I made a firm commitment to riding safety when I took up motorcycling exactly five years ago. I always wear high quality protective gear. (Well, almost always--I do ride the three miles to and from work in khakis or dress pants, and sometimes wear regular jeans when riding a local errand). I read
every motorcycle safety book I can get my hands on. I regularly go out on an isolated road and practice safety skills, particularly swerves and quick stops in order to sustain muscle memory. And I regularly take safety courses with trained coaches.
I took the Basic Rider Course which was developed by the
Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) a month after getting my first bike. Over the years I've taken what used to be called the Experienced Rider Course and is now called the Basic Rider Course II four different times. Last year I signed up for a new Advanced Rider Course (ARC) that Pennsylvania was offering but got sick and wasn't able to make it. So I registered again for this year.
The course was four hours of classroom instruction and discussion (which, ironically, fell on my fifth year riding anniversary) and four hours on the riding course. I was a bit disappointed because I'd hoped that this one would involve actual riding on a road with coaches, but it was more exercises in a large parking lot. The difference from the earlier courses was the complexity of the exercises and the speed with which they were done--the earlier courses were mostly under 20 MPH and in the ARC we were often going 25-30 MPH.
A lot of people take the basic courses either to get an insurance discount or because it's required to ride on military installations. Since anyone taking the ARC has already take the BRC and BRC II, the only motivation is a personal commitment to safety. So it's like safe riding grad school. That means the classes are pretty small. The BRC and BRC II classes are often 12 riders; my ARC had me and three others. But since we had two coaches, that was a good thing.
During the first classroom session we took a number of self assessments including our propensity for risky behavior. We had to rate our overall riding skills level. Then, to my surprise, the instructor wrote everyone's numbers on the board. I had given myself the highest skill level rating within the group so I figured I had self created pressure to perform the next day when we got out on the range. But that was OK since I need pressure to be at my best. (Plus, I still think my rating was right: I have myself an 8 out of 10. Since my annual mileage is in the top 5-10% for all motorcyclists and I do things that the vast majority of motorcycles don't, specifically take a training course every year and go out on isolated roads and practice skills like fast stops and swerves, I really think I'm in the top 20% of all riders).
I did stumble a bit on the risk assessment we did. One of the questions was "Have you recently ridden over 100 MPH?" I put my and up and said, "Define 'recently'." The instructor said, "This riding season." I said, "OK, that's good" and moved on.
But as it turns out, that self assessment was fairly accurate. We would break into groups of two to ride the various exercises. When I was paired with one of the two guys in the group, they really held me up because they were so slow going through the complex exercises (which involves as many as 8 or 10 different maneuvers in a single exercise, including very tight descending curves and S turns). One held me up so much that the coaches put me in front of him on subsequent runs and I would lap him and still end up behind him.
In their defense, both were riding big bikes--one a one a Kawasaki Vulcan 900 and the other a Kawasaki Concours. And they weren't
bad, just slow. I did one exercise behind the guy on the Vulcan and he must have scraped his floorboards ten times. The coach started calling him "Sparky" after that. But the course was derived from the U.S. military's sports bike safety course. That means the exercises emphasize quick maneuvers and hence are much easier on sports style bikes. That's the reason that the two of us in the course with sportier bikes had a much easier time than the two guys on larger rides.
On one exercise I was paired with the fourth rider--a lady. During the introductions during the classroom session she had said she'd only been riding a few years and had about 14,000 miles total, so I was expected her to hold me up. Wrong. She was very skilled. She actually was increasing the distance from me in a few of the exercises (but I was pushing her in some). I later found out she was a MSF coach who teaches the basic courses, so she'd been through coach training and done the exercises hundreds of times. And she was on a Kawasaki Ninja 250 which is one of the most agile bikes out there (with an engine 1/5 the size of mine). But she was just darned skilled, particularly on the exercises that were like the ones in the basic course.
Anyhow, there were no accidents throughout the day and, since there's not a test at the end, no failures. So count is as a win. The weather forecast had been for clouds and it turned out sunny so I was overdressed and physically exhausted at the end. But it was worthwhile--I could sense things I'd learned in earlier classes but forgotten coming back.
Next year I'm going to enroll in something like the
Lee Parks Total Control Course. I'm very interested in a getting a critique of my actual, non-parking lot riding style.
Spring and Autumn rides are always a challenge since there can be a large temperature variation from the beginning to the end. This was no exception as it was mid 50s at the start and low 80s at the end, but I was able to peel off layers and stay reasonably comfortable.
All was well until I hit the northernmost part of the route and started back south on 44. There were piles of gravel at random places in road. I almost dumped the bike hitting one at high speed. When I started sliding I instinctively reached for the brakes but luckily the experienced motorcyclist part of my brain vetoed that idea--hitting the brakes when you're sliding on ice or gravel is the exact wrong thing to do. I assume that area had a very bad storm within the past 48 hours which washed all of that onto the pavement. In any case, it caused me to ease along where I would usually rocket.
While I have yet to get in what I would consider a long ride this year (at least 350 miles), I did ride a 225 mile loop today. There were good parts. In particular, I was able to float unimpeded through the lovely section of Pennsylvania Route 30 from Fort Loudon to Breezewood. This includes four wonderful mountain crossings but there's so much traffic on it that the chances are very good of getting stuck behind a slow car or truck. But not today. It was sublime. Later, though, the weather turned out to be much hotter than predicted so I was roasting in my black winter jacket with limited ventilation in 90+ degree heat. It really sucked the life out of me.
