6AA2406 Alps Riding Academy
10 Aug 2024
Brenden and Jay special Tour.
Lets look back about 30 years.
Two young motorcycle racers with different ideas of the perfect line, well, "meet" in the middle of a curve on a racetrack in America. One could alternatively call it a close call or a racing incident. Anyway, no one crashed. They somehow managed to stay upright. After the race they met in the paddock, slightly worried what the other one would say or do. What could have ended in hostility caused laughter on both sides and started a lifelong friendship.
Now anno domini 2024 living in different parts of the world as airline pilot respectively manager of a global player group and decades of not much motorcycling they decided to do it again. Not racing but riding to enjoy the beauty of the planet and to meet more often. They agreed on a restart in the Italian part of the Alps. While racing on race tracks clearly teaches you to handle a motorcycle at serious speeds it does not necessarily teach you everything about super tight tornanti (Italien for hairpin turns) at walking speed or what to do with the big green public 12 meter bus travelling towards Bolzano while you are leaving Bozen (which is the same place just in the versions of the two local languages) on that single lane road.
So they took a conscientious approach as serious racers (and people in highly responsible job positions) do to prepare for the tasks ahead. The Edelweiss Alps Riding Academy seemed like a good idea and here we go.
During the Monday morning theory session we discussed the similarities and differences of track versus road and empirically confirmed it in the afternoon at Bozen Safety Park and its nice little racetrack.
As to nobody's surprise, there wasn't much training needed: just picked the right tools out of the tool box of riding techniques and fun mode was on. At the final arrival in our base hotel there were big smiles and a new problem: which tour to pic next? which one maybe our wifes would like to come along? Question after question!