Doing Wheelies

In a vain effort to remedy the situation where my friends are starting to call me names like boring, settled, and overall rather linear; I attended a wheelie class this weekend. If that sounds odd, well it is. I don't think there are that many such schools in existence.

It was a one day, 8-hour class and let me tell you, by the end of the day I could have not been more tired.



The instructors definitely knew what they were doing. The bikes were outfitted with a dual-stage limiter. It had settings 1-5 each at a progressively higher angle. Once the limiter was hit, the center cylinder (of the 3 cylinder speed triple) was turned off. So you rose up, hit the limiter, and then the engine lost 1/3rd power usually sending you back down.

After that at level "6" another limiter engaged that hit the back brake. The bar you see on the back (btw, that pic is of Simon my classmate as it was sort of hard getting a pic of myself whilst wheelie-ing and all) is not a hard stop bar, its merely there to engage both limiters.

I flipped a dirtbike a few years back screwing around which always instilled a good deal of respect in me for wheelies. Now the limiter was there to not let me do it again. By the end of the day I was at level 5 with pretty consistent wheelies. I really did go from nothing to finding the balance point in one very tiring day (I can't believe how sore I am today).

If you think this all sounds dangerous, well it can be. While I was standing by the side of the run, one of the students came out of a wheelie and in the process of trying to stop, locked the front brake and washed the front tire. He and the bike hit the ground doing about 50mph. The bike went skidding on its side right off the cement into a field like a hockey puck. The rider tumbled awhile and came to rest with (luckily) just a broken wrist (we were all wearing head-to-toe leather armor plus helmet).

That was an unfortunate cap to the day. Although I do get to add wheelies to my ever-increasing list of possibly interesting but mostly useless skills. :)