i'm a sucker for a good marketing campaign.
It's too bad I didn't fall in love with motocross, because the whole "dirty girl" concept amuses me.

I think that I'm going to try the MSF dirt class in the spring, and can hopefully convince some friends to do it too. :)

back | next
back to archives | bluepoof.com
email me

One word of advice: if you're sick at all, don't do a motocross training day. Especially if you have a pre-existing lung condition. After a day of breathing dust and dirt and 2-stroke exhaust fumes, the last remnants of my flu progressed nicely into a full-fledged respiratory infection. I'm back to sounding tubercular. Really pleasant.

Anyway, aside from the subsequent chest-racking cough and inability to take a complete breath, the class was pretty fun. We took the class at the Hollister Hills State Vehicular Recreation Area in Hollister, which is a wee bit more than an hour away from where I live. Hollister, of course, is famous for the biker riots at the AMA races in 1947 (which in turn were wildly popularized and exaggerated by the Marlon Brando movie The Wild One). More info on the Hollister riots here. Unfortunately, there were no leather clad Marlon Brandos nor riots to be found in Hollister last Saturday, and thus we leave today's history lesson.

The Marlon Brando-less class was run by Debbie Matthews, of Debbie Matthews Womens Motocross. My overall impressions of the class were that it would be worthwhile as an all-beginners special group, or as a refresher course. Unfortunately, the particular class we attended seemed to have people from various skill levels: neither Debi nor I had ever ridden dirt before, there were some young adults who had obviously had at least some formal training, and then there were whole families, with little kids (between 7 and 12 years old, I'd say). The kids had had training with Debbie before, as was obvious by their whining about having to do the drills again. This made it a little bit uncomfortable for Debi and I, especially because the kids were totally unmonitored. You just can't teach children and adults in the same fashion, and the kids were getting bored and just tearing around all over. One of them actually hit me while I was doing a drill. That's really inexcusable.

Other than the teeming masses of demon spawn, Debi and I had a pretty good time. I rented all of my gear, and Debi borrowed hers from a friend. She actually has her own motocross bike, a little Yamaha 125cc, but I rented a 80cc Suzuki with the class. We puttered around for a while, posing on her bike, and exhilarating in the small victories, like getting the huge ski-boot-esque boots on.

When the class started, we gathered together and Debbie talked about riding position. We all crawled up on our bikes (mine didn't have any sort of stand, and so was propped up onto a milk crate) and stood up on the footpegs, back crouched over, bent over the front of the bike. You press your knees into the tank so that you can feel what the bike is doing underneath you. After we'd done that, we had a short break, and they had us learn and practice the posture for turns. They strapped some bikes along the fence, so you'd get up on one, someone would hold the back steady, then they'd let go, the bike would fall to the side, and you'd fall into the "turn" position. The strap held the bike at an angle, so you could get used to how the positioning felt while the bike was leaned over. It was strange to hold a leg out like that -- obviously for street riding that wouldn't do me any good, and I never held it up high enough. It was a pretty cool exercise.

Next we did some normal kinds of drills, like tight circles and braking. The drills were useful, but like I mentioned, the kids were unsupervised and got bored pretty shortly after starting the drills, so they just tore all over. Not very useful when some people already have issues with tight turns and needed all the practice they could get! Aside from running over some little shit, I did pretty well on the drills and was pretty happy overall. I could turn the motocross bike much tighter than my street bikes (well, duh, it's like 300 pounds lighter), which was encouraging. Debi and I ate some lunch afterwards and watched some of the other people take to the dirt track.

Riding on the track was pretty intereting. They had the little kids go first, I guess to get it out of their systems, but all that meant was there was 20 minutes of all-kid time, and then the kids kept going even after it was "adult time" anyway. The first time I came up to the big corner, I was pretty scared. For some reason, I'd assumed that motocross tracks would at least have packed down dirt, but this wasn't the case at all. There was loose dirt and dust everywhere, and the corner had some ruts that were inches deep. I approached it really slowly, but after the first time, I realized that I didn't die, and gradually picked up a little bit of speed throughout the afternoon. There was a tabletop jump, but Debi and I didn't really try to get air at all -- though going down the other side of the tabletop was pretty daunting. There were more ruts and little bumps on the downhill slope, and the first time going down, I was convinced that the bike would catch in a rut or I'd lose control and fall over. I didn't, of course. If there's anything I learned from the motocross class, it's that the bike is a lot more stable than you think it is. You can lean over a hell of a lot more than you think you can.

Debi was tearing up the track pretty well. I got a bunch of pictures of her while I was taking a breather (not that it really helped).

Debi took some pictures of me, too. :) I'm the one with the green jersey on the yellow bike.

After a while, parts of the class moved on to other tracks, but Debi and I both felt as though they were way out of our first-day skill range (they had jumps and really tight hairpin turns and stuff), so we both stayed on the first track and puttered around. After a bit, the rest of the class joined us, and Debbie gave some instruction on how to do the jump on the tabletop. Once again, Debi and I went around the track, but neglected to attempt intentionally jumping on our first day (mainly because the instruction was a sort of vague "you need to be in the right body position" and by that point, I was too tired to ask any detailed questions about what that would be). I tried taking some pictures of the jumpers, but always managed to take the picture right as they landed. My bad.

All in all, I feel as though it was a pretty worthwhile day, though, if I were to do it over, I probably would have asked to reschedule based on my lung situation. Interestingly, on Sunday I rode the SVS over to Peter's, and I noticed that I was leaning into turns more than I usually do. Whether that was coincidence or because of the motocross training, I don't know, but it was interesting. I also thought it surprising that I ended up defending street riding a lot at the motocross class -- almost every person we chatted with responded with "oh, I could never street ride, it's too dangerous" or some such, if Debi or I mentioned our other bikes. I know that I'd like to give the motocross another shot, sometime when I'm not sick, but so far, I far prefer street riding. It felt comfortable to ride the SVS yesterday. I enjoyed that.