motorthings

both are great options, but it seems to come down to whatever you will be most comfortable on. Some people are so worried about crashing thier bikes that using the school's provides them with less stress. I would prefer to use my bike, since that is what i ride on the vast majority of the time (and i am confident enough in my riding to know i could keep it on two wheels). bottom line, whatever it takes to get you the most comfortable will give you the best tool for learning at the school.

after thinking about what i could do differently if i wanted to have MORE fear of speed (in order to perhaps better understand what you might be doing), the main thing i came up with was how far ahead I look when i am going fast. If you want it to feel like you are going fast, just look close to the front of your motorcycle, your car, your mountain bike, heck, even your feet when you run. The closer you look, the more random information you are asking your brain to process, which makes it FEEL faster. If you choose, on the other hand, to focus on the information what is truly important (the things farther off in the distance that you will actually have time to do something about) your perception of speed will be much less. My wife noticed the other day how far ahead i look when i drive the car (fast) because i was pointing things out that were 2 to 3 times farther away than where she was focused. When i asked her to push her attention out farther, she agreed the pace seemed much slower (and she felt safer!). The sense of speed in games like MOTO GP2 is actually pretty good, but unless you are REALLY engrossed in the game, it will be hard to recreate the panic reactions that arise when your mind knows something is at risk. (maybe you could pay someone to poke you with a cattle prod when you crash in the video game?)

if you know what you want, you can achieve it. if you only know what you don't want, you can't.

not much in/near missouri i'm afraid...gateway international is in e stl, but it is not set up well for cycles at all (too many walls, sub-par layout, and awkward transition to the banked section. putnam park is a great track and is only 3.5 hrs east of st louis, IRP is half an hour farther (but nowhere near as fun). Blackhawk is up past chicago, so around 5.5 hours from stl. But i have absolutely no problem with taking the longer 8 hour drive to get to Barber. Of the 8 or so tracks i have ridden on, Barber Motorsports just outside of Birmingham is far and away the most fun (and smoothest) tracks i have been on.

the one tip that made the most difference to me when i was racing (and re-learned this summer at the CSS schools) is that looking farther ahead on the track at the exit will give your brain a better chance of letting your throttle hand roll on more quickly. when i first put this into practice at putnam park i dropped a couple of seconds a lap and let me dice with the top riders in the class. if you keep your attention closer to your front wheel, you brain will have a harder time letting the throttle come on, and you will not get the drive you want.

dragging a knee can be one of the more zen things in motorcycle riding...the more you try the less it tends to happen. esp when you start out on the track, having knee dragging as one of your main goals will keep you from dragging you knee. if you focus on relaxing, and doing the other 25 things you need to do to ride smoothly, the knee will happen. the knee dragging is a result of riding well, and not the cause or the necessarily the indicator, but it is a great feeling to touch it down for the first time (esp when you are not on your way to touching down other parts of your body).

i was just involved in a discussion about BS and CS on the R6 messagenet, and came up with almost the same response to the physics confusion: i would posit that body steering (FWIW) is not different in its physics from countersteering. the same thing happens, just without the manual handlebar input (the most effective part). when you use your body. feet, knees, anything besides your hands to try to turn the motorcycle, you are moving the chassis to one side, which as a result also sends the front end in the opposite direction (around the pivot point of the steering stem, and into a CS)...think of the bike as two pieces of wood with a pivot connecting them; if you move the back one so it points to the right, the left will not follow, but its back end will pivot to leave the front end pointing to the left (CS position). that is STILL a countersteer, albeit a realllllly ineffective one.