Why EVERY Rider needs to experience a Trackday

In this episode, Rick Rayner sits down with Cobie Fair, Global Chief of Rider Coaching at California Superbike School. 🏁 From starting as a mechanic 40+ years ago to becoming one of the top motorcycle coaches in the world, Cobie shares why every rider—no matter their experience—should hit the track at least once.

🔥 Topics Covered:
✅ The biggest riding skills you can ONLY learn on a track
✅ How California Superbike School has trained thousands of riders
✅ Why track riding makes you safer & faster on the street
🚀 If you ride, you NEED to hear this!

#MotorcycleRacing #CaliforniaSuperbikeSchool #TrackDay #RideFaster #RiderCoaching #Superbike #MotorcycleTraining

Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:06.35)
Good day everyone and welcome back to the podcast. Today Rick Rayner is interviewing a really special guest, Cobie Fair. Cobie

has been with the California Superbike School for 40 years and Cobie is the chief rider coaching. So he runs the entire shebang and is a partner in the school. He also is featured in some of those original, Keith Co to twist of the wrist videos, which I'm sure some of you might've seen from the eighties. So he's been around a school a lot, a long time and has obviously learned a lot. Personally, my first ever day on the track ever in my entire life was in 2018 and Cobie

was my coach and

Fair to say I've come a long way since then. I look at the photos and I'm like, whoa, what was I thinking? So I have a great amount of respect for Cobie and he's a great coach, a great leader, a great person. And so what Rick and Cobie are gonna be covering off today after a sort of a brief introduction to Cobie is the topic of, should I go to the racetrack? Even if I'm not really into track, is it useful to go to the track to learn how to ride a motorcycle well and safety? And so they're gonna explore that topic a little bit. And over the coming weeks, they'll be exploring

few other topics as well of interest to those of us that are interested in improving our writing skills. So over to Rick and Kobi.

Speaker 1 (01:23.342)
All right everybody, Cobie Fair from the California Superbike School here with us today. This is going to be fun, but firstly we want to have Kobe introduce himself and tell us, well first of all hi Cobie. Hey Rick. Yeah good to see you too. I just think that if we could ask you to just introduce yourself and then I'll dive in with some questions but

Good to see you,

Speaker 1 (01:50.04)
Can you tell us, I know you started with the school way back, like way back, like where you were the first chief riding instructor, correct? That's correct. And then, what, right around when was that?

Well, I started as the Chief Ride Instructor and back then, you're right, you nailed the title. It was Chief Ride Instructor, then we changed it many years later to Chief Riding Coach. But that was in 1990, late 89 actually is when Keith contacted me. I had before then been an assistant mechanic and starting in 83. And I did that a few of the years of the 80s and then

989.

Speaker 2 (02:32.078)
little bit of coaching at what was then called the advanced school. And then the two day camp came about with the video reviews. Ethan vented that that was pretty cool. He actually took a the very first video bike was a half inch VHS deck modified into the tank of one of the Kawasaki's. Yeah. And literally were taking a you know, a big old half inch cassette tape and stuffing it in there. That was what was available at the time.

That's that's I have to deviate quickly don't forget where you're at Okay, because when I started at the superbike school was in like 2006 or seven there still weren't GoPros and stuff. So I I taped like we had those handheld Video camera VH. No, not VHS, but the eight the the ones with the cassette thing this little ones though

I remember taping one of those camera lenses to my fairing and putting the camera on the back. So, and there's a little nugget here, everybody, videotape yourself riding. It's the first thing you want to look at when you go home and want to learn because you have to watch yourself ride. That's a personal policy of mine. I know I talked to Kobe, sorry, Angus quite a bit about that when he interviewed me, but I just think that it's a

Super duper important thing about, uh, improving your writing is having video. Yeah. And so now we're going to go all the way back to 19 freaking 89 and talk about a VHS tape.

It's an excellent tool.

Speaker 2 (04:06.796)
Yeah, well that was, yeah. Yeah, Keith had one of the guys at the school fabricate that tank and then an arm looking over the shoulder of the rider so that they can see what the rider was doing. So I did some coaching there initially and that was like I in the late 80s and then in 1990 Keith invited me to be the chief riding coach. He basically created the position with chief riding instructor at the time. So that was 1990.

And then as the coaching program has changed, and it's changed quite a lot and progressed quite a lot, and there have been some milestones from our side. And then we started training and establishing branches in different parts of the world. So my official tile went from Chief Riding Coach, California Superbikes School USA to Chief Riding Coach worldwide, because I'm also responsible for the regions, meaning there's one in Europe, headed by the UK guys. There's another one in Australia.

headed by the Australian branch that handles Australia and Asia. So my title had to change to Chief Riding Coach Worldwide. There we go. Fancy, but that's it.

Hey man, it sounds real. You got global things going on, man. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, it's been an interesting evolution.

Speaker 1 (05:19.744)
I don't even understand. I can just imagine the work it takes to, well, I've seen, I've seen, I've seen your curriculum firsthand, which is not public knowledge. That's right. And it's a big fat mo fo binder, maybe more than one. And you've got to disseminate that to the satellites and make sure everybody's following that to the T and I mean to the T to the T.

That's not a joke. Nobody gets to go off and say their own things necessarily. But anyway, I don't understand how you accomplish that personally. Like that's a big ass task.

Well, it's a tremendous amount of support from the team, from Keith and Dylan, who's now also one of the partners at the school. just a tremendous amount of support and push worldwide. then we've clearly have find the jobs and the duties and that, as you said, people get and stay on the same page, which is a huge thing in training. we definitely, that's definitely a whole factor.

But yeah, and a job I enjoy, so I'm still here.

No, that's great. No, that's good. Hey, the fact that you're sitting here with us is pretty amazing, man. mean, I know that you haven't done this a bunch, if ever. So we're super duper happy and thankful that you're willing to sit down and have these discussions with us. I just want everybody to understand that this is a big it's a privilege, man. I mean, and I'm not.

Speaker 1 (06:58.72)
I'm not calling you a god or anything like that, but I know that you're busy, obviously, and that you got things to do, and you're willing to sit down and talk to us and help people learn some things here, right? I mean, the school makes a living getting paid to disseminate information, and here we have you willing to tell our partners, our viewers, for the click of a button. That's pretty nice.

Well thanks man for that. It's a passionate subject for me besides working at the school. It is a passion like many in the motorcycle industry. It's a passion for them. So I'm enjoying it and you're right. I don't do this. I don't spend much time or any more time than possible in front of computers. We're old friends and you've been a...

student and you're a savvy coach in your own right. So it was an interesting process and I'm looking forward to doing it. And as you'd mentioned earlier, we've talked about a few things that we wanted to discuss over a series of them. hopefully that these will have some value to some others.

Man, I'm gonna bet dollars to donuts that it's fact that there's gonna be some nuggets coming right up. But we wanted to get you introduced. so did you take us all, you didn't take us all the way to today though. Is there some in between there?

As a quick overview, could say the started in 1990 in that position, although I'd been here at the school before, but as chief writing coach in 1990 and then that just continued. The duties and responsibilities of that role continued to expand by the mid 90s. We were already looking at a branch in Europe and so we had to train up guys there and go to Europe and then get ahead or a chief writing coach there and then same in Australia.

Speaker 2 (08:53.976)
and both of those branches were started by really great guys themselves. Andy Abbott, started the, the English branch and, UK and then Steve Brogi founded the one in Australia. and both those guys are fantastic guys and they were great guys set up their regional branches and they would come here. We would go there and we just continued to work on, establishing it, and getting everybody on, know, to.

to not to belabor this point too much, but making sure that everybody's on the same program. And that's continued to this day.

Yeah. I think, we've already talked to Johnny. Johnny mentioned Andy. Johnny Haynes is your chief writing coach, deputy writing coach in the U S. Okay. Holy smoke.

Worldwide. sir. So technically Johnny is number two in our framework of organization. In some ways he's better than I am. In many ways he's better than I am. But when he had been the chief riding coach in the UK for many years and then he ended up in the US and you know he just steadily worked his way up the ranks in the US and when the position came up for my number two

I mean, he's been just an amazing asset and not to just blow smoke up his.

Speaker 1 (10:16.334)
Bring it on, man. I'll let you know. My opinion.

Yeah. Johnny is uniquely qualified in many ways. He's, he's blindingly fast. He can ride with pro racers, you know, of any level. He can coach anyone. He's passionate like I am. he and I work extremely well together. We both have strengths and we play off that and we're very, you we meet every day, multiple times a day. We discuss every component of the coaching. And, so, you know,

Technically, he's a step below me, but that's only technical. In many cases, he's not.

Well, that's cool. I so just as to make sure everybody knows is that we already have had a nice chat with Johnny Haynes. It's it's on the it's on KiwiMoto72's Facebook and I think podcast and all that stuff. So it's out there if you want to listen to it. But he mentioned Andy in that interview. And I just wanted to put all that put that kind of together. But going back a little bit back on track, what

You're really saying is the school takes consistently consistency super important getting with you same page. What does that mean? Like why why would we need to do that? Why do you

Speaker 2 (11:33.88)
Well, there's, you know, the school approach and philosophy is going to be a whole subject in itself. So, not getting too, too deep into that. You know, we want the guys to all know the same information to the same level so that when a student comes back, if he doesn't get the same coach or, you know, wants to try a different coach, which many people do both, they'll sometimes last for the same coach. Sometimes I get a new coach and I've had so many people say, you guys are all great. I don't care.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:03.438)
So yeah, we just want everybody on the same page and there's quite a lot that goes into making that happen.

That was me.

Speaker 1 (12:14.766)
It's kind of obvious that, I mean, I think even, I think when Angus interviewed Ken Hill, mean, most serious coaches, I think would want to have curriculum, whatever that is, be consistent when they disseminate it, you know, amongst their helpers, if you want to call it that, you know. And so I just, all I'm really pounding on here is that you guys are extra specially concerned with that.

successful with it in my opinion.

Yeah, we work at that in some detail and I'm happy to go into that. I know we have another in a series that we're talking about. So happy to go into that in more detail if you'd like.

country now.

Okay, so, well good deal. And so, before we get off the super bike school and I mean your specific situation, how's, can you just tell everybody that, might know the school like how's Keith and what's the scooperoo there? Is he, is he going to hang it up pretty soon or has he already, or, or, I mean, I haven't, he's been at everything I've gone to all the way up until, your break here. So is he going to, is he going to be here next year?

Speaker 2 (13:29.784)
Yeah, Keith's fully involved with the school. enjoys both working with the students directly and he is usually the lead level four consultant in running the level four area. Our many time repeat students like you, you know, and Angus been many times. So yeah, now Keith's definitely still here and he works intimately on the technical side of what we do. So, you know, what is in our manual has been

through his eyes and gotten his final approval in every category.

So, now we can time out on the Superbike School. We're going to talk about why go to the racetrack. So, Toby, we're starting our first entry of the series and we want to talk about why go to the racetrack. And that's such a general question. I don't know if that's going to take us five minutes or 50 minutes or whatever it takes, but it is an important question.

Let's throw it down and see what comes out. So what do you say there, my man? Why do we want to go to the racetrack?

Yeah, it's a good question because to the outsider, let's say the non-fort bike rider, you know, there's, you know, so there's touring, there's commuting, there's, you know, dual sport, you know, all the things, all of the disciplines that would end up with a person riding, you know, on asphalt and or in traffic, city, whatever it is, even guys that ride scooters, you know, and we've done a number of schools in Asia.

Speaker 2 (15:08.64)
and spent some time on scooters and there are some real things that came up there. So the first one is what does track riding have as a benefit that other kinds of riding will never have? And let's say no instruction at all and you showed up at a racetrack. Let's just say that, you you

Hey, I can speak firsthand, but you go ahead with your hypothetical.

Yeah. Well, let's just say, you know, that, you know, if we could get a rider to go to a racetrack, you know, with a solid machine and solid gear, and there was no instruction available, you know, and occasionally you, some people come into these situations where, you know, so there was no one there to show you around or tell you what to do or introduce technique or lines or go over any part of riding, but you were on, they're on your own.

I think that you would end up leaving a better rider than you showed up and I'd pretty much guarantee it. One of the things, and this is not unique to the Superbike School and many other high level sports or high intensity sports or sports that have some risk to them, it's well known that when you train someone, you train them on one subject at a time and all of the better instructors learn this one way or the other and to their apparel they violate it. So I'll give you an example.

I had a, a friend that went to a, a rifle class taught by, some military fellows, you know, some ex, they might've been special forces guys. And it was, so this was a, a carbine class. So everybody was virtually everybody was shooting, you know, AR style rifles. And, these were high end guys. and at one point they'd had a very nice progression of training that they did. They did a really, really good job. And then at one point.

Speaker 2 (16:59.128)
They had three different instructors. and one of the students, one of them, you know, my friend that went to it, he, he had three different guys telling him three different things. he just like too much. What's the priority here? You know, what are we going to work on? And then they whittled it down. He literally got them together and said, guys, I'm getting three different sets of instructions here. So, and this is, you know, a, like riding at the racetrack, you know, when you're on, you know, a shooting range with,

Yeah, you know, at a higher level, not just, you know, punching paper, you know, standing at a still, you know, still behind a bench, you know, you're, you're active and you know, there are military guys training you and there's a much higher demand, et cetera, et cetera. So, and a lot of movement involved. So, you know, that, that point of making sure that one thing is done at a time, that's a huge component. so one thing that the racetrack provides is basically a controlled road. is no, there is nowhere else you can do that. You know, you can.

You know, and think about what some guys do, you know, some guys that are interested and they find a section of road they like, and they go and ride it back and forth. That's one.

Man, yeah, the endless videos on YouTube.

That's right. Guy's spending a lot of time, but it's not a controlled road in actual fact. you just think of, know, so again, your ability to try practice one thing, you know, not so easy to do that. Two, you have to deal with other factors and these other factors and how much they chip away at your ability to concentrate and your attention is not minor. So let's just take them, you know.

Speaker 2 (18:36.622)
If you're riding at an enthusiastic rate, you might be breaking the law. You gotta be worried about the cops. You've got to be worried about, you know, the surface and you know, what's happened. Cause even if you went up and down at once, if other cars went on it they're leaking coolant or, or, you know, a guy spills a little bit out of a, you know, a dump truck and there's a little sand in one corner, you know, you're, you're coming around a corner with a possible change in that traction situation. So, you know, again, not a controlled road. Um, and.

You know, people going in multiple directions, know, dogs, cars, animals, cops, the whole thing. It is such a, it takes so much of your attention, you know, and Rick, you're probably familiar. I'm not probably, I'm sure you are. And Keith, Keith's first book, Keith Code and the first Twist of the Wrist book, Twist of the Wrist.

one and he talks about, know, everybody has so much attention and he does the $10 worth of attention analogy and you're having to spend five bucks or six bucks of your $10 on crime and he is like, you know, what's, what's going on behind me? What's going on in front of me? Do I have to worry about if there are faster guys than I am here? there, are there other guys using this as a, as their training ground, you know, uh, Angeles crest highway, you know, one of the, you know, the big, the big highways down here in Southern California.

about every week there were carting somebody way off there. And sometimes you'd have guys come up behind you, splitting lanes, doing just crazy stuff. And if that guy was hit and he bounced into me, then that's on, that ends up being a problem for me. So all of these factors, and this is why, you know, even for a, not a person that is looking to end up racing or doing a ton of track days or becoming a, you know, a semi-professional track day guy.

And we have plenty of guys that just do track days now, because there's so many available. Riding on the racetrack, you know, can be, can be a tremendous place to train. Not extremely well known, but, back in the early nineties, we did some Harley only days. Her guys showed up on choppers, you know, and the training didn't change. didn't, we didn't train, change the training, the fundamental core techniques. The bike is as capable or less capable in, know, than another, they weren't changed. So the.

Speaker 1 (20:38.717)
nice.

Speaker 2 (20:52.982)
Just the whole point of a controlled road that you can control is without other distractions, with medical attention there if it's needed. And at our schools, that's so rarely needed. It's extremely rare. A road that is designed for people to possibly make an error, and then there is runoff room on the exit.

Yeah, I was just going to say there's a lot more real estate and it's all going the same direction. And a lot of this stuff seems maybe obvious to people, but we're just what we're doing is we're throwing it out. You know, we're throwing it out anyway. It might not be obvious to everybody, but when you go to the racetrack, man, it's, man, in some cases, four lanes of regular highway wide the racetrack and it's all one direction. And whoever owns that racetrack, I assume.

that you've paid them to rent the track and they have a responsibility of making sure that that track is clean, doesn't have debris on it, doesn't have big oil slick somewhere. Like when you as the track renter gets there, you know, you, you are expecting that track to be clean and ready to ride on. So that's right there. I mean, that's, that's not a highway. That's not a road that does not happen on the road. That's right. Right.

I also want to go back quickly to your, to the $10, attention point. it just put a head on that. So everybody should just know we all have a limited limited amount of attention. That's the point with that. We do not have an infinite amount of attention, not even close. There's a, there's an amount of attention. How do we explain this? Like in a nutshell, there is a specific amount of attention.

that you are allowed when you're walking around or riding around or whatever you're doing in space and time as you move through the world. And that doesn't really change. In fact, it gets worse when you get on a motorcycle because things are moving. So the time to see something and absorb it, it's getting worse. So I think that's the point, is our attention span, as people call it, is fixed. Let's just assume it's like that.

Speaker 2 (23:10.498)
Yes. Yeah, there's a couple of pieces to this and you're quite right to take a look at this as its own little subject to be honest is, you know, you're right. There is so much attention. And then what do you spend your attention on? How much of your attention is taken by something? So when you begin writing, and if you remember back to that, you know, back in the stone age when you began writing, the amount of attention of your personal attention

that it takes to let out the clutch and not stall the bike. So we got $10 here. You might be spending eight and a half dollars to not just tip the damn bike over and stalling it and tipping the damn thing over when it did stall. And I know you were training somebody recently and you had some good success with this. the, the, you were just doing one thing at a time. You did it beautifully. You were relating to me how you were doing that. But, um, as you get, uh, better and better than that, letting the clutch out and not stalling.

that takes less and less and less to our, in the end, it's only taking a little tiny bit of your attention and you have it left over, right? So, you you could take this, this attention point and immediately, you know, look at, you know, accidents and what happens and where, where does people, where does their attention get drawn to? In fact, you know, a fairly well known.

visual air is fixed attention. Your attention is fixed. Another one is your attention gets narrowed and those often can be components and accidents. mean, know, the years ago I did a, worked for a lawyer remotely just doing an accident reconstruction. you know, there was, you know, a guy, I think he pulled the truck out in front of him and then, you know, I don't remember all the details, but the point was it's like another skilled rider.

who had been able to keep his attention wide and not have it fixed and narrowed, I think he could have gone right around the truck.

Speaker 1 (25:02.508)
Yeah, yeah, I saw one. I saw one just a couple days ago about a guy that was talking on his Don't forget man if you're gonna wear a camera on your you're trying to make videos for your youtube channel and stuff That's taking away from your attention like it or not That is no different than having to pull in the clutch or roll on the gas or push on the bar or whatever It's another thing that you're telling yourself that that you need to do is talk to your camera. Okay, so that's a new

Addition to the pile, right? And so here's this. Yeah.

No, I'm just, you know, agreeing with your point there, even guys that are not talking to the camera, but are, are aware that the camera is there. You know, we see it all the time at the school. Sometimes guy, you know, he's doing great, throws a camera on and all of a he starts, you know, riding above the skill level or trying to do goofy stuff. And we're like, okay. So yeah, good point you're making.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we want to go to the racetrack because we want to we want to get better and improve. It's not just for fun. We're assuming that these people, everybody wants to improve all the time. I do still. I know you do. So we're going to the racetrack to have fun, but improve and putting a camera on your bike is just adding a thing, you know, taken away from your $10. It's just another thing that you're adding to the pile of things you need to pay for.

So, but I was going to say I saw this guy talking and talking having a nice ride around this very long right hand curve on a two lane highway and he was just cruising along and he was talking about how the road surface felt and whatever he was talking about. And then this truck started coming around, you know, the in the opposite direction and he didn't know how to steer, I'm assuming.

Speaker 1 (26:50.592)
even though he was riding a motorcycle around everywhere, but he didn't know exactly how to steer. And guess what he was looking at? The truck. And guess where he went? Is the truck. And this guy at probably 60 miles an hour saw the truck and just drove right into it and had plenty of time, just like you're saying with this other person, plenty of time to avoid it, plenty of road up there, plenty of, you know, blacktop in front of him to just move over and stay in his lane. He just, just

Two things added up, man. Those two things. Learn how to steer and work on your attention. Exactly what you're saying, right? That's what we're saying. Work on it at the racetrack.

That's right. Again, back to this concept of, you know...

of using a racetrack at whatever speed you are. And I just want to touch on that for a second, because it just gets out to riders that, again, are not not planning on being serious sport bike riders, but let's say they're going to be street riders or commuters. I highly recommend this, getting to a racetrack every now and again, just to work on your own skills in a controlled environment so that you can build some margin into your own game. I had another top coach and he worked

He'd been with the school and he, uh, we had a discussion one day and he'd, he'd done some racing. didn't even done some endurance racing. Then he was out of it for a while. He, uh, you know, and had another career and didn't get, didn't get much time to get to the track. And, know, he commented to me later. He said, you know, as the years went by, I just watched my, my skills, you know, gradually. and the, uh, uh, it was because, and he felt it was because he hadn't, he just hadn't been on a racetrack.

Speaker 1 (28:26.856)
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (28:33.954)
You know, and so I recommend it as a maintenance thing, you know, whether you get coaching or not coaching, if you can get on a track, obviously you can get good coaching, you know, that's a whole thing that we're going to talk about one these, I know, but, you know, just, just using the rest track as a place to, work on your skills and controlled environment for whatever kind of writing that you do to end up building more margin into whatever kind of writing you do.

Okay, let's drill down into that a little bit just so everybody understands what you mean by that.

Yeah. So let me, let me just, let, let's just take a look at, let's say an, uh, any, let's not say a full blown accident, you know, or like the guy that ran into the truck kind of thing. Let's just say, you know, maybe a, slightly tense situation where, know, there was a closest call or somebody came into your lane and you had to move out of the way or somebody did something unexpectedly to you. Um, uh, if you, if you were to dissect that, uh, for a moment, put the component of time.

you would have something that you could look at. And when I say time, mean like kind of like your own personal time, like you feel like you have enough time to react or you don't have enough time to react, right? So a component of any tense situation, accident, et cetera, is going to be a component of not enough time. If you, yeah, learned that from Keith. That was a hundred percent learned from Keith. So if you've got the component of time and what you can do now,

way look at it.

Speaker 2 (29:59.446)
A way to help create time is to create more space in front of you or around you. So for example, if you have a very little amount of your own personal space, you're looking too close to yourself and not far enough out ahead, then things happen to you too quickly all the time. Almost everything is a surprise. So, you know, there are techniques that will help you increase and create that additional space, which will give you more time to react.

Mm-hmm.

There's a terrific technique that Keith isolated that another one of my coaches commented, you know, he was commuting in LA traffic and you can split lanes legally, you know, and he just said that one technique alone, but all the all the drama, all the tension out of splitting lanes, you know, so just back to this component of time that we're talking about here. So it just felt like he would have more time. again, you know, our

our subject here on using the racetrack as your test bed is to help so that you can create some more of your own time so that you can predict and control things. And this obviously doesn't just apply to riding a motorcycle. It could apply to many activities. And we know that because students come back and tell us, yes, I tried this while I was skiing. Or, yes, I tried this with one of my kids and we're on a snowmobile. wherever they were practicing. Or, was driving my car and I tried this wherever it is.

The racetrack just opens that door and you know, and like I said, I have whatever kind of riding you do. And we have done every, every type of full-size bike you can imagine. We've seen them on the rest of the

Speaker 1 (31:31.96)
Well, let's hear the scooter story from Asia.

We were in Taiwan and we had one of the days off and some of the scooters there are pretty fast. We ended up on one of our days off on one of their favorite roads and we found guys that were doing this and they were all in ass on this road. had...

Wait, but this is on a road?

yeah, yeah. So we were in a van going from point A to point B. We were in a van going from point A to point B. was on one of our days off. We were on a scooter and we came around up to this one section where there was a lookout and kind of a meeting place. And these two scooters came by us, one on the inside of the van and one around the outside.

They fired her past you.

Speaker 2 (32:27.446)
really superior riding. no, really, it was, you know, the one on the right, I think went over the white line, came back around, leaned the scooter over, and every coach in the van just instantly had a heart flutter because this woman was in a leather jacket and stockings. And she was hauling ass on that scooter. So of course,

That's funny.

Speaker 2 (32:56.074)
Every coach is like, my God, I'm in love.

That's what you found out about the scooters. That's pretty good.

I was like, I'm not going to do that. But it was, it was so good. I mean, her writing was so clean. It was like, and you know, she was wearing like fishnet stockings or something. It was like, it was just like, Oh my God.

We're not advocating that people go do that. No, but that's a good. That's a good fun fact.

You won't catch me doing that. All the gear all the time, but not on the highway. And I just, you know, back to the racetrack thing for a moment, you know, it happened to me, Rick, you know, I was like up on the crest many, many years ago and, you know, came around a corner. I was a little closer to the yellow line, but nowhere near over it. Just not deep into my lane. And a car came around the lane and he was feet over the yellow line.

Speaker 1 (33:24.01)
and not on the highway.

Speaker 2 (33:49.358)
I'm like, so, you know, pick the bike up. He sort of swerved, got collected back again, felt like, you know, six inches from the, from the dirt on the exit. I'm like, you know, I don't really need this kind of drama. So, um, it just, you know, and I've never, you know, attempted to go as fast and some guys have, I've known guys that have done it as fast as they would ride on a racetrack or nearly that fast, you know, but

I just never even attempted that. even, even writing it in a fairly enthusiastic pace, I'm like, you know, there's no margin to this. This is not, this is not worth it. Just another plus of, writing on a restaurant in a controlled environment.

And I'm one of those guys that I basically don't ride on their street anymore for whatever, whatever it is decades now. I mean, I'll take my supermoto out once a year, maybe, to, you know, run across town to my sisters or whatever. But generally speaking, yeah, I don't make a habit of riding on the road at all. But one of the good things that the going to the track is going to do for us is, basically give us an environment to.

find out where we're at and make some improvements. That's right. That's that's general. mean, it's to me it's a learning environment period. But but one of the things you can learn is where are you with with all this stuff? Like are you chasing more time that you don't have? Like what what is it that you need to work on to be a better writer?

you say, where are you? mean, in the realm of technique, you know, where, where, where's

Speaker 1 (35:23.38)
In the, in the realm of our subject of attention and allocated attention, where, where am I, with my allocated attention? Am I really thinking about the clutch and the throttle and my body position? If you're thinking about all that stuff, which you will when you're learning it, which you need to do, then, you know, you kind of need to know where your, where your time allocation is or your attention allocation. that's really what I'm saying.

Yeah, go to the track just to find out where you're at. And, part of the, part of the fun of it is if you don't mind me saying, and correct me if I'm wrong, but once we, start to learn, like you were saying in the clutch, for example, we're going to burn that in and it's going to go what I call to the back and alleviate some frontal lobe space. Right. And so you are, you know, I came to a school one day and I just told Johnny, Hey, I just want to work on my feet.

Cause I am thinking about my feet. I'm not exactly sure where they're supposed to be. And I want to get it figured out. And I want to get to see if I can get it burned in in a day. And we did it. So that's a specific topic that you can go to the track and think about specifically, not just arbitrary. You know what I'm saying? Help me out here. I'm saying figure it out and hit some things on the, hit some nails on the head and put them in the back. leave that opens, opens up some attention.

Yeah, it's an excellent, an excellent point you're making, and, know, really, kind of gets into the subject of like, okay, when you go to the track, what do do? We, we, I do think we should talk about that, but, maybe we'll, we'll, we'll leave that to its own subject here. But again, sort of putting the cap on, on this of whatever kind of bike you ride, you know, and maybe it isn't feasible, but there are tracks, you know, some people may not know there are tracks all over the country.

Yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:16.942)
Getting on a track these days is easy and cheap compared to what it used to be 25, 30 years ago, where there wasn't this kind of track time available. Most tracks will have something that you can do, even if you're, gosh, there are even smaller tracks, go kart tracks that have lower speeds. And geez, my first race was on a go kart track in Las Cruces, New Mexico in 1982 on a Ducati and I never got the thing out of second gear.

Speaker 2 (37:50.19)
So yeah, so yeah, and the cost is, you know, doesn't have to be super high. And you know, you might just might just take a little bit of looking and such. But I think you've made some great points here, Rick. And I think the idea of just simply considering the track as a place to go, even with no instruction, in most cases, you have to get some. And we can talk about that, too. But I think I think this is this is great, Rick. I think we've we've we've touched on the subject nicely.

Yeah, that sounds good. Well, we could keep going, but let's just leave that as our first installment of the series. Why do we want to go to the racetrack? And it's because we want to learn, we want to get better, and we want a safe place. I mean, those are the three big things, essentially. What's another big thing? I mean, it's just a great place to go.

Yeah, I know just in what you're saying, you why, you know, you want to learn? What do want to learn? You want to save place? Great. Yes. B, you want to be able to basically, you know, one of my top coaches always used to comment about this because he did road ride and he said, look, I want more margin. I want some, I want some padding in, this game and, racetrack riders, you know, back when, you know, years ago, when I checked these statistics, it was racers at the time.

They're underrepresented in street riding accidents. They're just not in as many, you know? And I had a coach, it was an interesting story and I'll just, make this one brief.

Take your time, man. We got time. Angus, it's going to be what it is,

Speaker 2 (39:28.693)
He'd done just a little tiny bit of racing and he went off and did his first endurance race and it was a six hour race and he had two riding partners in Brandy Race. this is so far back. was back when the speed limit was 55. It was in the early eighties and he came back from that race and he'd gotten, you know, two solid hours on the bike for his two riding stints in the six hour race. He came back and he rode on the street and

The way he described it says, you know, Kobe before what would have been a tense situation or like, God, I've got to break or stop or dodge this dog or this pothole. you know, he said before the race compared to after the race, after the race, the exact same situation would have been like, okay, I'll miss that thing now. And he said his, because he'd had so much time to practice that,

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 2 (40:23.338)
It just stretched his skills nicely and comfortably further as a rider so that what was difficult, hard, panic before was no longer. And that's really, you know, this margin that you talk about. And I think that it's the potential of what the racetrack can offer. If a rider approaches going to the racetrack with, you know, kind of a good approach and a good mindset and a good preparation, then I think that racetrack riding can just be hugely advantageous.

Yeah. And something that's interesting or notable about your example there is that man, for whatever reason, knew that he could control his margin. So he came to you and said, I need more margin. To some people that's odd, but this guy knew that he could create margin out of this fixed attention span. Let's say that's still fixed hypothetically now, just for example. But to know that you

don't have enough margin than to ask somebody to help you create it is a unique student. And we're going to talk about that later on too, you know, but that's, that's odd for somebody to just know that you can create margins and come and ask for it. That's pretty.

Well, to make sure that I related that story correctly, he became aware of it after the fact. after he came back from that all that time on the racetrack, he came back and wrote on this treaty, was like, my God, the difference between before and after, know, what was a problem before is no longer.

Okay. Well, let's put it like this. Anyway, if people are listening, we're telling you that you can create margin for yourself. Now you can all be people that know that you can create margin. And if you don't know how, then you can either be one of those people that wants to go figure it all out yourself, like Kobe's saying, just go to the track. or you can speed it up, you know, and go find somebody that knows how to, create margin for you in the proper way.

Speaker 1 (42:25.51)
And you can go down that road. Yeah, but hey man, I've I've ridden on almost all of your west coast tracks with my electric scooter and I'm here to say that it has two wheels. It has brake. It has a throttle. It has a counter steers. Your cg, you know, your body position matters. All that stuff can be found on a on a ridiculous little electric scooter. So you can go out and explore on anything just like kobe's saying.

And, you know, we're just trying to help everybody understand that, you know, the world's your oyster. Now, you know, you can ask for and go have some fun.

And racetrack riding is crazy fun. It's exhilarating and fun and people will give up time with friends, family and home and push their credit cards just to make it happen. Cause it is, it's one of the levels of experience that most people rarely get to. And so that's probably why people keep going back.

yeah, like if you can't fly jets anymore, where you go? The racetrack?

We've had fighter pilots come and tell us that.

Speaker 1 (43:34.76)
I've seen many. I've met many of them, man. Yeah. So, all right. Well, hey, that was fun. That was good. So, we'll get another installment going whenever you have time. If this was okay, we'll do another one. Okay. So, we're going to do it. We're going to do another one. That's great news. Thanks, Coby. Thanks for having me, We'll talk to you soon. Thanks, man. Bye, everyone. Hey, everyone. I hope you really enjoyed that chat with Coby and Rick. If you really enjoy this kind of content, please

I'm good, look forward.

Speaker 1 (44:03.768)
help us out little bit by liking, subscribing if you're on YouTube. And if you're on Spotify or iTunes or your favorite podcast platform, it'd be really helpful if you could submit a rating and even better a review so we can get this content out there. Like I've said before, this is not our day job. and I both have day jobs that we enjoy. We just really enjoy meeting interesting people in the sport and passing that information on to others. And we've been lucky enough to have met really interesting people in this sport over the years. So if you like the content, you think it's useful, yeah.

Just write a review, give us a rating, whatever, that would be awesome, it really help us. So thanks a lot and have a great day and ride safe and all of that fun stuff.