[GUTTERbOY]

Back home from day 2 now. I'd summarize today by saying that it's easily the most fun I've had in YEARS. And this is coming from a guy who honestly thought he'd have trouble getting comfortable with a bike. This stems from a few incidents I had in earlier years with dirtbikes and one encounter with a Honda cruiser. Mind you, nothing was injured in these events except my pride, but the memories seem to stick with you.

Anyway, myself and the nine other students hit the range bright and early at 7:45 this morning. We then went through a series of exercises, which seemed to be to be primarily oriented at building and reinforcing basic riding skills. I assume that tomorrow we'll move to more complex situations and maneuvers.

The first thing we all did was learn to mount and dismount properly- developing habits like putting the kickstand up and down, leaning the bike over slowly while dismounting to be sure the stand is down correctly. We spent some time "playing" with the controls, reinforcing their locations and functions. We also leaned the bikes from side to side while standing still to get used to the feeling of the bike's weight. And last but not least, we ran through the engine start/stop procedures a few times.

Then it was off to the real exercises. Every exercise after this was preceded by an instructor briefing, where the instructor explained the course and what we would be doing. This was followed by the other instructor demonstrating the course on a bike. Questions were encouraged and answered.

The first few exercises were aimed at developing clutch control. Only one of our class had never driven a manual transmission; however, even having personally driven manual cars almost exclusively since I was 16, it's almost like starting from scratch with the different controls. I definitely didn't feel bored by the clutch exercises. First, while standing still we'd use the clutch to rock the bike forward until we were on our toes, and then declutch and rock back. This got a good initial feel for the clutch. After a few repetitions of this, we moved on to "power walking". This is where we practiced actually getting the bike moving under its own power, but walking along with the bike so as not to worry about balance. Finally, we moved to making short straight-line trips with feet on the pegs. I had some issues with stalling the bike at first, mainly because I was wary of applying too much throttle- but I got past that fairly quickly.

Next, we practicing starting and stopping precisely. A basic oval "course" was set up, with the straights consisting of cones set at intervals. First, we negotiated the course, stopping fully at each cone, and later, we'd run each straight as a whole, stopping only at the ends. I had no trouble with this, save for a little overzealous front brake grabbing early on. We did have one or two riders manage to go down during this portion- probably mostly because it was their first time really moving under power. But there were no injuries, just some red faces.

We then moved on to the "weave"- that's a mild slalom for you laymen. This time the course consisted of a similar oval, with a single line of cones along each straight, which we'd weave between. These were spaced fairly far apart, so it was a relatively high-speed exercise (well, for us n00bs). This was where it really I really started to understand the value of looking where I wanted to go. Doing that was far more valuable than any other thing I tried.

The basic weave was then complicated. Now the cones were not in a straight line, but staggered, like the slalom we've probably all seen. Additionally, one of the "straights" had the cones closer together, necessitating much sharper turns. This portion had to be done at quite slow speed, and while it took me a lap or two to get comfortable with the low-speed turns, by the time we finished it, I had developed a lot more confidence in my turning.

Now comes a fuzzy portion for me- probably about the time I stopped being nervous and started really having fun. I don't think it was the very next exercise, but we set up a course to teach higher-speed turning. This used two 180* curved lines painted on the asphalt, with cones marking entry and exit points. The entire course was negotiated in second gear, the objective being to get a little speed on in the straights and then have to brake a bit before entering the sweeper. Basically, this was "slow-look-press-roll" in action. By this time my confidence had gotten high enough that the other riders started to frustrate me some. Several really didn't want to get up to any kind of speed, and there were even a few times when I had to downshift to first because the person in front of me was going so slow. But here I learned again that looking anywhere except where I wanted to go caused me to wander, and I also found that rolling into the throttle during the turn actually served to tighten up my turn. When we changed direction, the instructor stopped our group with me in front so I could have a few laps doing it right- as he put it, "Since you can ride, I'm putting you in front". That made me feel pretty good.

Now we had the real challenge of the day- we had to (gasp!) use third gear. Surprisingly, this seemed to bamboozle a lot of the students. And admittedly, I did have some technical difficulties here. This course was a large oval, with points set up where we would either shift up to third or down to second- four shifts per lap. On my first lap, I got into second fine, but when I hit the shift point and tried to shift to third, the lever didn't move! I completed two laps like this before I realized I just wasn't hitting the thing hard enough- after that, it was all cake. As before, probably the toughest part was keeping sufficient speed while other riders wanted to keep going slowly- there was a lot of chugging going on when they'd try to shift into third going slow, too. During this exercise, one of the less-confident students pulled aside, and presumably decided that riding wasn't for her- she didn't ride any more that day, though she stuck and watched since a friend was riding.

The last exercise of the day involved maximum braking. You just rode straight towards the instructor, and upon passing a set braking point, stopped as quickly as safely possible. After a couple of these runs, instead of stopping when reaching the braking point, we'd stop on the instructor's signal. During this exercise we had the most dramatic "incident" of the day- a student ahead of me locked the front brake and didn't release in time, and went down sort of hard. No injuries, and he took it pretty well; got right back on the bike, too.

After this, we put the bikes away, picked up our stuff, broke for lunch, and met back at the dealer for a little more classroom time. This time, we had the instructor who didn't teach Tuesday teaching. I found him to be far more like what I expected- ensuring we got the correct info out of the handbook, but bolstering this info with personal anecdotes, more in-depth explanations, etc.

As I expected, getting on the bikes brought out the instructors' best sides, and also proved far more educational to me than the classroom time. The biggest thing I personally experienced was becoming comfortable with leaning. When I rode my friend's dirtbike as a kid, I was alway very uncomfortable leaning it in turns. Today, I felt the same uncomfortable feeling while turning- until I started looking where I wanted to go and rolling into the throttle in the turn. That made all the difference in the world, and I found myself carving up turns like I never would have thought possible mere hours beforehand. My confidence level was boosted immeasurably today, and I no longer have any doubts that I can be a successful rider.

One more observation I made, on a sort of personal note- getting back in my truck to drive to the dealership, it felt like the most clumsy piece of vehicular equipment I'd ever been in. Granted, a 1986 Ford Bronco II isn't a "fun to drive" vehicle by any means, but it felt to vague and remote after six hours on a Buell Blast. I wanted to get back on the saddle and ride some more. I'm eager as hell now.

Tomorrow will be more exercises, the riding skills test, and the written exam. More to come then!

One more thing to mention- I cannot possibly stress enough how much confidence I built up today through these exercises. I probably learned today what might have taken me weeks of riding on my own to pick up. I do not, in any way, shape, or form, regret spending the money on this course.