had heard, “Pridmore doesn’t believe in
countersteering.”
Not true. His
technique involves both.
It is based on smooooooth-ness, and emphasizes
primarily body steering with countersteering used as
part of the overall flow of movement around a curve.
To quote Reg, himself:
“.
. . when approaching any curve, be sure your body is
always on the inside of the turn . . . just pointing
your knee in the direction of the turn makes turning
easier. Rotate
your hips around the tank . . . your body weight is
applied downward on the inside peg and sideways against
the outside of the tank with your leg to help lean the
bike.” “Countersteering
may still be happening, but you are no longer pushing
consciously on the bars. You are using your entire body to steer, not just your
arms.”
Pridmore
believes everything you do on a bike should be executed
smoothly. You
should be able to move seamlessly through the gears, on
and off the throttle, paying attention to transitions.
A rider can make smooth transitions by riding
with the index and middle fingers resting on the brake
lever to facilitate rolling off the throttle and on the
brakes or on the throttle and off the brakes
simultaneously. Keep
the RPMs up to
 better control your speed, both
acceleration and deceleration, rather than relying
heavily on braking. I practiced high RPMs for two days
and found that it helped me significantly in the curves.
If redline is 7000-7500 RPMs, Reg recommends
keeping the engine at around 5000-6000.
When downshifting, “blip” the throttle to
raise the RPMs before engaging the clutch.
This prevents the little “chirp” of the rear
wheel that most of us have experienced, the one that
almost made Schwartzie slide out from under me in turn
#1.
As far as
riding posture is concerned, Pridmore recommends keeping
your weight off the bars.
This advice gave me something to think about, as
I always lean on the bars.
The recommended posture involves keeping the arms
slightly bent, or “flapping your wings,” as Pridmore
says, with a very light grip on the bars. “Support
your body by grasping the tank with your legs if it’s
a straight-line stop, or use the inside of your thigh if
you’re set up for a turn.” The balls of the feet, not the arches, should be on the pegs.
On Day Two, Craig Hansen pulled me off the track
for some private instruction on foot placement. Evidently my left foot was doing the right thing but my right
foot was wrong. Now
that I’ve righted the wrong on the right, the left is
still right and nothing is wrong!
The right foot now knows what the left foot is
doing. Whew!
By Day Two, I started putting all the skills together
and began to have fun.
I wasn’t the slowest one on the track, but I
didn’t feel an overwhelming need for speed, either. I was happy with 95-100 in the straightaway, which seemed
fast but felt slow when twenty or so guys blurred past
me in their race to the “Chicane” at turn #1.
 Once, on the backstretch, I heard a worrisome
noise that I imagined to be Schwartzie’s drivetrain
acting up until the Italian on the Goldwing passed at
high speed on an outside curve, scraping as he went.
From then on, I could tell when the “wing”
was coming up behind, as I could hear a scra-a-a-ape on
every curve.
Pridmore had videocams mounted fore and aft on his race
bike. He filmed riders and recorded comments about their riding
styles, then played the tapes for us during classtime.
I made it into the movies on both days.
On Day One all he said was, “There’s the BMW
Lady.” By
the second day, I had improved so significantly in my
skills that I earned the comment, “Her line is better
than it was yesterday,” which, to me, was just fine,
as it showed some
progress.
I finished my racing career happy and satisfied at 5:00
p.m. on Day Two. Jim
Stewart showed up to root for the Beemer riders that
afternoon, and it was nice to see a familiar face.
In two days I had moved from, “What I am
supposed to do in the corners?” to “Let’s see if I
can scrape my foot again.”
For me the class really paid off.
It gave me the skills I need to “ride” the RS
through the unending curves of Eastern Oregon.
On the ride to the Steens in September, my
abilities had improved dramatically.
And now? Last
weekend I didn’t quite catch Terry on the 11S, but I
was gaining on him.
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