Motorcycle Course

OMG!!!!! SO MUCH FUN!!! 

I’m enjoying the course so far; can you tell? It started around 6 last night–we were a little late starting. One student didn’t show up, so there were 7 of us–5 women and 2 men. One of the guys looks quite young, but has some silver hairs speckled through the dark, but that may just be a family thing. He looks to be in his 20’s, but might be older. The other man is 50, and the women are 40ish to 62!! I’m not the oldest! Yay! *laughs*

We’re taking the course at 14 Wing, Greenwood, at Hangar 4. Air Force, could you guess? I know one instructor is an Air Force man–don’t know about the others, Anyway, we started with theory and classroom stuff, and ended up being there until 11 pm instead of 9. We’re kind of a chatty bunch, but it was all good. We were supposed to have the written test last night, but it was so late and we were all so tired that we opted to have it this morning. Our instructor who was there last night, Tom, is an examiner for the Department of Transportation, so if we pass the course and the tests, we get our beginner’s license for motorcycles. In Nova Scotia, if you don’t take the course, you have to pay to take the written and practical test to get your beginner’s license, and then, after three months, you have to take ANOTHER test to get your advanced motorcycle license. With the course, you can go get your advanced license after ONE month and you don’t have to take another test–just bring your certificate from the course to prove you took it. How sweet is that? 

We covered things like which part of a lane on the road is best under which conditions and why. I like learning the "why", it makes it easier to remember the "what". We covered the importance of good gear, what the major causes of single vehicle motorcycles accidents are (too wide a turn, mostly), and that we have to be hypervigilant making left turns because that’s when we’re crossing other lanes of traffic and are most in danger from other vehicles. We talked about watching for hazards way down the road, and the acronym SIPDE–Scan, Identify, Plan, Decide, Execute. We watched videos. We filled our brains. 

Today, we wrote the written test. I had two wrong–one because of blatantly NOT reading the question thoroughly (I blame the early hour and lack of sleep) and the other was a close choice, and I chose poorly. Still, two wrong out of 25 or whatever questions isn’t too bad. I think I passed.

Then we went out to a decomissioned runway. I know! Isn’t that a GREAT place to learn to ride? Sweet!! We were told our limits and not to wander onto the active runway or the air traffic controllers would be upset and the military police would swoop down on us and give the instructors hell. We had little Suzuki GN125’s to learn on. Nice little bikes, not too overwhelming. There’s a Marauder as well, and I’d like to try it tomorrow at some point.

Step one: we walked the bikes from the hangar to the runway to learn how to handle them walking. 

Step two: we learned where things were–the clutch, the choke, the throttle, the gear shift, front brake, rear brake, etc., and learned to check them over every time we take them out.

Step three: we paired up and pushed each other around the course they had set up with little orange plastic pyramids, so we could learn to balance at low speeds. The course was a big rectangle and we went around it clockwise and counter-clockwise, taking turns with our partners.

Step four: we sat on our bikes, learned to check from the kickstand up to the gas (on or off or reserve), the choke, the clutch, the key, put it in "run" and hit the start button.

Step five: rock and roll. This is where we put it in first gear, then engaged the clutch enough to disengage the gears and put our heels on the ground, toes up. Then feather the clutch until it caught just enough to move the bike forward until our feet were flat, feather it again to disengage and push back until we were on our heels again, and back and forth like that to feel that fine 1cm of engagement. There’s WAY more to using a clutch on a motorcycle than a car. Very cool. At low speeds, it’s easier to control the motorcycle with the clutch and the rear brake than the throttle and shifting.

Step six: we actually drove our bikes around the course, stopping at every marker along the way, feathering our clutches for all we were worth, learning to use front and rear brakes together (gently on the front brake since it has the most stopping power). The markers were probably every twenty feet or so. We did that in both directions.

Step seven: shifting from first to second and back down again on the long sides of the rectangle. Start at the corner from a short side, ride into and through the corner, accelerate, shift up, shift down, and feather the clutch through the next corner. A little nerve-wracking at first, but fun all the same. 

Lunch break!

Step eight: playground! The instructors set up a series of stations with the ubiquitous orange triangle dealies. Start at a "gate" to a large open rectangle, ride straight, then do a figure 8 and exit through the second "gate". Then into a big circle, turning to the right, and stopping in the curve, and starting in the curve. Exit to a slalom (slow), then into a 90 degree right turn, accelerate and shift up and then down again to a big circle for counterclockwise circles, no stops this time, out of that, accelerate, shift up and down, into a 90 degree left turn, then a short jaunt to a corridor to feather the clutch and go as slowly as possible without putting your feet down, then into a third circle for clockwise turns, no stops, then back to the "gate" to the figure 8. Over and over. Then they added another area with a 90 degree turn left, followed by a right, then a curvy path which caused me big issues the first time and minor issues the next time. 

And before we knew it, the day was done and we drove our bikes back to the hangar to put them away.

For some reason, I had a hell of a time doing the right-hand circles. Not the one with the stop in it; that was fine. The figure 8 was my easiest thing, followed by the left-hand circles, but I kept coming out of the right-hand circles. Tom and I tried to figure out what I was doing that was making me pull straight, and I told him I didn’t know why, but that I was sure I could beat it, and next thing I was making 5 metre right hand turns instead of the 10 metres allowed. Go figure. That course was a BUNCH of fun. We got to practise shifting up and down, tight turns, feathering the clutch, using the brakes properly (using the back brake to slow down the circles some, if necessary).

I’m pretty sure I’m going to dream about motorcycles tonight. This would be good–it would help sink the information into my brain.

Oh, and we’re all wearing our names on the front of our helmets–masking tape written on with marker. Must remember to remove it when the course is done. I’m pretty confident we’ll all pass. I can’t tell you the last time I had this much fun! Probably my trip to Toronto! Life is absolutely chock-full of goodness right now. I’m not complaining!!

So–tomorrow–I wonder what we’ll be doing. A few times today, I thought "OMG, I can’t do this!" and then I did it. The instructors are all really good at encouraging us when we do something right, and gently correct us when we go mad and out of control. They’ll either tell us where we went wrong, or ask us to see if we know, and then tell us and help us figure out how NOT to do that again. And shoulder check, shoulder check, shoulder check–every time we stop, every time we start out again. And reminding us that we need to stay within the rectangle because going out of bounds means we’ve either gone into oncoming traffic or the ditch, depending which direction we’re going. It’s a very valid point!

One of the instructors told me and Pat about an exercise we can try on our own when we’re done the course. It involved a steadily shrinking figure 8, and I think I’ll ask for a reminder tomorrow and maybe jot it down. It sounded like a great home exercise, and really good practice. There’s a community college near my apartment, so I can use their big parking lot evenings and weekends to muddle around in. I’m not going out in traffic until I feel reasonably comfortable on my bike. But I don’t think that’ll take too long. There are a lot of low-traffic streets around here I can noodle around on. And I need to learn how my bike handles and how it feels to ride. Should be interesting.

I’ll be back. I need a light meal and a bath or a shower something fierce.