• Hi everyone,

    As you all know, Coffee (Dean) passed away a couple of years ago. I am Dean's ex-wife's husband and happen to have spent my career in tech. Over the years, I occasionally helped Dean with various tech issues.

    When he passed, I worked with his kids to gather the necessary credentials to keep this site running. Since then (and for however long they worked with Coffee), Woodschick and Dirtdame have been maintaining the site and covering the costs. Without their hard work and financial support, CafeHusky would have been lost.

    Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working to migrate the site to a free cloud compute instance so that Woodschick and Dirtdame no longer have to fund it. At the same time, I’ve updated the site to a current version of XenForo (the discussion software it runs on). The previous version was outdated and no longer supported.

    Unfortunately, the new software version doesn’t support importing the old site’s styles, so for now, you’ll see the XenForo default style. This may change over time.

    Coffee didn’t document the work he did on the site, so I’ve been digging through the old setup to understand how everything was running. There may still be things I’ve missed. One known issue is that email functionality is not yet working on the new site, but I hope to resolve this over time.

    Thanks for your patience and support!

Shane Watt's Dirtwise Academy

ioneater

Husqvarna
AA Class
Was fortunate to be able to attend "school" last weekend at JR's track getting educated by Mr. Watts. Clutch! Brake(s)! Stand Up! Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap!

Anybody else here attended in the past? He sure makes it look easy and he doesn't beat around the bush! I needed it. Met some new faces and re-acquainted with some familiar ones.

Good stuff.. :thumbsup:
 
yup did it last year,havent met anyone who knows so much about what the bike is going to do and when its going to do it. guys a tough SOB,he limps around off the bike like an old man!
 
I did one last year and learned loads! Still hear Shane in my head..... "Throttle Norm, more throttle. Stop riding like a Grandpa in a car park!":busted:
 
Got passed like I was going backwards at a industry team race by him once, so yes, I have been schooled by Shane. :D
 
ioneater;121257 said:
Was fortunate to be able to attend "school" last weekend at JR's track getting educated by Mr. Watts. Clutch! Brake(s)! Stand Up! Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap!

Anybody else here attended in the past? He sure makes it look easy and he doesn't beat around the bush! I needed it. Met some new faces and re-acquainted with some familiar ones.

Good stuff.. :thumbsup:

Were you at the class where the Yamaha went out of control and hit the spectator, breaking his leg?




WoodsChick
 
There's a class in a couple of weeks which is about 2.5 hours away from me. I'd love to attend, but I don't have a trailer, and there doesn't seem to be anywhere to stay, locally, other than camping.

Too bad, as I've read a lot of good things about his schools.
 
AndrewS;121298 said:
There's a class in a couple of weeks which is about 2.5 hours away from me. I'd love to attend, but I don't have a trailer, and there doesn't seem to be anywhere to stay, locally, other than camping.

Too bad, as I've read a lot of good things about his schools.

Where?? And how much??? I need all the help I can get :busted:

P.S. I got a truck & trailer & tenting it ain't too bad :cheers:
 
Ruffus;121299 said:
Where?? And how much??? I need all the help I can get :busted:

P.S. I got a truck & trailer & tenting it ain't too bad :cheers:

It's in Pontypool on Sept. 25/26. (So I guess that's one week)

I think the cost is $360 for 2 days. I would expect that is in US$.

For more information: http://www.shanewatts.com/schools

They're currently indicating 5 spots remaining for that session.
 
Do it guys! He's good at teaching verbally then demonstrating exactly he was talking about. Goes through basic skills and shows how important they are to make you safer and faster!
 
AndrewS;121495 said:
When would you want to head up? I'd be happy to split the cost.

I'm on days this week, so anytime Friday after 4:30 works for me, but I go in on nights Sunday, so will have to be back by 7:00 PM Sunday
 
AndrewS;121298 said:
There's a class in a couple of weeks which is about 2.5 hours away from me. I'd love to attend, but I don't have a trailer, and there doesn't seem to be anywhere to stay, locally, other than camping.

Too bad, as I've read a lot of good things about his schools.

There are lots of accomodations in Peterborough, which is only 20min away and there are a few mom&pop motels on the 115 just to the southwest of the Ganny.
 
I took his two day Dirt Wise course and learned a lot about riding that I didn't know - and I thought I knew a lot already. Shane is an awesome rider and teacher. The money spent on training made me a better and faster rider than if I spent it on a new pipe. :D
 
If you get the chance; GO!

And if you can get your kid in; GO!

Andy did the Watts thing with a fairly large group - very good.

AndyandShane.jpg


He did the Jason Raines thing with a very small group, advanced youth - very, very good.

SmithsGang.jpg


The Raines thing was racer based, whole different ball of wax...
 
Slowpoke;121566 said:
There are lots of accomodations in Peterborough, which is only 20min away and there are a few mom&pop motels on the 115 just to the southwest of the Ganny.

Ahh, looking at google maps, I thought they were further.

So, we have some options! Thanks.
 
What an awesome course, I'd recommend it to anyone. On the way home I was thinking, if only I would have taken the course when I first bought my bike, I never would have broken my leg the way I did.

DirtWise graduating class of 2010 :D

cid_6D246AD9-7C1F-4758-9198-3367D4C0AF8A.jpg
:
 
It was awesome, indeed! Shane is a great teacher and I'd highly recommend this to anyone, regardless of your current ability. Well, perhaps not an absolute beginner, but anyone with at least basic riding experience.

Despite my attempting to impersonate 'George of the Jungle' a few times, my bike and I survived relatively unscathed. :D

On top of that, I had the pleasure of meeting Dan (Ruffus). We were two of the three Huskies at the class, the third being a 2010 TE250.
 
Back
Top