Sunday morning wasn’t quite as cold as the day before, but I was still glad to see the sun come out and burn off all the frost. We enjoyed a nice basic breakfast, but the best part was the hot coffee — and drinking it under the heater!
I have to say, I sure got my money’s worth out of my Gerbing’s liner. It was perfect for wearing around camp and kept out the chill in the mornings and evenings.
After breakfast, we headed out to the practice field where the instructors had set up a riding course incorporating many of the exercises that we did the day before. We spent 15 minutes or so playing follow the leader. I ended up in the group following Gary like a line of ducklings. It didn’t take long before he started doing tricks like taking his hand off the handlebars, or taking his feet off the pegs, or standing up and putting your leg over the seat as if riding sidesaddle.
I even ended up making some slow turns while both my left hand and left leg were completely off the bike. We didn’t practice these things for very long, but I noticed afterward I felt a lot more comfortable moving around on the bike. This practice directly translated to my street riding — I feel a lot better about shifting positions on the bike or even doing mundane things like taking my hand off to scratch my nose.
After the warm-up, we were free to ride around the course as much as we wanted for the next 45 minutes. This was a good refresher for the day ahead.
Then it was time to learn how to shift our butts off the saddle to counter-weight the bike for super tight turns.
I didn’t quite get the hang of it completely, but I was able to put in a few turns at almost full steering lock — in both directions. This is one of those skills you just have to keep practicing until you get it.
The groups then split into two with one group doing some hill exercises while the other tackled the sand and gravel pits. My group did the hills first. I didn’t get any pictures, but one of the exercises involved braking while on a descent with loose footing under the wheels. This one was extremely hard for me and I had a lot of trouble with the coordination between my body positioning and the proper amount of front brake modulation. Somehow I picked up the habit of never using the front brake in dicey traction situations, and I spent a lot of time during the whole weekend un-learning it. I think I dumped my bike at least once during the braking exercise and had a couple more near-misses.
Then we had a break for lunch and a clinic about efficient packing techniques for dual-sport trips. I was glad to see that most of my gear and packing methods jived with those of the presenters.
And then, it was time for the part you’ve all been waiting for…
The Pits!
Two pits: one filled with sand, the other with golf ball sized gravel.
Here are the keys to successfully crossing the pits:
- stand on the pegs and shift your body weight as far back as you can
- steady throttle, the slower speed the better — the best riders can ride the slowest!
- relaxed grip on the bars
- head and eyes up
My first sand crossing was a little shaky, but I did it! I can’t over-emphasize keeping your arms and hands relaxed, and I thank Team Oregon for burning “head and eyes up” into my brain that its almost automatic. The thing about the pits is that every little movement gets multiplied tenfold. Imagine you’re controlling the rudder of a boat. When you move the rudder, the boat doesn’t immediately turn. There’s a delay… annnnd then the boat starts to turn. When you’re riding in the loose stuff, if you push on the bars to make a correction, you’ll quickly find that you’ll feel like you have to make a bigger push to counter the correction, and then a bigger push, and then another… The kicker is that if you stay relaxed at the bars and steady on the throttle, you’ll hardly have to make any corrections at all.
My second run through the sand pit was a moment of pure perfection. Everything felt right. I rode so slowly and moved so softly with my inputs that I felt like I was floating across. It was very Zen. I think I’ll remember that feeling forever.
Keep an eye on my front wheel. It’s very informative if you know what to look for.
See how straight the wheel is in each picture?
I’m glad I had at least one good run, because the rest weren’t exactly up to that level. 
Especially the next one where I tried crossing the gravel…
Off to a good start...
but the bike feels so wobbly that I'm starting to tense up on the bars.
Back on track?
Uh oh, how did I get over here?
Over-correcting!
And that's what happens when you look down!
The feeling of successfully crossing the pits was awesome! It was definitely the highlight of the weekend.
The final set of exercises were all about braking in the dirt. If you’ve taken the BRT, you already know the basics of what to do, but in the dirt your inputs need to be even smoother. The instructors had us start with a few quick stops using the rear brake only, as an example of just how weak the rear brake is. My brain is so permanently wired to squeeze the clutch and front brake levers during a quick stop that I killed my bike every time because I couldn’t remember to pull the clutch in while pressing on the rear brake pedal by itself!
All too soon it was 3pm and my camp experience was at its end.
See, I even snuck the Battle SV in there!
I had an incredible amount of fun and learned so much. This experience was worth every single reasonably-priced penny, and it has my highest recommendation.
To see all the photos I have from this event: Adventure Camp – May 7-9, 2010
Popular Posts
Recent Comments
The Latest From Twitter...
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Excellent stuff, Stacy. Would love to try the class – maybe one day. One thing you might practice to assist in getting over the clutch and rear brake only issue is to sometimes use JUST the rear brake to stop when you find yourself in very low traffic situations on dry roads. When conditions allow, I purposely mix up my braking combos a lot just so I can easily do whatever I feel a particular real world stop may call for. As we all know, on the street nothing beats the front brake, but slippery conditions can sometimes demand more rear usage. Best!
@Jim: That’s interesting… In the class, they were teaching us to not rely much on the rear brake due to weight transfer making the rear lighter and thus the rear wheel being much less effective in the loose stuff. The rear-brake-only was just an example for example’s sake, not something that needed to be practiced. On the street, I can work the rear brake just fine when necessary.
The quick stop technique was the same as the Team Oregon BRT: light-to-lighter rear and progressively harder front brake at the same time.
well…I would say they are correct in theory, at least most of the time – and likely all of the time in nice deep sand or deep large and well interlocked gravel. But in the real world sooner or later you will find that you MUST slow down or stop whilst in a turn. Just try using your front brake while turning on a very fine layer of sand or just enough small size gravel that will not interlock, but will only act like ball bearings under your tires. Or even a fuel spill on pavement for that matter. That front can/will wash out in an instant. Ha!, street tires on wet grass! And even on perfectly dry pavement I’ve seen riders accidentally lock their front in very low speed turns while maneuvering in gas stations w/ their front wheel turned hard and the end result was a dropped bike. I make no claim to being qualified to instruct, but personally I do what I can to put as many “possible solutions” into my riding “bag of tricks/skills” as I can and then try, with my admitted limited knowledge, to call upon the BEST combination in dealing with situations that befall me. And sometimes that means relying on the rear brake only – at least imho.
I don’t dispute having a variety of skills practiced and ready to deploy depending on the situation. Of course there are situations requiring the rear brake only.
This exercise, in which we were braking in grass and dirt in a straight line, required use of both brakes. My intent was to give my readers an example of what they could learn at camp. I’m not an instructor, nor am I qualified to teach proper braking technique.
Thanks for your perspective.
Stacy, this looks like another awesome training day. I have the feeling I can learn something just reading your report. Thanks for sharing this.
Thanks for the great report and photos!