Gymkhana

Looking good Oreh
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Too many panniers. Didn't read.

Hey Oreh great videos, but I'm worried that you haven't found any other riders to play with yet! We have a great group up in the Czech Republic, so maybe it could be worth a journey to ride with them.

BTW, I like the panniers and was wondering how the bike handles with them full!!!

Thanks for suggestion for Czech Republic, but this is allmost "half a Europe" away from me. Not realy that far, but too far for hobby. Maybe one trip in the summer. Never know.

Thanks for worrying about riding friends. I think we have two types of riders here.
First one are too proud to ride between cones and they don't want to ride with me .They rather dragging their knees on roads.
Second one are riders who are scared to drop their bikes, and they think I'm too aggressive and competative rider and they don't want ride with me.
But I just want to improve my riding skills. And like someone (I think it was you) once said "the clock is the only one who shows you if your riding tehnic is improving"

Panniers. Of corse they were empty. Just wonted to get the feeling for dimensions. Handling with full paniers would drop drasticly.

Very cool! Wish you were here with us, would love to learn from you as well.

we tried and tried to get local supersport riders out for gp8's. finally, a couple of knee draggers showed up. first time, they just hung out and chatted (fine). then, we pushed a little, and asked why they didn't try it. the excuse was "i don't want to drop my bike, besides, it's not fassssst!".

then one time on a whim, they tried the stupid little cones and this came out:

"HEY THIS IS HARD! HEY THIS IS FUNNNNNNNNN!"

then, once a week, they were there. supersports, police cruisers, police beemers, dualsports, SM's, all makes and rider types. everyone wanted to RIDE those stupid cones a little faster, a little smoother. keep at it, they will come.


i watched your videos. that's impressive. lots of low dipping, lots of good control. the gravel was impressive too. what really got me was how you're doing 8's and tight turns: you're coming in hot and letting your remaining inertia carry the bike through all while tightening up the turn almost to the point of stalling... then WHOOOMP you're back on the throttle. >> i love this ! <<

the board trick was neat too. very good stuff. i wonder how much harder you would push on a smaller bike that would crash better ?

rock on

If'in Oreh is anything like me then far enough to have a nice little lie down

Going through a course everything is moving, but also direction changes so often as opposed to going in circles. It comes down to a trust in the grip. (this is julius btw) For new guys it's not enough trust, when we slide it's too much trust lol. I remember towards the end of November where you damaged your rear brake pedal you had a lot of confidence in both your tires. In warmer circumstances you definitely would have made that turn.

Looking back to when I first started with you guys I didn't have much trust in the grip of the front tire with my CBR. Then after the third session I had a lot more trust in in it. The michelin's on my R6 have superior grip to my CBR stock touring tires, but I don't have what people call "feel" for the front tire's grip as I do with the CBR. Now with my new bike I'm having to learn how the stock bridgestones feel. Sucks we can't go to the limit in this temperature.

These guys in the video know that the tire won't slide at this speed with this lean and braking force. :eek1 I think it takes a few slippery experiences (not necessarily lowsiding) to truly understand where the limit of grip lies. The toughest place to trust the grip is a sharp change of direction after a long fast sweeper. The place I have most trouble in and hope to improve are consecutive tightspace haipins. 62 days to spring, should work on my trailbraking as much as I can.

Yeah, my priority above everything else at this point, is to find a suitable spot for us. If we can do our sessions uninterrupted, we should have a very exciting season this summer.

I have a couple of ideas that I want to try, to involve more people remotely, if they do not have somebody to practice Gymkhana with locally, but still want to compete and be involved in this sport. Should be fun, but it all revolves around us actually being able to do this without interruptions.

Are you all up for some of this?

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Can't wait I've been on a diet since the new year, living like a Tibetan monk in preparation, lost 7 lbs in weight, so my KTM will be faster than ever this year

More concentration too? You're already the fastest!

At the rate you are improving, I will need all the speed I can get this year

Still got a long ways to go before I catch up to your lap times lol. Maybe next year I'll be 2 seconds behind

tell me more?

I've been wanting to do a Google hangout that had 5-6 locations filmed at once (with my time zone the most comfortable if course! ) but please, tell us more!

Oh no, my idea was much simpler. Its basically a continuation of the GP8 idea. So far GP8 is sort of a benchmark simply because its very simple to set-up, film and the dimensions are set, so anybody can recreate it and compare their times to everybody else.

So my idea was in parallel to our local season and competition, do a monthly obstacle. Create a small course with 4-5 cones, post the exact dimensions of that course online, and have people recreate it, run and film it, and then post the results. So it wouldn't be a live interaction like you would get with a Google hangout, but I think it would encourage people to compete with others remotely like that, especially if they currently do not have anybody locally to run Gymkhana.

We will be running these monthly obstacles here in NY as well, so there will always be a baseline for people to beat/compare to.

Each month it will be a new obstacle. It just has to be very simple to set up. I'm thinking something along the lines of a square, with four cones at each corner, and one in the middle. So the cone configuration would stay the same, but the pattern would change each month.

We've (you Bama guys, UK guys and us here in NY) been doing this for a while now, we already have a number of obstacles that we've shared with each other and tried, there is plenty of video clips of people trying stuff out. So all this would do, is just organize it a little bit more.

We have people from all over the world in our FB group, who are following our posts and events, so the interest is there. I know I personally would have loved having something like this, when I was starting out, and was running GP8 all by myself. I'm hoping that if somebody picks this up and starts running the monthly courses and setting them up, that will generate more interest from their local riders, so they can find someone to ride with locally, faster.

What do you think?

Excellent!
I like the idea of a monthly Google hangout too. Gives more instant interaction but could be more difficult to do. It is worth giving it a go I think.

Both ideas will help to promote and expand Gymkhana into the main stream of the general motorcycling community.

I say lets do both! Great ideas, both of you!

yes to all of it.

my main goal has been to make folks better riders, and secondary to get satellite gk sessions happening on a regular basis.

here's some to go on that we have tried so far: there are no dimensions, but only because it's easier to Taylor tip larger bikes that way:


circle of trust (always first for new riders)


gp8 (gated)


the butterfly (people really like this one)


snake (advanced)



burnmuda (fast!)


can o pea (harder than it looks)


gozirra (haven't tried any of these on anyone else yet)


drunk monk









I only takes a minute to make up stuff on paint, then half an hour to ride out and see if it works.

As Vulfy says, there are quite a few internationally agreed timed obstacles and we are always interested in finding new and challenging designs. During our Practice & Play days we will usually set up an obstacle of the day from the catalogue and run some timed attacks on it just so that people can begin to get the measure of it. We typically do not make these of fixed dimensions, but just lay something out to suit the space and surface available.

A particular favourite is the 'cats cradle' an obstacle that consists of both straight and offset slaloms and a couple of rotations just to make it interesting.

It's the first obstacle being ridden in this video of Yoshinobu Shiga. It's made up of just 8 pylons, but as you can see from the way that Shiga-san attacks it, it's not short of challenge.

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I've been thinkin of us posting vids of identical courses here before. But everything fizzled. C'est la vie. I think it's a great idea. Motivating no less.
Big thumbs up from me. Somebody has to be slowest. But proud to participate
We have no place to practice but could probably knock up a GP8 somewhere. Ain't done it for eons. Scary.


I reckon Mr Shiga would be quick on anything, anywhere. He is so fluid. Lovely riding style. That first obstacle could almost be a fertility symbol.

Yeah we will try the Google hangout this season too.

Just came from a scouting run for a new spot. A few really good lots, but non are accessible without security guards instantly calling police. Talking to management gave us the same old response, "no, liability".

sigh

The search continues.