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| BMW Enduro Training in Hechlingen (Germany) |  | BMW Enduro Training in Hechlingen (Germany)
Paolo Volpara © OMM 1999
Standing Up for Doktor Schalber! The reputation of Richard Shalber as Master of the Enduro did not need further exploration: an impressive list of victories and placements in Enduro and Cross Events, a fifth place in the 1988 Paris-Dakar, team leader of the return to victory of BMW in 1999 African marathon. His course is the Academy of Enduro on big four stroke bikes.
The course being in Germany, it felt on our friend Selim to organize the event: and organize he did. With his usual Teutonic efficiency and precision we arrived in Hechlingen without stress, on time and with style. Flying from Istanbul to Munich, driving a Volvo station wagon for two hours to the Forellenhof Gasthof, Murad, Cemil, Selim and I arrived just in time for dinner and drinks.
The manicured landscape surrounding the village of Echinglen was not soothing enough to dispel the tension of the challenge ahead: all my partners never placed a wheel on dirt road before (if you exclude the bad roads of Turkey) and for myself I never took a beast as the BMWR100GS for a ride in the mud. We went to sleep with vision of mountain to climb, deserts to cross, river to ford and bikes to crush.
For an enduro rider the BMW Park in Hechlingen is the replica on hearth of the paradise waiting on the other life of motorcyclists. Three big, natural amphitheaters surrounded by steep wall signed by trails leading to top paths. Rocks, sand, wet spots, bumps, natural and artificial obstacles just designed for constant testing of riding skills.
Two big hangars accommodate the Bikes and the lesson room (with coffee and drinks). From this last hangar our adventure began on the morning of August Friday 13 (please note the lucky date!). A short but comprehensive briefing on what to expect, a division of participants into three groups and a signature for the disclaim of responsibilities. The atmosphere is happy but tense with each of the 20/25 participants looking around to get reassuring clues. The disclaimer we signed is not exactly a tranquilizer:
"The signatory is aware that: He/she rides the motorcycle at his/her own risk, even if he/she follows the tour guide's/instructor's directives and that he/she must be satisfied that any overtaking maneuvers can be carried out safely, Motorcycle riding off and on the road requires a good physical condition and motorcycle riding experience. Riding a motorcycle off and on the road can be dangerous and there is always a possibility that one may fall or injure oneself.
He/she need not ride any passages that he/she feels to be too difficult, but can ask the tour guide or instructor to ride the bike across the difficult passage in question or, by agreement with the tour guide, take another less difficult route."
Good for us, I think, that Selim took full insurance for all group…now let see if we are in good physical conditions and if we have any motorcycling riding experience.
The totality of raiders are German and German is the official language of the course: here again (and for the entire trip) the Selim comes to help with punctual translation. We are introduced as "Riders from Turkey" receiving the first (not the last) set of applause.
Now we get dressed with all the paraphernalia of off-roading protections and we meet our bikes: BMW R1100GS or F650 in top conditions (mine had 2.000 Km. on the clock) and on standard preparation. For the GS the only modification are: removal of rear mirrors, Touratech hard part frontal, reinforcement of the swing arm points (done in house without using Touratech parts), plastic tank.
The first pleasant surprise is that our Instructor is Richard himself: two riders are added to the group and the six of us we will have his dedicated attention for the next three days. What follows is a brief description of the program written from my personal notes taken at the end of each day: many exercises and a lot of off-road riding is not reflected here.
Day One: "Gentlemen on your bikes…start the engines" You would expect an off-road biking course to start with this worlds and in Hechlingen you would be surprised.
You start by learning how to handle the bike while standing aside, mowing around the bike, changing position and trying to hold the GS "a-la-Richard": one finger gently pressed on the top of the windscreen (noting else and…no stand). This exercise provides a good feeling of the bike balance, weight, and movement while delivering to the rider a good level of confidence. If you are still not confident than…put down the bike, trash it on the floor and learn how to lift a GS all by yourself: with the many falls waiting ahead this is a lesson to learn extremely well. Nobody will be there to help you when agonizing under the too many kilos of your bike.
Standing on the side of the bike you then start the engine, you engage the first gear and take the beast for a stroll. You literally walk with the bike on your side while slaloming between cones or circling around: you are requested to control the speed by a right combination of throttle, front brake, clutch and to reduce the strain on your arms by balancing correctly the bike. Incredible what you learn from a simple stroll with your favorite lady!
Time to get on the bike for what Richard calls "gymnastic on wheels".
This hour of exercise is conducted with the Instructor in front, the bikers in line after him circling around rough surfaces and completing at any circle a set of 20 cones slalom: standing on the foot pegs with the bike in first gear you start by lifting the left arm from the handlebar getting a good feeling of throttle control.
Around you go with the bike bolting at the beginning (if you loose balance on the back the vehicle jump ahead, if you lean forward the throttle close) smoothing down toward the end: it is matter of finesse, of placing little pressure on the arm, of turning by shifting weight on the pegs.
The fact that you are tailing on rocks, gravel, mud becomes less important. Next two hands but…one leg: alternatively you place one leg under you on the seat and you keep going. Still moving you place both legs first on the right and then on the left foot peg, finally both legs on your knees on the seat. This concludes the first set of exercises: please note than you stay on each position for about five minutes continuously circling around and following the bike and the movements of the Instructor.
"Gymnastic on Bike" is great for learning balance and throttle control, disconcerting at the beginning when repeated (on the third day) it becomes quite pleasant and relaxing. This is a set of movement I plan to repeat on regular basis to keep my (old) body in bike-shape.
A gentle tour of the Park follows: you can see quite demanding climbs / drops and you cannot stop wandering whether you will be asked to take your bike there. It is time to learn the basic position you will keep for all the duration of the course: standing on the foot-pegs with knees locked, shoulders relaxed and parallel to the terrain, body at the center of the bike. This standing provides good visibility ahead, it leaves the bike free of moving under you, it allows for amortization of jumps and hits, and it guarantees good balance while steering the vehicle. You also learn to shift the body weight from one peg to the other while cornering: the explanation of the technique is simple but the execution requires long practice. You have to place the body weight on the foot peg on the side of the turn you want to take by bending the knee placed on the outside of the corner.
Professor Richard can turn with this technique a GS at 180 degrees just by skidding the rear tire. For the mortal of us it was a joy, at the end of the three days to receive a moderate skid on the rear. Practice…practice… more practice, (and possibly a rented bike!)
Once captured the basic of "standing position" is just matter to put it in action with a long set of slalom, squares and figures of "Eight". In this way the morning comes to end and we move (on bike… on asphalt… two hands and two feet on standard position… comfortable on the seat… what a relief!) to the local restaurant for lunch. The afternoon session opens with a ride around the park including some climbs and descents: we are always on first gear, always standing on the bike… learning a new way to move around the beast: this is a good warm up and the teaching starts setting into the practice.
Time for more demanding obstacles: the designer of the Park obviously was not satisfied with the roughness of the terrain: in his perverse wisdom, he also created artificial obstacles and these are the one we are tackling now.
The fist is an undulated section of undulated metal: take several sheets of the corrugated metal normally used for roof on sheds, arrange them on the terrain in waves, moving up and down, sprinkle the surface with loose gravel, some mud and dust, line up six bikers and ask them to move standing along this path. Receipt for disaster?
Just simple exercise for throttle and bike control. The real test comes when Richard lifts the left hand form the handlebar and requires passing the obstacle single-handed. The bikes are unstable, the terrain rocks the vehicle and the undulations move your body front and back. Unless you keep the position well balanced at the center of the bike any up and down translates into a movement of your right wrist on the throttle: this is the real receipt for disaster with the bike jerking and sliding under you.
The next artificial obstacle was a personal nightmare: I always feared deep rails in the forest, when your wheel get trapped between two close walls: now picture a ten meters with two logs running parallel separated by the rights distance to accommodate the wheel of the bike. Got it? I did not and the first attempt ended with a fast separation from the falling bike. Enter Professor Richard: the trick, he says, is to look ahead…at the exit of the obstacle. In this way the body keeps the right position, the head is up looking forward, the bike moves in straight line. By just applying the instruction what seamed impossible becomes feasible and then "normal". (We got pretty confident in crossing this obstacle until day three when Richard suggested to pass it holding the bike with only the right hand… personally I had three attempts with three painful failures).
We move then to an artificial "bump" in the middle of the field, what a cross rider will see as a perfect trampoline for jumping. Richard uses it to teach the right approach to a climb: when to open the throttle and when to close it. We are requested to cross the bump accelerating when the front wheel touches the climbing angle and closing the throttle before the same wheel reach the top. The spectacular side of this lesson is Richard showing "what-not-to-do".
"If you approach the climb too fast and your do not accelerate at the right time this is what's going to happen" Richard GS shoots on the air and lands on two wheels 10 meters after the bump… " If you forget to close the gas at the end of the climb this is what's going to happen" and this time the GS jumps even higher with Richard landing perfectly on the back wheel.
Just looking at the "mistakes" all of us realizes that transgressions are more appealing than rules. Still, for the mortal of us, is time to learn the rules first on single bump, than on double bump and finally on a series of bumps.
When the lesson is well honed into our beginner's brain it is time to put the "theory" to practice and off we go to experiment some minors climbs and downs. The length and the incline of these obstacles gradually increase until some of the so feared trails becomes "normal road" The day is over and it is time for rest.
While the bike are returned to the hangar, we spend the remaining of the late afternoon exploring the natural beauties of the area: going back to infancy we rented a "pedaling boat" and spent one good hour on the lake drinking beer, watching ducks and boasting about our performances. Dinner is a serious affair in a village near by. Good night.
For the second day, the scene and the protagonists change. We are divided in two groups and taken to a military camp: it is home of a thanks division and the school gets free use of the land in exchange of training for the soldiers. The novelty of the day is that we are on asphalt and we are doing calisthenics in full off-road uniform.
The teachers believe that a good warm up of the muscles followed by a session of stretching is indispensable for safe off road riding. This proves to be true and we suggest inserting a few minutes of exercises in your "preparation routine" before starting a ride.
The exercises of the day cover counter-steering, cornering and braking. The way counter-steering is passed to the students is quite interesting: after a brief explanation (push on right bar to go right and vice-versa) and time for individual experiments, two cones are set as entry gate. Perpendicular the two cones at a distance of about three meters the teacher sets a cone line two meters wide. The rider has to approach the gate at moderate speed (30 km/h), enter the gate and than counter-steer to avoid the cone barrier. It is relatively easy when you are the one who decides if steering left or right: more difficult when the teacher faces your approach and, at the moment your bike crosses the gate, indicates on which direction you should steer. A fellow student approaching the obstacle too fast and obliged to change direction at the last minute generated a fantastic accident skidding a good F 650 for quite long distance.
This accident (and others involving our group) shows a unique face of this school: the school let you test your own limits without worries for the bikes. If you do not feel like you can "refuse the obstacle" but if you want to go for it, nobody will complain if the bike is damaged. The skilled mechanic of the school is always at hand to bring the beast back to operating standard.
Diminishing circles and figures of "eight" are used to explain the different cornering techniques: hanging (knees down), pushing (bike down), on line (body in line with the inclination of the bike). It is always surprising to discover that (outside of circuits) the hanging technique does not produce always fastest corner. It is also good to learn the "pushing" methods coming quite useful in cornering maneuvers at low speed or on loose surfaces.
Emergency braking concludes the morning: the GS have to disengage the ABS and then you learn how to lock the back wheel under control: not as difficult especially for the OMM members present at Mick Wheeler course.
More interesting is the request to lock the front wheel to get the feeling and learn control: to do this you must keep the throttle slightly open while operating the front brake.
After the first moment of disconcerts one can hold the skid for few meters without crashing.
Full emergency braking without ABS (full back, clutch, hard front brake) is than practiced a different speed (50 and 70 km/h) to show the substantial increasing space required by a marginally faster approach.
The afternoon is fun and unfortunately, we do not have pictures of the splendid course trough the forest: this is the track used by the thanks for exercises and one stretch will always stay in our memories.
A two meter wide and 300 meter long track gently undulating up and down: in the "down" portion big pools of water sometime at seat level. All bikes performed very well in such demanding conditions: riders had several encounters with father mud and mother water.
The skills learned in the previous hours now come to fruition and everybody in our group enter the off-road mood. Roads that just two days before we would have avoided or ridden with difficulty now look easy and pleasant. The moral is high and the Turkish eyes are smiling.
The evening is again biker’s time: Richard and the team use videocassettes to present the activities of the Company. All levels of competence in off-road riding are taken into consideration; Richard's Company organizes off road tours in Spain and Italy, the Transdanubia Ride and the Paris-Dakar.
The third and last day opens with gymnastic and two good hours of riding around Hechlingen area in a mixture of paved and unpaved road: Richard leads and lessons are placed into practice.
Back to the Park additional time for teaching: stopping the bike in the middle of a climb, reversing the bike down a slope, changing direction during a descent, using front brake.
Now we move along the entire circuit of the Park and we try increasingly demanding passages.
A steep, narrow and loose gravel climb is baptized in honor of Murad while the sandpit takes the best of my strength (I also managed to break an ankle in the last few minutes of the last sand exercise). We repeat most of the exercises we learned on the first day and now everything seems to flow much easier.
It is time to close, get the Certificates, say good-by to our Instructors and Friends.
Everyone owning a big trial bike or everyone interested in improving road and off-road biking skill must place this course at the top of priorities. Just contact:
Munchner Freiheit GmbH
Hausanschrift,
Feilitzschst. 1, 80802 Munchen
Postanschrift
Postfach 44 01 48, 80750 Munchen
Telephon: (089) 395768 Fax: (089) 344832
E Mail: 100604.2140@compuserve.com
| Last Updated 2008-08-16 23:07
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