Click to support the best
conservative web site on the internet!
~OR~
PayPal at Jimrob@psnw.com
Snail mail at FreeRepublic, LLC.
PO Box 9771, Fresno, CA 93794
Let's have some fun!
Hurry before they bring out the Cheerleaders!
Posted on 06/09/2002 4:32:52 AM PDT by 2Trievers
| 06-02-02 BECOMING A BIKER: Buying the motorcycle is just step one for this beginner |
This thing might kill me. That thought is on my mind as I learn how to ride my shiny new purchase, an 883 Harley-Davidson Sportster.
Experienced riders advised me to never lose this respect for my bike. Riding is risky, no matter how good you are.
Nearly everyone recommended the three-day motorcycle rider safety training program put on by the state division of motor vehicles for $85. Anxious to increase my odds of survival, I signed up. Plus, if you pass the class, you get your license. That means avoiding the stand-alone test at the DMV.
But the earliest state safety class available was June 3. Who could wait that long?
For $50, the state will give anyone a motorcycle learner’s permit. That lets you ride in the state from dawn to dusk. No experience or knowledge required. Get on and go.
Not that I was in any hurry to do that. Just sitting on the bike and starting it up was thrilling enough. And that’s all I did for a few weeks. Then it was moving the bike a big 15 inches. What a thrill, shifting into in first gear, slowly releasing the clutch, inching forward, and rolling backward.
Next, to the end of the driveway and back. Then to end of the short dead-end street and back. Back and forth, back and forth. As boring — and perhaps silly — as this sounds, it wasn’t. Learning how to throttle, clutch, shift, turn and brake takes a lot of practice.
Finally, the big day. My outing with cars. An experienced Harley-riding friend assured me I was ready to ride a mile to the parking lot at Jenness State Beach in Rye. The big open pavement. She followed behind in an SUV.
For several weeks, she coached me on how to do figure-8s, turns, stops, and shifting at various speeds. Going straight was easy. Accelerating exhilarating. Turning frightening. But still fun.
After becoming comfortable with all this, I took to the open road. Well, almost. A slow 30-mph trip along Route 1A through Rye and Hampton. It was ideal because it’s slow, has a lot of curves to practice on and few intersections. Invariably, a line of impatient motorists would collect behind me.
I find few things natural about riding a bike. It’s not like a car. It involves your entire body. Your hands and feet control different functions, braking, shifting, accelerating. And your body controls things like the bike’s balance.
The open road
On April 17, the mercury hit a record 90 degrees. No one with a motorcycle left it at home. I suited up in full leather armor and full face helmet, and attached the windshield. My first highway ride, a 48-mile commute from Portsmouth to Manchester on routes 95 and 101.
What a drag! Noisy, vibrating and way too dangerous. Cars whizzed by way too fast and close. I found myself envying people in their cars.
Holding the throttle open for the 45-minute ride was painful. Not much different than gripping a vibrating jackhammer. By the time I arrived at work, my right hand ached and my arm was numb up to my elbow. No leisurely ride to work sipping your coffee and listening to the radio. Plus, I missed my morning stop at Dunkin’ Donuts to get a coffee for the office. Bummer.
By the afternoon, the National Weather Service had issued thunderstorm warnings. The rain never came, but the wind did. Ungodly blasts of wind pounded me. My bike blew all over the highway. I gripped the handle bars and hung on for dear life.
I tried to calm myself with words like, “Of course, motorcycles are designed to drive at highway speeds in high winds.” But this one sure didn’t act like it. Who in their right mind rides a bike on the highway?
So what’s next? It seemed like I had done it all: back roads, highway, parking lots. I even began feel pretty cocky about having logged 760 miles on my bike. I half suspected the state’s three-day safety course would be a bore, although experienced bikers assured there was plenty left to learn.
They were right.
Bike school
The course was taught by a stout man named Chico, who rode an awesome Harley. He looked the biker part with a shaved head, giant mustache, black leather jacket, black boots and black jeans. In his other life, he is a successful bass player who travels around the world playing with well-known artists such as blues singer Koko Taylor.
Chico, and an assistant instructor named Doug, imparted all sorts of valuable and potentially life-saving information to the eight women and three men in attendance. Some had never sat on a motorcycle or even driven a standard transmission car. Others, like myself, owned bikes and had put a number of miles on them with learner’s permits.
The state supplied the motorcycles: lightweight 150cc and 250cc Hondas and Suzukis. Some were brand new. Others were battle-scarred. Mine was an abused Honda CB125. Most of the red paint was scraped away from the dented gas tank. One rear view mirror was missing. The gear shifter was bent, and a parking light had a missing lens. But it ran great and was perfect for learning.
Real-world knowledge
Chico taught us about the official and unofficial rules of the road. Every day we learned more about how to ride safely. Stuff like where in the lane to ride, how to be seen in traffic, how to minimize the risks such as a car turning in front of you, and lots more. We went over numerous potentially dangerous situations (from oil on the road to a dog giving chase) and how to ride through them. It was all good stuff.
To my amazement, even the people who had never ridden before did great. They stayed upright and balanced. They even rode pretty well for their first day of ever sitting on a bike. In hindsight, I can see it would have been a lot easier and if I had taken this course before I ever got on my bike. Even bikers who have years of experience say this. Many take this course because it has a lot to teach even veteran riders. The state offers advanced riding classes, too, which I intend to investigate.
Everyone in the class had a blast. Occasionally we dumped the bikes, but by the end of the three days, we were all weaving through tightly-spaced orange cones, swerving around an imaginary school bus, accelerating through sharp turns and skidding to a short stop.
The third day of our class was the big evaluation day. Each of us had to successfully maneuver the bike through four exercises: weaving and sharp turns, quick braking, hard accelerating through a tight turn and swerving — all stuff we had been practicing for two days.
We were all ridiculously nervous and jittery. Many of us rode like we never had before, which is to say terribly. We hit cones, overshot turns and such. But we all did well enough to pass by a decent margin.
By the day’s end, Chico handed us all little graduation cards. All 11 of us became bikers right then and there. The real thing. And more.
As Chico said, we didn’t just get our license. We had joined the universal brotherhood of bikers. Very cool.
8 women in leather? :)
That's a fact. My last ride (1985) ended up with my Harley losing an argument with a moron in a pickup truck who decided he didn't need to be in the left-hand turn lane afterall and pulled directly into my lane not 10 feet in front of me. It took a long time to recover from long list of broken bones. With two young boys to raise, I decided they didn't need a vegetable for a father. I WILL ride again once the youngest is out of college.
Relativly poor (even miserable) performance is the price Harley pays for using an obsolete twin V design for the sake of getting that nice popping exhaust note that everyone associates with a bad bike.
Hurry before they bring out the Cheerleaders!
You must live in a area with nicey-nice forests, I have known trees, bushes and rocks that traveled miles to get in front of me.
Relativly poor (even miserable) performance is the price Harley pays for using an obsolete twin V design for the sake of getting that nice popping exhaust note that everyone associates with a bad bike.
Ah, the "riceburner" mystique! A truly awful thing, that - the most technically advanced and capable machines that a regular working stiff might actually be able to afford happen to be (primarily) designed in Japan. Shameful. Even the fact that a slew of them are built (or at least assembled) here in the states doesn't mitigate the shame. Seriously, though, the slams in each direction, IMHO, are sometimes way off the mark, and sometimes right on target. Harleys used to have a certain "reputation" for being rolling junkheaps; but the quality transformation they've undergone is phenomenal. One of the biggest problems I've seen is that the Motor Company has pursued profit (ain't nothin' wrong with making the bucks, mind you) on the backs of those devotees who kept a faltering operation alive (albeit on life support) through the lean times - they'd buy those clunkers no matter what problems they could expect or what better machines were offered by others, and it was this dedicated core group who truly helped save H-D. But the thanks they got later was to have the machines priced so outrageously that these folks couldn't afford them, or at least complete with RUB's whose pockets fairly bulged with cash. That's a real shame. The criticism leveled at Japanese machines hits home on a couple of points, too - the resale value is much worse than H-D's in general, the frequent resyling means decreased parts interchangeability (and higher replacement costs), and the early attempt to make machines that were kinda "like" Harleys was pretty pathetic. Now, resale values are market-driven, of course, but when a guy or gal can buy a big ticket item for less than MSRP, I count that as a very GOOD thing, personally. And after the first and second iterations of Harley-like knockoffs, the Japanese produced bikes that for all intents and purposes were much, much better than the Milwaukee products, and priced much lower, to boot. It wasn't until the Porsche-assisted introduction of the V-ROD that H-D brought a bike to the marketplace that was the equal of the latest generation of Japanese cruisers. JMHO.
What's true is true. Whatever else is true of HD's-- they're cool, they give you instant access to a (middle aged) community of riders, they hold their value well-- they're just slow, heavy, and unreliable bikes.
The original article might better be called, "How to buy and ride a motorcycle when you don't know anything about them and are frightened to the bone of riding them." Which is fine-- fear is a healthy response to motorcycling. However, you can a much better bike than a Sportster for $8k (!). And, I'm one of the experienced riders who thinks that the MSF safety course is a waste of time and money. If your state allows you easily to get your license without taking that thing, don't take it. Well, I should provide a qualification: if you find yourself frustrated with fundamental activities, like turns or operating the controls, after an initial get acquainted period, you might think about it. Or, if you're like this author and can't get up the nerve to ride at boulevard speeds after two months of riding then you need some help.
However, if you possess reasonable physical coordination, can operate the controls smoothly after a short acquaintance period, and are serious about teaching yourself, then that's what you should do. Buy a book, the MSF book is good. Start in a parking lot and on slow streets. Then just keep riding.
Otherwise, prepare to stand around for hours and hours in a hot parking lot. Hear overzealous instructors shout about how to pull the brake and clutch at the same time for about fifty minutes before you're allowed-- on a motorcycle with the engine off-- to try it yourself. Spend ten hours of stultifyingly boring time before you have the opportunity to ride a moped-like 125cc bike around orange cones in a parking lot at 15 miles an hour. Listen to the instructor shout at you with all the intensity of someone who caught you trying to to fly an F-16 at an airshow while you putter that little bike around in demoralizing ovals. Then think of all the better things you could be doing on a nice summer weekend. Then think about the $100 bucks you've kissed goodbye.
I speak as an experienced rider with no accidents in many years of riding, and someone who stupidly took that course years ago when I had already had a good deal of experience riding with a learner's permit. Be forewarned...
A highly dangerous way to learn I might add and not recommended. But spending a few weeks riding up and down the driveway? You've got to be kidding.
Imagine that!
The real thing. And more. <P. How could this be? I didn't read anything about tatoos,jewelry,scarey-sounding nicknames,or "Official Harley-Davidson clothing"?
In my experience, Harley riders are far far more polite and safe out there on the road ways when you compare them to those that ride riceburners. For that reason alone, I would rather buy a Harley and strive to live up to their responsible behavior. The tone and topic of your comment only highlights the dangerous mentality of the rice burner crowd.
It ain't about getting there,it's about enjoying the trip.
LOL Oh boy, now you've done it. If only they were this deliberate in learning how to drive a car :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.