Boy we had a great time at the last two track days. We were full both days (always a good thing), the weather was perfect, and on Tuesday we were surrounded by the police without getting a single ticket. Not bad for a few day’s work.

Training the cops was a pretty big deal. The Massachusetts Motorcycle Response Unit is made up of 40+ riders from different departments all across the state. Turns out they saw us on NH Chronicle and thought we looked like a good addition to their training. We were excited because frankly, it looks good on our resume. Additionally, they train so much already, we have huge fun working with them; they already get the mindset of riding to learn. Last but not least, it gave Robbie a chance to ride his Fatboy on the track. That was sort of scary. When Robbie bought the bike it came with these billet hand grips that looked like they came out of Soldier of Fortune magazine (Out of ammo? Just stab the bad guy with this little beauty). Fortunately we kept him away from everyone, and he managed to not impale himself on the throttle grip. Racers . . .

We’ve been training the Cambridge police for 4 years now, so we had a pretty good idea where their strengths and weaknesses would be. When it comes to slow speed maneuvering, nobody but nobody does that kind of riding like the motorcycle cops do. It’s almost as if they have the ability to suspend physics while they make the bikes do amazing things. Where Fishtail comes in is in the high speed maneuvering part. When you’re bending a motorcycle around a corner at speeds below 25mph or so, it’s natural and efficient to use a lot of back brake while pushing the bike down into the turn. Once the speed picks up, that approach tends to bite you in the nether regions. You give up a lot of potential braking power by not using the front brake aggressively, and you tend to run out of cornering clearance really fast. Not good, unless you like lots of sparks and metal dust. Of course it does save on tires because they keep getting levered off the ground. Anyway, our focus with the motor cops is to work on late apex lines, more front brake and pushing the hard parts away from the pavement while cornering as opposed to pushing the bars down into the turn.

So here’s the comical part. Scott Sauve, the head cheese, offered to let me ride his bike for a session. Yeah baby, I’m all over that, so out I go. I think I got as far as turn 3 (The Wall of Death) before I started scraping. Badly. So here I am with my feet way out in front of me, my butt firmly in the bucket and my hands on something that feels not unlike a tiller on a sailboat. Hmmm, this is different, says I. I dealt with it all by riding with my butt way up on the nose of the seat, my feet pulled as far back as I could get them on the floor boards and my chin way out in space. I settled on the technique of pitching the bike into the turn (actually, it was much more like slowly rolling. . . tacking? . . . coming about? . . .) while I listened for the sound of the grinding metal to change. There’s a definite difference between the folding parts grinding and the non-folding parts. Here’s a hint: Stop leaning when the sound changes. Once I figured that out (and resigned myself to removing the sides of my boots), it all became rather fun. The next challenge came from trying to shift. If you ever want to scramble your brain really well, try going from GP (reverse) shift to a heal-toe shifter. Great googly moogly, it got the point where I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to push, pull or simply bail out and pull the rip cord.

Oh, one other thing. It took me ¾ of the session to realize the gauge right in front of me was not the speedometer. I’m pushing the bike hard down the front straight thinking to myself, How can I only be going 50? And why does the engine keep cutting out? Here’s another hint: if you ever find yourself trying to haul the mail on a police bike, the speedometer is on the tank; the tachometer is on the bars, and the rev limiter works just fine.

My only regret is I forgot to ask where the button for the siren was so I could pull someone over. Maybe next time.

All in all it was about as much fun as I’ve had in a while. Someone may have even gotten part if it on film (Jason?). Apparently he was so convinced I was going to crash in a violent and spectacular way that he wanted to record the event for posterity. Sorry dude, old age and treachery win every time. We have 7 more cops coming in August, so we’ll get to try it all again.

So there you have it. We’re off this weekend to ride New Jersey Motorsports Park. My bike still has a massive hole in it where the motor used to be, so I’m at the mercy of others. Fortunately Max Stratton is trying to get a bike for me to ride while I’m down there. How does one get blessed with such good friends?

That’s all I know. See you at the track.