It’s nearly a decade since BJ last buckled down, sat up straight, stopped fidgeting and paid attention. So it was time to go back to school… of the California variety.

WORDS: BENJAMIN J KUBAS CRONIN PICS: CSS

CALIFORNIA SUPERBIKE SCHOOL

‘Ifyou end up here, you’re bolloxed.’

As I was pulling into Silverstone’s hallowed facilities, following a fun but ridiculously early ride cross-country from Bath, the march of time hit me hard. Nearly 10 years since I last did California Superbike School’s Level One? But it feels like it was both last week, and also in a different life altogether!

When myself and Andrew Saunders attended the school way back when, we did two levels at a time in two separate hits. Both of us really took to it, and it brought on our riding beautifully on both road and track. For me, I learned to go as fast with less than half the effort and, crucially, a lot less machine lean through corners. While it did my pictures for the magazine zero favours, I was so much more comfortable and by proxy (given that I suddenly had a lot of riding leeway), I ended up becoming markedly quicker.

And to this day some of the things I learned have stuck with me, mostly from Level Two’s superb vision-based exercises. But the rest? Well that faded away in the intervening years, old habits inevitably crept back in and the wealth of confidence gained long ago, while not completely spent, could do with a top-up.

Which is why I find myself signing on for CSS on an early, overcast but warm August morning. I’m curious to see how the school has evolved, too, especially now old Fast Bikes boy and former CSS point man Andy Ibbott has moved on. Aside from chatting with the guys about their regular column for CSS founder Keith Code, the last contact I’d had was with Andy ‘Spidey’ Peck, who had given me an incredible piece of visual advice for tackling the final double-turn on Silverstone’s GP circuit a few months back. It worked, and worked so well it made my mind up to come and do this all over again.