[Land-speed] Driving skills

[john robinson]

Howdy,
         Speaking from personal experience, riding a motorcycle should be 
easy especially after riding one for 20 years, but try taking an 
experienced rider course for street or one for the race track and find out 
just what you have been doing wrong all those years, and being humbled by 
your lack of skills in the riding portion of the test ..... I agree with 
several of the other people on this list, take as much training as you can 
get for driving a car or a bike.  I've taken the experienced rider course 
for street riding 3 times in the last 5 years,and the track time course 
once down at the Blackhawk race track and each time I've learned something 
new (no, I did not forget and relearn)  and learned not just from the 
training course, but also from the riders who were taking the course having 
a different perspective and experience than the teacher or the course 
material.... everybody gets set in their ways, we all have a route we drive 
daily and repetition causes us to slack off, and most of us have been 
driving for 30+ years... the EAA suggests that a pilot other than the 
builder fly a newly built experimental airplane for the first time, due to 
the amateur builder having not practiced the skills needed to fly an 
airplane during his build time. And the vehicles we drive on the Salt are 
all experimental... and we should be trained in skills that we need for 
driving. (I did not say required, only should) Escaping from a vehicle in 
an allotted time should be on both the builders and drivers mind, and the 
driver should have much needed practice getting out. An example of 
practice, as a skydiver, we try to practice the jump maneuvers three times 
correctly before we make a jump, muscle memory comes into play here, and if 
you do it wrong once and practice correctly only once or even twice before 
the jump, we find you will forget a maneuver, and blow the jump.

           John Robinson, Mechanician
   Mechanical Engineering University of Wisconsin
                 1513 University Ave.
                  Madison, Wi. 53706
                     608-262-3606
            Current World Land Speed Record Holder
                  Bonneville Salt Flats
                      H/GCC 92 cu.in. 1980 Dodge Colt
                  144.396 MPH set 2000
         Antarctic Ice Driller 2002-03
         Greenland Ice Driller 2006