Some friends of mine and I decided to take the
California Superbike School out at the
Streets of Willow Springs at
Willow Springs International Raceway, north of Los Angeles.
I wanted to take the school because I feel like I had the very basic skillset as far as street riding, and because I'm just not the type who rides aggressively enough in the canyons to really improve my cornering skills. There are too many douchebags who shouldn't be riding/driving up in the local L.A. canyons, not to mention traffic, road surface hazards, cops, and animals (in that order).
I'd been to one track day, at
Buttonwillow Raceway (not to be confused with Willow Springs) out near Bakersfield in central California. I think I posted some pics from that track day, you can probably search for it.
It was fun but in a sometimes-terrifying kind of way, because for me it was hard to judge when to brake, when to turn in, and how fast to take a turn. I blew the turn on the back straight twice and ran off track, though I didn't crash or anything.
Willow Springs has several tracks; "the big track" aka "the fastest track in the West" which supposedly has some serious pucker-factor high speed turns, and Streets of Willow, a shorter, more technical course; and other tracks (2 ovals, one dirt and one paved, and another short road course). Streets looks like this:
In addition to the CA SBS, our group also signed up with TrackDaz to do a proper trackday the following weekend at the same track, so we could try to put it all together for ourselves in an open trackday environment.
We showed up early for the CA Superbike School, dressed for the forecasted 90 degree F weather. Needless to say, we were quite surprised at the 38 F temperature at sunrise! Nonetheless, we had some of the coffee and breakfast fruit they provided while we milled around at registration, looking at their nice-looking ZX-6Rs that two of us rode (the other two rode their own bikes). It was bitchin', BTW, to just drive out there w/ our gear and have the bikes there and ready to go. For the cost of renting a van and the extra gas, it was almost as much as the extra cost to ride their bikes.
