There's a reason for "dirt to track" - Back from RawHyde Offroad

September 12-14, 2008 at RawHyde Offroad

In 2005, Jim Hyde of RawHyde Offroad Adventures visited CalMoto, my local BMW dealership, and gave a talk about his rider training programs and the Riders Challenge event he was presenting. Listening to him describe the see-saw event made me shudder - you ride your knobby-tyred companion up the see-saw plank, balance at the fulcrum, and ride down. Well yes, if you are going to ride off-road, really off-road, that kind of balance would serve you well. And I so wasn't ready to try.

A pink and green parrot magnet has kept the 5 by 8 inch grey-tone RawHyde Adventure event flyer affixed to my refrigerator door for three years. Last weekend I left my ego and my GS at home - I drove half a day to Castaic (a bit north of Los Angeles, California) in a 4-wheeled air-conditioned vehicle. During the class everyone else was riding something at least 650cc or more while I did my best on a rented Yamaha 225cc dirt bike.


Preparing for the trip south I knew this was going to be an adventure camp because
a) you aren't given an address, you are given GPS coordinates - and
b) on the list of what to bring, the "toiletries" item is caveated with " ... real adventurers don't shave :-) " (really, the smiley is there)

When you are a minority in a group, for practicality and social ease you can choose to adopt the majority culture and, for your own comfort you may hang onto one attribute of your own culture. Some female off-road riders choose to keep their fingernails nice. I try to keep mine clean, but I'm unwilling to take the time to keep them "nice". Eyebrows on the other hand ... left to their own devices could they greet each other and form a mono-brow in three days? Hmm. Not only did I leave my razor, I left my eyebrow tweezers at home. First step towards being a real adventure rider. (rolling my eyes)

The RawHyde ranch is next to the Angeles National Forest, just south of where Highway 5 and the Grapevine Highway split. The upheaved hills are striated in sienna, taupe, ancient floor polish yellow, and dusty oak tones. During the day the hot dry air holds in suspense a bit of Los Angeles smog - not enough to be a real haze, just gauzy. I've driven up and down Highway 5 many times over the years. Watching the canyons I've wondered, "What's in there? Hawks, horses, coyotes, maybe some cattle?" but I never envisioned enduros sitting on their center stands in the paddock in the coolness of the night.

Friday night everyone was assembled under a bright full moon. Pesky small winged insects tried to whisper secrets in our ears but we didn't appreciate their intentions. On the student roster were eleven guys and me. When I greeted Jim on arrival, I could tell by the look on his face that I would be the only female student in this class. Two other women were signed up, but for various reasons they had deferred to a class later in the year. Two of the guys were teachers-in-training - they had taken first and second place in the 2008 skills challenge and had been recruited. A guestimate of the student age range was middle-late thirties to mid-sixties.

Most of the students had arrived with or on their own bikes - a Suzuki VStrom 650, a Kawasaki KLR 650, an 1150 GS, and several 1200 GS bikes. As they road up the suspiciously poorly paved road, past the ranch's iron gate, many people experienced their first "oh shit" moment when the tarmac dissolved into the gravel apron around the training facility. Gravel would prove to be the least of our worries.

On the teacher roster were Jim Hyde, Mark and Gunny. Gunny, sometimes called Cheryl, is the kind of of person you call "Ma'am" without thinking about it, and no, I've never been in the military. I had heard about her - she's about my height, quite fit, and she rides bikes much bigger than you would expect for a woman of her size. Watching her ride the X Challenge was proof positive that if a person is determined and skilled enough, he or she will find a way to ride any bike.

Jim Hyde and his Yellow Behemoth

Gunny Lecturing with Bovines

Gunny coaching me on proper body position. Note how she is using her foot to stabilize the front wheel while helping me balance

Mark on the Whoops

The class format is two and a half-days. We expected to be drilled in basic skills and then be tested in an environment that demonstrate our assimilation of the skills. We knew that the progression of skills would build on previous skills. We did not anticipate how quickly all of us would be fighting to perform as well as we expected ourselves to be able to perform. The teachers reminded us in non-verbal ways that if we could stay open and willing, we would improve.

Saturday morning the warm-up exercise was to ride from the paddock across the gravel apron down the poorly paved l o o o ong driveway to the main road. First we rode to the road and back just standing on the pegs. For some of the students, that was a first. Then we were to ride out and back standing on the pegs, transferring our weight from one side of the bike to the other. "So, what's the big deal with that?" you ask. We are not talking about just lifting one foot off the peg, we are talking about swinging your entire leg over the bike to same side as the weight-bearing leg, continuing forward motion for a few seconds, then swinging the leg back over to the other side, and giving that leg some company. We watched Gunny do it. She made it look so easy. Did I mention that the driveway has pot holes and some nice down hill turns that have sand all over the surface?

In the United States, if you can pass the DMV written and the range tests, you can go buy a motorcycle, any size you like. That's right, a rank beginner can buy a 1000cc bike, ride right off the showroom floor, and likely get himself killed in no time flat. In Europe you have to work your way up to the big bikes, demonstrating your bike control skills with each exam. Most motorcycle safety courses start with basic drills like controlled starts and stops, and this class was no different - but it is different in the dirt. Traction and balance, traction and balance, those are the fundamental themes, and it is humbling to realize how much control you don't have.

Friday night some people stayed up late. Class started at 9am on Saturday morning; by 9:30 pm everyone was in bed and asleep - our bodies hurt, our brains hurt and many of our bikes had never ever spent so much time lying down on the job. Learning to control our bodies to give the correct inputs to the bike filled our muscles with lactic acid and fogged our brains. We progressed from start and stopping to slow turns - standing on the pegs, or, as appropriate standing on one peg, with our butt hiked to the outside of the turn.

The quality of the teaching was particularly evident in the tight-turn exercise. Your forward motion is not much more than idle-power, you are pushing the bike away from you and counter-balancing with your body weight to execute the turn. The outside knee is pressed into the bike's neck, the inside leg is either keeping the outside leg company on the outside of the bike or draped in a relaxed position over the seat. The outside arm is bent, elbow up and out to about ear height, the inside arm is straight. Your head is supposed to be turned so that you can look where you are going but the cone you are maneuvering around now has you in cone thrall - you can't tear your eyes away from it. There are teachers posted in strategic locations to call your attention to where you are going - they holler at you, they break that hypnotic trance - you hear, "Cecilie - hey Cecilie! Look at me!" You feel their eyes pulling your head around, aligning your vision with the cone that is in back of you, where you are going. The teacher standing between the next pair of cones yells "Look at me, look at me!" and locks his eyes into yours. You are overcome with gratitude as his voice pulls you towards that cone that is where you want to go, and damn if you don't glide slowly through that turn like you knew what you were doing.

One of the riders was having particular trouble with this exercise - he was fixating on the near cone, not the far cone, so one of the instructors-in-training picked up a cone and walked with it so that the rider could both fixate on the cone, and execute the turn to at least get the body position into muscle memory. Whatever it takes - good teachers will find a way.
Conga Line

On Sunday we took those skills to hillside riding, first flat-but-winding, then to off-camber-winding hillsides. We walked this section in a conga line so that we would be acutely aware of the off-camber pitch. Most riders survived riding this section. Later in the afternoon some riders were successful riding across a long stretch of sand, some were not. Many of us were reaching our limits.
That is one way to park it

On Monday morning some people had to leave, but five of the guys still had functioning brains and bodies. Jim showed them a long hill climb that required a hard right turn at the top, which meant that you needed control of your power up the hill in order to slow down at the top and perform a controlled tight right turn. Nobody said it out loud, but I heard more than one person think to himself "no fucking way". Jim, who is a bit of a showman, let the thought hang in the air for a moment, then he fired up his bright yellow GS, powered up that long steep hill, paused at the top, then rode down a narrow windy path through the trees like he was bringing a fruit basket to Grandma's house.

Seeing is believing - one by one the riders gave it their best shot. As with the exercises in the paddock, having a teacher in the right place at the right time telling you what to do makes all the difference. Jim was at the top of the hill queuing the riders on throttle and brake management. Every one of those riders went from "no fucking way" to "I did it!" in about fifteen minutes.

Thus far in my adult life my fears haven't stopped me from doing anything, but looking at that steep hill made me ill, and thinking about riding downhill kept me from riding up it, I am sorry to say. I was pointed towards a much easier course, but lining up with the larger group.

When one of the bikes decided to take a nap at the top of the hill the line got longer than usual. I had stopped my bike a little too close to the downhill course, which forced one of the guys to take a turn tighter than he had planned. He ran into a tree, but he didn't fall over, his bike was leaning on the tree and he was able to push himself back to vertical. Instead of resuming forward motion, he got off his bike and seemed a bit stunned. I went over to apologize for parking myself in such a thoughtless place, and seeing an odd look on his face, asked if he was okay. "I hit the tank" he replied. I walked to the tree side of the bike, expecting to see a gash on the bike, but there was no mark. "Groin", he grimaced, "there's nothing you can do." I apologized again and felt like such an idiot.

On Monday I learned that one way to find a path across land where there is no paved road is to ride under the power lines - there's some semblance of a cleared path for the trucks that maintain the lines. However, sometimes those paths get washed out by rain, and you find yourself staring down into a gully with trepidation gnawing at your gut. Nature has been kind to RawHyde ranch, there just happens to be two perfect gullies for students, one U-shaped, one V-shaped. We gazed into the gullies sharing the sensation of dread and insecurity mixed with curiosity. Jim demonstrated how to coax his yellow behemoth into and out of the gully so neatly that it was graceful. One by one, the riders followed; carefully composed faces turned to smiles and relief.

One person did manage to wedge his GS into the V-shaped gully pretty good. It took four people to orient the bike properly and raise it upright but that was unusual. In the two days of practice, we had become used to picking up our bikes. One of the biggest confidence builders from this weekend was learning how to pick up your bike by yourself, a skill some of us practiced more frequently than we had hoped we would.



The last challenge of the day was a goat trail - single path, narrow, windy, through trees. Looking at it from ten feet away you wouldn't even think that a GS could fit in those trees let alone run the maze of tight turns. Lest people leave the Introductory course with an inflated sense of confidence, Jim gave us taste of the first exercise for the Intermediate class, which brought everyone down to earth and planted the seed for a return to RawHyde Ranch.

I wish I could say that I was rode the entire class - I didn't. I fell apart in the afternoon of the first day. Three years ago a 3-day Aikido seminar in nearly triple digit heat would not have taken me out. However, this weekend was a reminder that I have been sick for over a year. I have just started to ramp up my physical activity and haven't had to figure out how to eat within a gluten, soy, and milk restricted diet to keep my energy levels up. I wasn't ready to take this class, but - live and learn. And, I have reached a do-or-die point with my fear of heights.

I know what I need to do to physically prepare to try again. I don't feel that I have the right to wear the "Where the road ends - the adventure begins" T-shirt in public until I finish the entire class but I will because it is good advertising. I'm not so sure about the mental preparations, but maybe this is one of those things that you have to lean into and see what happens.

When I started riding in 2001, I think someone commented, "first dirt then track", but I had no idea what that meant. I found my way to the track not because I was a fast learner, but because I was afraid to learn to ride on the street; in my mind it was safer to ride in group C at the track on nice sticky Dunlop tires with teachers keeping a close eye on me.

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step. - Martin Luther King, Junior.

There are huge sections of our national parks where you won't see a motorhome for hours. I've got a bee in my helmet buzzing "ride the Silk Road". My riding future needs off-road skills. If I had to do it over again, I would start in the dirt but my history can't be undone, so I'll be returning to RawHyde Offroad in Spring of 2009 (if not sooner) to try again.

This class was the first officially sponsored by BMW. RawHyde is currently the only off-road training program in North America to receive BMW's sponsorship. Keep an eye on their calendar - this school is going to get popular - and not just for the riding, the curriculum, the teachers, and the environment. The outdoor showers are wonderful and the cuisine was great. Thank you Jim, Stephanie and staff.

Thayer, Paul, Rene, Hugh, Cameron, C.R., Don, Dan, and Vince - you ride safe.

Photo credit: All photos are courtesy of rider Thayer Walker, aka the Thundering Pig God