From the Couch to My First Flat Track Race, Part 1

From the Couch to My First Flat Track Race, Part 1

As I sit here sore, tired, achy and in general pain while writing this, I think back over my weekend. I know tomorrow will be worse, as today I’m still moving on the adrenaline of my 700-mile return trip.

By the last main race, I could feel the exhaustion beginning to consume me. I was succumbing to the pain that caused my early exit from the lead position.

I entered in two races, meaning I had three practice sessions: two heat races and two mains. All of this was after 12 hours of flat track instruction the previous day. In that short amount of time, I packed my head with information and techniques, like learning how to crash...many times.

The morning of the race, however, I hid my pain in order to simply make the starting grid. I was determined. I still am. The moment I left that race, I wanted so badly to line back up and race again. I still do. As I write this, I’m jumping back and forth between my Word document and the open tab to Craigslist, searching for keywords like “small dirt bike,” “race,” and “flat track”.

This is my two-day journey from the couch to my first flat track race.

[To back up a bit here, this story is being published many months after the schooling. I had actually attended this the day before the Hell on Wheels race at Perris Speedway. Read that story here: https://rideapart.com/articles/first-flat-track-race-hell-on-wheels-racing.]

Couch to the Track, Day 1:

The idea was simple. I had lazed around on my couch and in my lonely garage for long enough. It was time to finally get onto a dirt track, something I dreamt of for a long time. I grew up auto racing, running in a small division of NASCAR, but I was forbidden from racing motorcycles due to a family tragedy.

One morning, Brian Bartlow called me after his email went unanswered for a few days. I told him my idea of following a journey to my first flat track race. I could feel his excitement through the phone as he told me about his program.

READ MORE: The Best Dual-Sport Motorcycles | RideApart

You may recognize the name, but not from dirt. Bartlow started a track-bike rental program, known as Feel Like a Pro, renting Ninja 250/300s at local track days around Southern California. A former road racer, Bartlow originally began helping some friends work on their riding technique by lending out a couple Ninjas. It eventually evolved into the operation it is today.

It was the perfect plan. They were able to keep overhead low enough that even riders who had their own bikes couldn’t pass up the opportunity to thrash on someone else’s. He has since sold that program to his head mechanic and moved his family to Northern California, opening up Feel Like a Pro Dirt—a program targeted to teach dirt riding, along with a simultaneous track-bike rental program.

He offers a variety of different training sessions from half days to half-week long training for pros. Bartlow occasionally schedules one-day Saturday classes the day before a local Sunday race. He convinced the local track/sanctioning body to offer a beginner’s class for 150cc and under that was targeted towards his bikes—show up, rent a bike from Brian, and compete. This, again, was a pretty sweet deal like his original Ninja program. A typical race would cost you a couple hundred bucks, including rental and track fees. So it was perfect: school Saturday morning, racing Sunday morning, and back to work on Monday. I was in.

Only problem was his class was two days away when he called me and I had planned to attend The Quail Motorcycle Gathering. Located in Monterey Bay, it was 5.5 hours (the boring way), but still another 5 hours south of Bartlow’s compound.

Well, I could spend a weekend looking at museum pieces while sipping champagne with my pinkie out and talking to millionaires about shit I’ll never own, or get filthy, sweaty, and sore during a weekend of dirt riding. Yeah...

I was to visit Greg Anthony at Treasure Island, which is made up of old Navy barracks and is located off the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. His plan was to leave the next morning for a cross country trip to North Carolina. I was to ride a KTM 1190 to his place then switch for his Triumph Speed Triple. This would make his return trip easier as the KTM belonged to KTM, which is located outside of LA so his drop-off would be smoother.

Remember Greg’s trip? Read here:
https://rideapart.com/articles/adventure-ride-sea-shining-sea
https://rideapart.com/articles/2015-ktm-1190-adventure-review

On Friday, I arrived much later than planned (naturally). After a Super Mission St. Burrito and riding around for hours looking for a late-night auto parts store that carried jumper cables to start Greg’s dead Triumph, I left the next morning with only a few hours of sleep.

Day 1

I jammed north up the 101 at 6 am after spending an hour getting the bike running. The 10-year-old Speed Triple was fitted with Viking Bags universal saddle bags, which housed a Napier tent, my camera gear and clothes along with my full Alpinestars ADV suit.

Up until this point I’d only ridden Hwy 1/Hwy 101 south of San Francisco, but I had heard the northern route was the best part. The highway jumped into a series of fast curves as it entered the South Cow mountain range. Bartlow’s town, Kelseyville, was on the other side of the mountains, making it hard to reach. I turned off the highway onto a small two-lane road that eventually went up and over the mountain with some of the best, most remote twisties I’d encountered. I hoped this was alluding to a fun weekend of riding.

Down a country road in Kelseyville is a white picket fence in the front yard of a blue house hidden behind a row of trees. Bartlow’s property was up the shared driveway behind that house. The trees opened up to a field a few acres in size. The main compound is a mowed grassy area with a large, ornate doublewide trailer and tall, steel pop-up garage building with a paved entrance, which was to be my home for the night.

Bartlow came screeching up on a little golf cart, exiting it with a smile that rivaled the size of his property. “Park over there and get yourself unloaded. There’s plenty of water over there too. I’ll be right with you.” I was the first to arrive.

East of the garage and house is a small standing shed against the border of trees that marks the property line to another empty field. On the other side of the shed was the track.

This was a complicated and technical track, which is made up of tight turns, switchbacks and long straights, all housed inside of a 1/8-mile oval, with scattered bails of hay and sprinklers throughout.

It was hard to tell when we first arrived, but this wasn’t the only track. In the next field on the far side, hidden inside 4-foot tall weeds, was a track made up of loose silt. Even further east, on the edge of the woods, was the adventure section. You entered that via a small wooden bridge over a dried-up creek bed. Then it was up a small jump and into the woods, where the track zig-zagged up steep hills and around piles of basketball-sized rocks.

Bartlow’s wife and two toddlers were inside the house making lunch for the day, along with the junior racer, his teenage son. Far removed from the world, with acres of riding area and a tight knit family, I envied Bartlow’s life.

The compound was like a dream.