This weekend, I took the state of New Hampshire sponsored Motorcycle rider training course (educational materials provided by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation.) I had signed up for this back in May or so, before getting my bike, but with the state of the waiting list, It's actually only by a bit of luck that I took it this year at all.
Coming in with about 3 months of practice, I had a bit of a skills advantage over most of the other students, many of whom had never been on a motorcycle. The weekend was almost completely incident free, even with wet conditions caused by rain on Sunday. The one incident we did have was minor, thankfully the rider was not hurt. Unfortunately for her, it occured during the skills test portion of the day, which, since she dropped the bike, is an automatic fail.
I suspect that with that exception, and possibly one or two other people who hadn't quite gotten things down with the available practice time (6 hours Saturday and 5 on Sunday) most people passed the course.
Naturally, with my abundance of previous practice, I passed the riding skill test with no difficulty.
I do feel the course was useful to me. I was assured by the instructors approval that I had not developed an overabundance of bad habits while teaching myself to ride, and I now have a nifty keyring, too.
Posted by John at October 12, 2003 08:00 PMA nifty keyring? You're all set, then.
"Yesterday," (which is to say, Saturday), I got to drive the big big truck in the daytime for a change, and under a different tutor. Well, he was mostly trying to talk on the phone with the window rolled down, or scoping out FHM magazine-- but the warm body of a licensed driver is required to be sitting there.
There were lots of speed zones and such, so I obtained much practice with the air-shifted "splitter." It's amazing how useful it can be to drop half a gear using just a thumb button and some throttle actuation. Definitely a good trip.
Posted by: Mitch at October 13, 2003 12:04 AM