I learned how to ride a motorcycle

I am pretty excited, I just learned how to ride a motorcycle last night. What originally was plans to go rock climbing again, ended up not happening as I got shot down at the door being told I am only allowed to return as a guest every 60 days. Sucks! I went back to my friends place, who happens to own a motorcycle, and we took the free time as an opportunity to go down to an open parking lot/runway type area and practice.

We started with of course the basics. How to turn it on and off, where the breaks are, explained the clutch (I have never driven a manual before… but now that I have in motorcycle form I might just be able to in car form too. *ahem* Dev) and how to accelerate. I started with simple drifting, which is just slowly releasing the clutch and walking the bike forward. Then I lifted my feet up to drive forward with a little bit more power and get rid of the “training wheels.” Practiced turning, practiced changing gears, and just general driving it around. Played around on it for about 40 minutes before there wasn’t too much left to be taught.

At first I was kinda iffy about the whole clutch, accelerating, and braking thing. (Yes, I know. That’s like the whole function of a bike) but it is pretty simple once you make a few attempts. Its tricky because you have to do it all roughly the same time and its all in different spots on the bike. Tricky for a first timer at least. I dropped the bike once when I was trying to stop, they are a lot heavier than they look so if you don’t put your feet down when you should… you just kinda start leaning and whoops! Your no longer sitting on a bike, your standing next to it.

At the end of the training though, I felt pretty comfortable riding it around. I won’t be ready for actually driving it outside of a parking lot for a while of course, I would have to take the class and put in a lot of practice, but getting that solid ground of understanding the basics is really nice. It is a lot of fun. It is also going to be a few years before I buy one. I am waiting until I graduate from college and pay off my current car so I won’t have to worry about fees overloading my wallet.

Here is a picture of the bike I rode.