somebody do some man maths for me.

[leolion]

Has anyone given up on riding on the road and just gone to track day riding instead?
How expensive would once a month be on average? Having done a bit of car racing i know how those little things you never thought of can bit you on the ass!
Its just a little idea im formulating..

[Minty]

Go to track website of your choice, price up a track day.


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My fingers smell of your mum.

[MarJay]

Fuel, food, van running costs, cost of trackday etc.

For me one of the biggest costs is getting to the track, especially when it's somewhere like Cadwell Park which is pretty far away.

If you haven't already done a trackday I'm not sure why you'd want to do this... Do some trackdays, then work out the costs.
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British beauty: Triumph Street Triple R; Loony stroker: KR1S; Track fun: GSXR750 L1; Commuter Missile: GSX-S1000F
Remember kids, bikes aren't like lego. You can't easily take a part from one bike and then fit it to another.

[redeem ouzzer]

I’m planning to make my 400 pretty much track only next year (subject to sorting bodywork). I will say van hire is expensive, and if buying a van you best make sure you do plenty of track days or you are basically pissing money up the wall. Then do you want to go as far as tyre warmers and wets and all that shite? It’s not as expensive as racing but it’s not far off if you jump into it properly.
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Be a REAL MAN!

[Jewlio Rides Again LLB]

[MarJay]

[chickenstrip]

I think he should just play motorcycle video games - no risk!
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Chickenystripgeezer's Biking Life (Latest update 19/10/18) Belgium, France, Italy, Austria tour 2016 Picos de Europa, Pyrenees and French Alps tour 2017 Scotland Trip 1, now with BONUS FEATURE edit, 5/10/19, on page 2 Scotland Trip 2 Luxembourg, Black Forest, Switzerland, Vosges Trip 2017
THERE'S MILLIONS OF CHICKENSTRIPS OUT THERE!

[trevor saxe-coburg-gotha]

[chickenstrip]

[Teflon-Mike]

The man maths go like this:
Problem - 'hobby A' costs a lot but enthusiasm is gone, so its not worth the money.
Proposed Solution - 'hobby B' looks fun... also looks expensive... but then the money spent of Hobby A is mostly wasted anyway, so surely it cant be that bad?

Deliberation of the conundrum is pre-ordained to find in favour or Hobby B... whether its as expensive as you expect or not... just because THAT is what you 'think' you want to do... so costs will be justified or forgotten, one way or another! Be warned!!

In reality..... Expenditure Expands to Consume Funds Available... PLUS as much more as bank-manager, significant other, richer-relatives etc will allow.....

You have been warned!!!!

IF you go tracking, and the bug bites..... well, you'll never get enough... and one track-day a month will become two every six weeks, yeah well I know I did four in two months, but, I didn't do ANY all winter......

At this point actual club road-racing will 'seem' like a good idea, even though its apparently expensive... cos they have a club calendar, and you can see that there's 'only' Half a dozen race days or so a year, on their calendar, which should 'cap' the number of events you can actually do, and spend on.....

Yeah... then comes the practice sessions and taking days off work to go 'set up' the bike, and oooh... well, I could do that at an 'ordinary' track day...

And so the elasticity of the economics start to get tested.....Along the way of course they will already have been tested... every time some-one in the paddock suggests that actually you would be better off with 'propper' race tyres rather than that chitty road rubber... or you spot some-one with a tartier pair of rear-sets that are 'oh so essential' etc etc etc... and err.. yeah, tyre warmers suddenly become an absolute MUST HAVE item on the inventory.....

THAT is hobbies.... don't matter whether its motorbikes or course fishing, or golf or strangling a guitar.... IT COSTS and will cost as much as you let it, PLUS a bit.... till it starts to hurt....

And the more enthusiasm you have for your new found hobby, the more it gonna cost... the quicker that enthusiasm wanes... so the sooner much of it will have been wasted!!!

Answering your original question... ish.... twenty years ago, when first childling came along, the cost of nappies in bulk, and push-chairs that for some reason were more expensive than my dang car... made me revise my priorities... and motorbike, with only room for two, and not exactly baby compatible, was top target for criticism.....

Now... I parked up the VF-Thou and went back to trials riding... which is probably THE cheapest motor-sport there is in this country... unfortunately it is also one of the most prolific.... and the 'Season' runs from January 1st to December 31st, and most clubs tend to put on about 12 events a year.... but there's a LOT of clubs!!! "Well, each trial is only £5 an entry! What the heck!"

When I lived in the Don Valley, there were actually five trials clubs 'active' in the immediate region, and not just trials on a Sunday, but Saturdays as well, and bank-holidays, A-N-D 'evening-trials' mid-week, PLUS 'training days' and 'practice sessions'!!!! I think I worked out that after Easter, I could near enough do an event a bloomin DAY if I wanted, through till the autumn!

Hmmm..... Well, they are still only a fiver a time..... and how many of them could or would I really be able to tackle? Errr... yeah, well THERE'S a challenge!

In practice, when it came to it, I signed up first with my most local club, which conveniently had 'just' 12 events on its calendar a year... Oh-Kay, not so bad, one a month, and yeah, OK one is a 'two-day' event on a bank-holiday.... but still.....

Unfortunately they had their own quarry to go play in, with a few extra's squeezed into the calendar by way of 'training days' and more or less sanctioned 'practice sessions'....

Even MORE unfortunately.... they 'hosted' events for other clubs...... with entry by invitation to club-members.... ah... so that 12 event calendar, sort of started to mush-room with 'bolt-ons'....

A-N-D..... worse still, the hosted 'gypsy' trials by other clubs were intended to get a bit of cross pollination, and members of both clubs signing up to the other.... which I did!

I ended up riding pretty much fortnightly, with two regular clubs, PLUS the odd gypsy trial with any other on a 'free' Sunday, plus the practice sessions and training days.....

THIS IS NOT a great plan to try 'save' money.... or squeeze the juice from an existing 'spend.

Parking up the VF-Thou.... well, primia-facia, I 'saved' the tax and insurance, and yes, that DID go an awful long way to covering the costs of entries for a year in trials...

In fact, it probably saved enough to pay for an entire season, 'all in' with just the one club, IF I had been a bit stricter on that.

But, as warned... expenditure expands to consume all funds available, PLUS a bit.....

B-U-T VF-Thou.... it was NOT the cheapest road bike to try and run from the outset! And whilst not paying the tax and insurance on the thing, did cover the costs of the club dues and entry fees, plus some, on the trials bike, and not having to replace tyres every 15oo miles went a long way to paying for the petrol and broken mudguards and chit..... an AWFUL lot of that, was actually showing just how much money I 'wasted' on the road bike....... it WAS an expensive indulgence from the beginning...

So we are starting the voodoo maths from a falecie before we begin, and that is that the spend on the road bike, is somehow 'a given' and that that money is available for something else.... in fact, in my case, as it was a second vehicle, what the road-bike cost to run, was NOT a given,it was 100% over and above what I actually needed to spend, and hence 'leisure-expenditure' like going down the pub, or a holiday in Malorca....

Fact I used it to get to and from work... no... NOT really much justification to say that I 'HAD' to spend that money.... I didn't, and if I really wanted to save money, I'd have caught the bus, or bought a push-bike....

And we are into degrees of 'kiddology' trying to justify how shifting one waste of money for another waste of money, is in SOME way 'saving' money....

It's not.... its like when the now ex came back from the super-market, clutching three enormous bottles of cooking oil, and a box of chocolates, and tried to explain that even though she'd spent an extra £30, this was in some way 'saving' because the cooking oil was on offer, three for two... so she'd got one for 'free'.... err no, you spent twice what you needed, to get three times as much as you wanted... BUT some-how, you 'saved' money! Which you felt so good about, meant you thought that that 'saving' some-how paid for the chocolates!!!

You do NOT 'save' money by spending money... you SAVE money by NOT spending money... and 'SAVINGS' are something in the bank, NOT in your head..... or at least real-ones are!!!

MORE WARNING, that is the trap, the Three-For-Two-Deal.... getting you to spend more money than you would, or need, but molifying you with some passifier to make you believe that it was worth while, and you DID actually get value for it....

Ultimately its a spend switch; not a 'saving', and like the supermarket offering the 3 for 2 deal, it 'might' help you save money... IF you dont just use the extra bottle of cooking oil twice as quick, cos you seem to have 'loads', A-N-D you actually like the chocolates....

ULTIMATELY!!!!

That's the crap you have to cut to..... IF you want to go tracking, whether track-days or actual racing, its a spend shift,and a new pursuit.

If the Road-bike, is justified on how much it would cost to get to work... back up, and look at the actual cost of getting to work, and what the actual CHEAPEST way to work would be..... cos you are likely already into kiddolgy kidding yourself how much that bike is 'saving' you to get to work every day, rather than using... oooh,. lets say a 12mpg Bentley!

Start the ecconomics there, with what would be the cheapest way to work; if you cut back all unessential spend, what could you really 'save' as in actually put in the deposit account at the bank....

Then, with some idea of how much you are already 'wasting' on the luxury of leisure activity... ponder how much pleasure you actually get for your pound.....

THEN... with a clear idea of how much you are spending on 'fun' and how much fun you actually get for your money.... do you really think that the 'switch' to tracking, will deliver more? It will almost certainly cost you more one way or another... BUT, is that real actual 'value' from your money?

And think here; five minutes of open road 'fun' tagged on your daily commute, a dozen times a year when the sun-shines.... compared to just one, twenty minute session at say Cadwell? THEN compare that amount of fun, to what ELSE you could do for the same money... like the holiday in malorca, or a week-end at a health spa in the lake district, or whatever.....

And after you have stammered, and muttered,and decided you aren't interested in any of trhat chit, and this ISN'T answering the question, we are back-to-top, and degrees of delusion... in how you kid yourself that tracking or switching to any other sort of hobby HAS to be a good idea and pay for itself, for little other reason than that is what you want to do, and the answer you want to get to......

Remember... expenditure expands to consume the funds available PLUS a bit...... sorry but it be your maths... fudge it how you like... indulge in as much creative accountancy as you think you can get past management... BUT, remember.... savings are something that makes the balance in the deposit account go UP, not down....
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My Webby'Tef's-tQ, loads of stuff about my bikes, my Land-Rovers, and the stuff I do with them!
Current Bikes:'Honda VF1000F' ;'CB750F2N' ;'CB125TD ( 6 3 of em!)'; 'Montesa Cota 248'. Learner FAQ's:= 'U want to Ride a Motorbike! Where Do U start?'

[Bhud]

Bikes are one of the only things that some mature men still approach with a certain level of fantasy, even as complete beginners.

Suppose you're interested in some obscure Oriental martial art. You want to go to Japan or China, find a wizened, invincible master with a long beard who lives in a forest as a hermit for some reason. He asks you to demo your skills, and he's so impressed he tells you you're a natural, one born in every 1000 years, your coming was predicted in an ancient Buddhist scroll revered by a secret order of warrior monks, and you are the reincarnation of the great Lotus-Born One from ancient times. He conveys to you the secrets of the martial art which he deems your birthright, and you immediately acquire the skill. He then deems you a grandmaster right then and there on the spot, and gives you a special dragon tattoo or something, and a black belt, before telling you his life's work is complete. How likely is that?? It's a theme of many an 80s/90s B-movie and a pubescent/adolescent fantasy of many at the time. As an adult man in 2019, presumably well into maturity, you would be a complete idiot to even imagine this could ever happen in the real world.

What does this mean? Every skill, great or small, rare or commonplace, has a learning curve, and you have to progress along it in stages or you'll never acquire it. It doesn't matter how old you are or how good at driving a truck you think you are. Even if you are a legit kung fu master, it doesn't mean you can ride a motorbike safely and enjoyably just because the next man, whom you deem beneath you and common, can do it. You have to work your way up because you're a beginner in that skillset. Funny enough, everyone who's actually tried to study a martial art knows this. You walk into that room knowing nothing, you are the noob, everything you do and say is at noob level, you can chat and joke with whomever you like but you are not one of them because you haven't made yourself into one of them by learning the ropes. It takes humility, time and commitment. You can't just buy yourself a black belt from Ebay and expect to be taken seriously (well, you can do what you like but it won't work). There are some things you can't buy on Ebay. You can buy the sign pointing to that thing, but that's all. If that sign points to an underlying reality, then it is correct. If, however, it points to Timbuktu in Bedfordshire, then it is not, and you can't get no satisfaction (hence, your "MT-07").

Going to a track for the first time, you will need instruction and to join a beginner's group. You haven't even tried it or put your foot on the ladder, but you're already talking about it as if it's a hobby you can just decide to adopt and which you will be able to sustain and enjoy. Presumably, "anyone" can do it and because you feel awesome, you already know you'll enjoy doing it on a monthly basis?

[MarJay]

Just hit 'post reply' to see what Bhud and Tef responded with. Regretted it immediately. At least it vindicated my choice to keep them on 'enemy'.
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British beauty: Triumph Street Triple R; Loony stroker: KR1S; Track fun: GSXR750 L1; Commuter Missile: GSX-S1000F
Remember kids, bikes aren't like lego. You can't easily take a part from one bike and then fit it to another.

[Ste]

[chickenstrip]

[Ste]

That bit is optional.

OP needs to go on a trackday before making any more plans.

[chickenstrip]

Can you do a track day on a C90?
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Chickenystripgeezer's Biking Life (Latest update 19/10/18) Belgium, France, Italy, Austria tour 2016 Picos de Europa, Pyrenees and French Alps tour 2017 Scotland Trip 1, now with BONUS FEATURE edit, 5/10/19, on page 2 Scotland Trip 2 Luxembourg, Black Forest, Switzerland, Vosges Trip 2017
THERE'S MILLIONS OF CHICKENSTRIPS OUT THERE!

[Ste]

No.

[leolion]

[Teflon-Mike]

[Ste]

"If it passes ACU regs and scrutineering, and you hold an ACU Road-Race licence, you almost certainly could track one at a practice-day"

Yeah you could, if the organisers would let a C90 on the track at the same time as all the big bikes.

The only time a C90 will get on track is as part of moped racing as they're allowed in lots of the moped race series.

[Teflon-Mike]

[Sister Sledge]

Tef, mention of the budget class slipping through with less regulation: I once watched a race at what is now the Teesside Autodrome. It was on the short kart track but bikes around 250 cc. Full of Elsies but there was a single MZ and it wooped an awful lot of ass that day.

Just saying - it's not always about having an expensive bike and more about the experience... if you can ride one.
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CCM 404 DS

[redeem ouzzer]

Anyone else think Teffers found track riding boring because he was slow as shit?
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Be a REAL MAN!

[chickenstrip]

[Islander]