Review: Rich Oliver's Mystery School

Due to rain, the two-day Fun Camp was cut short to one day. I was bummed because the second day was supposed to be when the real fun was to start. But, we’re currently scheduling a make-up weekend.

I still feel compelled to write about the experience because it was just so much fun! In fact, I might say it was the most fun I’ve had on a motorcycle, ever.

What is it?

It’s basically a flat tracking school, but not specifically a flat tracking school. The venue is set at Rich Oliver’s residence in Auberry, CA, which is roughly 30 miles East of Fresno, just at the foot of the Sierras. His property is impressive and a motorcyclist’s dream as it is literally surrounded by various mini tracks used for all the different drills and races. The equipment is provided: a Yamaha TT-R125 outfitted with stiffer suspension, bigger rear wheel and a rear tire made for easy and predictable sliding.

Rich instructs the group (max. group size is 8 at any given school) starting out with the basics: how to operate the motorcycle, which is made to accustom each rider to its assigned machine for the weekend. He then goes over proper riding technique. While many may think that dirt riding might be contradictory to the way you have been riding your street bike, it really isn’t.

So, here’s the deal and why this school will benefit anyone who rides a motorcycle. The drills Rich put you through allow one to understand how a motorcycle works under extreme circumstances. You learn how a bike reacts when the rear starts to slide and do unpredictable things like falling; in turn, you learn how to make an unpredictable situation predictable, while having the most fun you will ever have.

It’s really quite a rhythmic experience as you begin to put all the fundamentals you learn the first half of the day together. The day moves very quickly and it should be noted that his school isn’t for everybody. It helps to go with a group that is equally skilled. Our group had four that have attended before (including Rich Oliver’s Pro School, which is a four-day camp that puts very experienced riders, usually racers, through rigorous and physically demanding drills), me, and two that had very little dirt experience. The two with no dirt experience struggled a bit but did their best and improvement was noted and would have been exponential the second day, according to Rich.

For whatever reason, I was able to pick it up pretty quickly, perhaps because of my limited dirt experience when I was a kid. At one point, I posted the best time for the Big Oval Time Trial at the end of the first day. There’s no feeling like going WOT deep into a dirt, lean the bike, dump down a gear, and feel the bike go into a controlled slide. Then, you go WOT again and power slide out of the turn and prepare for the next. Yes, there is a lot of crashing involved and in fact, I won the award for the nastiest crash of the day, a high-side that pitched me into the air not high enough to throw me over the bars, but onto the bars…about 1 cm away from the family jewels…weee!

I have to keep this short and sweet because we weren’t able to do the second day, which was supposed to be twice as hard and twice as fun. I was really looking forward to the 25 lap race at the end! Oh well, until next time.

For now, I leave you with this bitter-sweet taste of quite possibly the best thing you could do for your riding. No, I don’t expect to start backing in the 125 at the track, but I think this will help my overall riding. Okay, time to go buy a dirt bike now!

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