Me, on the Road King, on the New York Safety Track.
This is the course.
I highly recommend this class to anyone wanting to learn to ride faster and harder, without the drama speed of a true track day.
In a nut shell, it's a small class of less than 25 students, broken into two groups. You ride the track single file with on passing except on the straight aways. Makes for calmness and serenity, so you can focus on your own riding.
Each group is brought in from the track for a small ~15 minute lesson on something, then back out onto the track to work on that particular skill set. About every 45 minutes you're flagged in for a new small lesson. So basically, you're on the track, riding as hard and as fast as you are comfortable with. Since the class is small, there really is quite a bit of room between riders. So you can indeed corner about as hard and as fast as you wish.
On the track itself are riding coaches. They have the nifty safety green belts and harnesses so you can identify them. Their job is to follow you for a bit, then pass you in a straight away and get in front so you can observe them. They will demonstrate what they see you needing to work on. Then did a great job of making it clear through exaggeration what they wanted you to do. They would also talk to you during a pit stop. For me, the big thing was to move my body enough on the bike. It felt like I was hanging off like a monkey, but as the pictures clearly show, I wasn't movign all that much. That said, most of these pictures seem to have been taken early on in the day. I was moving over a lot better later on. At least that's what they said.
There was some drama, namely two crashes. I wasn't one of them! A BMW rider lost it in the deceptively tricky turn 3&4 and went tumbling. A coach got to horsing around in the wet afternoon and low sided in turn 12 (think it was 12). Both bikes were out, and the BMW rider suffered a little rash, but no real injuries.
I did not embarrass myself. Never went off course or off track, never crashed. Nor did I apparently do anything stupid and cause others any serious problems. Happily, I was not the slowest person on the track either. By no means was I the fastest either.
I got what I wanted. More practice and a lot more comfort at throwing that bike far harder into turns far faster than I'd been doing. Nope, never masters drifting it, never slid anywhere. Only threw sparks once that I know of. But I think I'm a lot more comfortable at pushing harder in fast turns than I've ever been.
All in all, a very worthwhile class, and one I'd recommend to anyone looking to ride better at higher speeds. By no means is this a Motorcycle Safety Foundation course. Though interestingly, I did get a discount from my insurance for having completed the course. Huckleberry, thank you very much for turning me onto this course.