Mud and bikes just go together at school

AARON HARRIS/TORONTO STAR

Unidentified riders make their way around a track in May at the Horseshoe Resort Riding Adventures.

Mark Richardson

WHEELS EDITOR

BARRIE—This is a dirty day to be outside. There’s rain lashing everything in the cool wind and mud sticking to everyone’s boots. There’s mud in the air, too, as it gets picked up by spinning tires as another group of Yamahas heads off into the bush.

A dirty day indeed, but none of the young riders here is asking for his money back.

“There aren’t too many kids who don’t like dirt bikes,” says Clinton Smout. “If there are any, they’re definitely not here.”

Smout should know: in just the last decade, his school has taught tens of thousands of young people how to ride dirt bikes safely, as well as thousands more parents and curious adults.

Visitors to the Toronto Motorcycle Show each December know him as the organizer of the Yamaha Riding Academy, where children dress up in all the blue protective gear and buzz around hay bales in a chilly loading dock; it’s here, though, in the mud and the wind, where he’s most at home.

This is a side area far from the main buildings of Horseshoe Resort, 20 minutes north of Barrie, where you can ride the trails hard for two days and never cover the same ground. There are about 30 people up for the day to ride dirt bikes — some experienced, some total beginners, most of them children and teenagers.

Everybody starts with a basic orientation, clustered around Smout who demonstrates the basic techniques of trail riding.

• “Always look ahead at where you’re going, not where you are,” he tells them, and the older ones nod. This works in the car on the highway, as well.

• Sit up at the front of the saddle to bring your weight toward the front and improve your traction. And get your elbows up in the air for improved steering.

• Ride with just your toes on the footpegs, not your flat foot. This prevents you from pressing on the rear brake pedal accidently, as well as providing a little more flexibility.

• Don’t even think of touching the front brake for at least the first half-hour of training; use the rear brake aggressively. On asphalt, the front brake is the most powerful and often all you’ll use. But on the dirt, your braking front wheel will slip easily and throw you from the machine, while a skidding rear wheel can be simple to control.

“Learn to ride a dirt bike well and you’ll be a better street rider for it, too, as well as a better car driver,” says Smout.

“We had a guy here who later went across Canada on his cruiser and his chain locked up. His rear wheel seized, but he told us that he just rode out the skid and it was no big deal. But if he hadn’t learned here first how to control a skid, it might have been very different for him.”

Of course, this is all lost on the kids, who just want to start riding. The instructors know this and break everyone off into groups of similar experience. My own 10-year-old son is among them; he’s in the group that has only ever ridden bicycles — except for those excursions around the hay bales at the bike show.

It took half-an-hour this morning to get all the waivers signed and dress up in all the kit. The school provides everything that’s needed to ride: a Yamaha dirt bike (the smallest with no clutch and 50 cc, right up to a powerful WR250 that only the most-qualified, and tallest, people can handle); all the clothing, including plastic breastplates and bedecaled pants; and the trail system of Simcoe County Forest that borders the resort’s own property.

This doesn’t come cheap. A two-hour children’s lesson is $99, while a full day ranges from $225 for kids on PW50s to $309 for adults on the WR250s. There’s insurance, too, which is recommended, though it covers damage to the equipment and not injury.

Smout says that in the 15 years he’s been teaching up here, he’s only ever called six times for an ambulance, and the worst injury was a broken bone. “And I’ve never called an ambulance for a female, and never for anyone under 18. Read into that what you will.”

My son’s group practises for an hour or so in the former gravel pit. Their instructor, Amanda, lets them discover the finer points of braking and throttle control and riding over rocks and logs, and then she leads them off in single file into the bush. I’m offered a Rhino 4x4 to follow them with the Star photographer.

It takes us a while to find the key, however, and by the time we get going the little serpentine of six motorcycles has disappeared in the labyrinth of trails. We take left forks and right forks, climbing slopes and diving down hills with our umbrellas raised in a futile gesture against the elements.

These are all familiar to Smout, who was born just three kilometers from here and bought his first dirt bike at age 8 with money he earned selling salamanders from the local creek at 25 cents each. But they’re unfamiliar to us. We spot several other groups and consider turning back until finally finding Amanda and her charges at a small figure-8 track in a clearing.

My son and his new friends, the youngest being six and hardly able to touch the ground on the bike, the eldest not yet in his teens, are zipping around the track with complete confidence, despite most of them slipping over at some point into the puddles and sticky goo. We’re cold and soaked in the Rhino; they’ve not even noticed it’s raining.

I remember what Smout told me in the shelter of the changing room: “When kids grow up in the dirt, they don’t have any interest in video games. They discover the real world, and they all find they prefer it.”

mrichardson@thestar.ca

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