They say you can't teach style, but the Cali boys did!
The quest to eke more speed from my aging, injury ravaged body and ever more reluctantly enthusiastic brain found me making the trip up to Cadwell Park, a venue that more than appreciates the faster things in life. Away from its Silverstone activities, the California Superbike School (CSS) was hosting two days of intensive learning, something that I have decided to embrace over the course of this year. Screw you, Alice Cooper and your crazy sentiments, school's in for the summer!
I'd tried to make this trip last year, but an interface with a car on the way up put pay to me establishing new levels of speed after my schooling. Yes, I've done all four levels of the school (get me), but was keen for a brush up of the fundamentals and to experience CSS in the verdant surroundings on the Lincolnshire track. I like the place, and I even set pole position here in a Trackday Trophy race a few years back (a championship that's, er, one down from BSB), but I knew I could uncover lost seconds round the track with the help of some instruction. Of course, a trackday would no doubt reacquaint me with the track and probably enable me to go a bit quicker, but I'm acutely aware that after nearly 15 years of track riding practice makes permanent, not perfect. I was hoping that after my day with CSS I could return to a base setting of riding, much like racers return to their favourite settings on a bike if ever they get a bit lost. There was half a notion to do an endurance race with the Dangerous Brothers, Bruce and Brod, so a bit of track familiarisation wasn't going to hurt either.