I rode a 2 day Dirtwise School Friday and Saturday and had a good experience. The first day you spend a lot of time doing field drills of fundamental skills and are only in the woods loops to warm up. You're kind of wondering what it's all about and if you're really learning something. The second day you spend more time in the woods applying your "Fundamentals" and it starts to make more sense. One shortcoming was Shane was the only instructor for 20 riders. He actually gave everyone a good amount of attention, but the drills were pretty unstructured with 20 riders fighting for space in some of them. This leads into my example.... We learned how to do stoppies or nose wheelies. I always thought this was a fairly useless dirt bike parlor trick, it does teach excellent front brake control though. Back to drill chaos.... We were doing hillclimbs on two sides of a gully. One being advanced and one more basic. I was on the downhill return from the one hillclimb and a rider from the other loop strayed onto the trail going backwards. I only avoided a collision, by pulling off the trail and doing a controlled stoppie in front of a tree. Because I'd drilled it so much, I was really comfortable with the feeling of doing a well balanced stoppie. Two days before, I would have hit the tree and crashed out, if not hit the other rider. A little more organization might have kept the rider from straying the wrong way, but my new skill saved our butts. I still suck, but this school will make me a better rider in the long run. Not cheap at $350 for 2 days, but money well spent. Thanks to my wife and daughter, as this was Father's Day/Birthday present combined. I will forever hear Shane in my head saying.... "A little more gas Norm.... Stop riding that thing like an autoclutch Grandpa in a car park!" with the universal more throttle hand motion!
norm,I got the chance to do his school in CT this year,and had a blast,learned alot of things you just dont think about while riding,shane is one of the smartest guys you will talk to about a bike and what its going to do,his bike is like a part of his body,and just an incredible rider as well
Sounds like you had fun and learned! And there probably were not a bunch of ktm video ads like on the Shane Watts dvd that I bought. They found the perfect gift for you.
Think yourself lucky! I had that DVD on order from the UK importer for a month, only to find that his web site shouldn't have been taking orders because he has no stock and can't get any more from Shane for a while for some reason, but it accepted my order and didn't forward it on to him so it just went down a black hole. Once I chased him I got an immediate refund which makes me more inclined to believe what he said, but he reckons the DVD won't be in stock for another few months so I may be ordering one direct from the US if possible and paying yet more shipping/handling/import duty/sales tax etc. to the middle men. Sigh.
You must have gotten his first video "Dirtwise". Yeah there was a lot of shameless adverts throughout. I just completed one of his classes last weekend up here in Washington state, and picked up the "Advanced Techniques Vol. 1" DVD. There were some sponsor plugs, but not the stupid adverts like in "Dirtwise". I would recommend this video, and I am looking forward to purchasing volumes 2, 3 and 4 when they are back in stock on his site.
I'd agree with all of that. Shane also looked a lot more relaxed talking in front of the camera in AT1 than in Dirtwise which meant he could do most of it himself and I thought that worked better as he obviously knows his stuff. Is it just a case of Advanced Techniques vol 2 onwards being out of stock? I've not looked at the site before so I didn't know whether they'd ever been available or perhaps hadn't actually been filmed yet. Do you have any idea when they will be available? After my failed attempt to buy Dirtwise and Advanced Techniques 1 through the UK distributor I ordered them and "Common Ground" direct from his US web site and 6 days later they dropped on the doormat with no import duty or sales tax to pay. Got a few things I need to try now after watching them ("grinding" for one :ride.
