My MSF experience in-depth

[GUTTERbOY]

My purpose in writing this thread will be to tell the world in general about my experience taking the MSF course. I, for one, had a great deal of curiosity about what went on during the course that wasn't satisfied looking at info here and elsewhere- and if nothing else, I like the idea of putting as much info as possible here in one place.

I want to provide a perspective of what a n00b should expect- and since I am pretty much a total n00b to two-wheeling, save for a little dirt-biking eons ago, I feel qualified to do this.

Mods, if you think this would fit better in the MSF subforum, I surely won't be offended. I put it here since I want to direct it to the average new rider. Now, on to the meat of the story.

First off, I'll talk about the course I took. I actually took a course provided through Harley-Davidson called "Rider's Edge". What it boils down to is the MSF BRC, with a little more orientation and immersion in the HD side of things. It also seems to be a bit of an advertising opportunity for the company. I selected this course over an independent MSF course because it was very convenient to me location-wise, and there were a wide variety of class schedules to choose from, including this midweek course, which is very appropriate for my work schedule. I registered for this course last Wednesday, and today was my first day.

Now, back for a bit to the perceived difference between this and an independent MSF course. Today's classroom session was held at the local HD dealer, Ray Price. Not surprisingly, one is immersed in the HD feel, for better or for worse, when inside an HD dealer. As best I could tell, I was the only student of the nine in the class who was planning on riding a sportbike instead of an HD or cruiser. I detected little or no derision towards sportbikers in general, though, be it from staff or students.

However, there does seem to be a secondary aim to the course, which is to get you to buy stuff. Today's time included a ~30-minute "dealer tour", including spiels from various people about different HD and Buell bikes, accessories, gear (especially HD-branded), and purchase info about stuff like the "preferred buyer program". Most of this I found interesting in spite of the "buy stuff" overtones.

Also, the videos we watched were 100% HD-specific, with references to the brand name at regular intervals, almost sounding like slightly more informative commercials. I can't say that I really learned anything from them that I hadn't already found through my research.

The classroom time in general I found to be not necessarily boring, but also less than informative. I don't think I learned anything that I couldn't have found out by reading a DOT riding manual or threads here. Moreover, I felt that the instructors were more oriented towards "teaching to the test" than they were towards providing practical knowledge and filling in the cracks in the written material. But in fairness, not every rider is going to be as diligent/rabid as me in seeking out information. Novice riders will get good info from this time, even if it's taught straight from the book, but I thought the teaching style could have been refined.

We did have a bike in the classroom that the instructor spent some time sitting on and demonstrating static stuff with. I got the feeling that the instructors were far more comfortable teaching practical knowledge than the book info. In light of my previous comment, this leads me to believe that the "teaching for the test" isn't necessarily an overall strategy- maybe they instead reserve the more practical knowledge for the hand-on time on the range.

Finally, a word about the instructors. We had three instructors, only one of which did much teaching today. One was a retired NC SHP officer who'd been tooling on Harleys for about ten years. Another was sort of the typical grizzled old hog rider, with eons of riding under his belt. Nice guy, and full of knowledge, I felt. Finally, the third was a Buell rider, something of a sportbike guy among the cruisers- but he didn't talk much at all.

All in all, today's time got has me really anticipating getting on the bike tomorrow and getting in motion. I'm very eager to get going. More to follow after tomorrow's time, which will be about six hours on the range and a few in the classroom.

[OldSkoolFool]

Thanks for the post. I've been thinking about taking a MSF course and also one at a HD dealer since they compact it into a three day weekend. I really don't like that they advertised their products so much, good for them though I guess. Let us know how it goes. I'm wondering if I might be better off paying for a motorcycle class at a track day type deal.

[UberGoober]

I have no problem with where you posted it. I think you should get with Fargin Bastage about polishing this up some and submitting it to SBN's articles section, that way it would stay as a resource on the board for a long time.

A lot of guys don't like to submit articles because they think they don't get read, but when you look in that forum and see the number of views, you find out that one or two hits per day adds up over time.

[GUTTERbOY]

Originally Posted by tmkreutzer

I have no problem with where you posted it. I think you should get with Fargin Bastage about polishing this up some and submitting it to SBN's articles section, that way it would stay as a resource on the board for a long time.

A lot of guys don't like to submit articles because they think they don't get read, but when you look in that forum and see the number of views, you find out that one or two hits per day adds up over time.

I'd like to do this, actually. My original thought had been to have sort of a "daily report" thread going on, and then I started getting delusions of grandeur. What I may do is go back and reread what I've written after it's all said and done, and put it all together into a single unified writeup for posterity. I just have to work on a better writing style instead of the sort of stream-of-consciousness thing I tend towards.

For the moment, I'll continue to put in nightly reports tomorrow and Thursday, just so I can get the thoughts down while they're fresh,

Thanks for reading, everyone.

[3.8mateo]

How many people were in the course? When I took the MSF BRC course, me and my father agreed that 12 people was too many for the area we were training on. I mean its ok for the classroom but out on the range it was kind of hard to get adequate teaching.

[isaac]

I say this becomes an article series. It's very well written. It needs specific details though, especially on the riding days.

I never took the course but I'm really interested in how much accident awareness and evasion they teach, because as far as I'm concerned that should be 90% of the course.

[Fargin_Bastige]

Rider's edge is a weaker version of the MSF BRC. I would ask the MSF instructors on here about it.

[TwistedGray]

I have not taken the MSF and have intention on it; however, this is a good write-up.

[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.

[Jehos]

Awesome writeup of the 2nd day. If you're lucky, you'll do the "box" tomorrow, then you'll see what your classmates are really made of.

Also, understand that the bikes you ride in the MSF course are pretty much the lightest and easiest to handle bikes you can buy. When you get a full-sized road bike, it's a whole different game. Expect that you'll need to go back and practice those same basics because they'll feel totally different. Doubly so if you go with a sportbike--the riding position just makes everything feel different.

(this coming from a guy who aced the MSF and was nervous and jerky on a Ninja 500)

[GUTTERbOY]

OK, third and final day is behind me. Long story short, I now hold a NC motorcycle endorsement- we got done in time for me to run to the DMV before they closed.

And today's theme is this: Dragging a peg is a bit startling the first time you do it. Especially when it's the second day you've spent doing any serious riding. Also, reminiscent of yesterday's write-up, I can't guarantee I'll remember all the exercises; I was having too much fun to commit it all to memory.

We started out, again bright and early at 7:45. This time, the instructors didn't get the bikes out and warmed up for us- we got to do it. We warmed them up, rode over to the range (very short distance, off-road), and proceeded to ride laps around the perimeter for about five minutes. This let everyone get used to the feeling of the bike again. I felt that I'd lost some of the skills I'd developed from the day before just overnight, and watching the other students, I wasn't the only one.

But I and others picked back up pretty quickly, and soon it was time for the first exercise- the dreaded "box". This is a box, fairly small (I don't know the exact dimensions_, in which you practice very low-speed turning. Specifically, you enter at one end, perform two U-turns within the box, and exit the other end. Doing this right REQUIRES you to look where you want to go- in this case nearly breaking your neck looking behind you. Getting the speed right is vital, too- too fast and you'll lose your nerve in the turn, too slow and you'll end up putting a foot down. There was a lot of trouble with this to start, including me- although I only was going a foot or so over the line, much less than some other students. Everyone seemed to catch on well, although several still had work to do to tighten their turns sufficiently.

We also did a lane-change drill. Pretty easy, you ride a straight line, up to second gear, and the instructor directs you to make a lane change either to the left or right, at which point you activate the turn signal, check mirror, head check, change lanes, and cancel the signal. I don't think anyone had trouble with this. This was then midlly altered into a swerving drill. Again, we rode into second gear, and executed the same maneuver as before- except this time we had less space in which to do it, and there was no requirement to make mirror/head checks, use signals, etc. This evolved into the instructor occasionally giving the rider the stop signal and having us execute a quick stop. Few locked brakes here and there, but we'd all done quick stops the day before.

Then we were practicing negotiating corners. Now we has a short straight into a 90* turn, followed by a longer straight into a 135* turn. Here we had to display proper turning technique at speed (slow-look-press-roll) as well as proper braking technique entering the turn (both brakes, complete slowing BEFORE turning in). This was an exercise that I thought was really simple; riding at second-gear speeds was far easier to me than slow speeds. But many of the other riders were reluctant to get up enough speed for this to really work right, and they also didn;t like rolling into the throttle in the turn. There were several that went out of the boundaries during this. This is also when I managed to drag the peg on my Buell Blast, going through the 135* turn. On my next-to-last lap, I carried a little more speed in than before, and when I rolled into the throttle and pressed a little harder to stay on track, there was this alarming grinding sensation from my right foot. I was startled enough that I lost focus on the exit point, and went off the outside of the turn- after which my coach informed me that I had just gone off a cliff and was dead.

And the crowd favorite was the obstacle exercise. Not too hard, you just ride over a 2x4 in second gear, remembering to hoist your tuchus off the seat and roll into the throttle before putting the front wheel over, and off before the rear crosses. Piece of cake.

It seemed like no time at all before we were setting up the evaluation course for us to practice on. Here, we just cyclically rode the box, the swerve test, and a graded quick stop. The swerve test and quick stop were easy for me, but I found that in the space of a few hours, I had totally forgotten how to do the box. I mean, I went RIDICULOUSLY wide my first time through. I went through it in my head afterwards and decided that I had used too much speed, which unnerved me when I tried to turn, and caused me to not focus on where I wanted to go, etc., etc. Second time I went out a little, and I nailed it the third and fourth times.

Short break, and it was time for the real deal. The eval included the three exercises I mentioned in the last paragraph, plus a revisit of the cornering exercise earlier. Basic idea of the scoring is that you start with zero points, and every time you screw up, you get points added on, quantity dependent upon the severity of the screwup- and 21 points equals a failure. I finished with three points accrued; I went over the line in the box on my first U-turn. Everything else was perfect.

Scores for the students ranged from a zero for one guy (the only person who bested me) to 20 points for one of the less confident riders. And then it was over- time to put the bikes over and head to the stealership for the written exam. And the written exam was ridiculously simple. If you pay attention in class and read the MSF manual, there's no reason for anyone to fail. The low score in the class was a 94- three incorrect answers.

We then had a little "ceremony" out in the middle of the showroom floor in which were were presented with our completion cards and certificates, along with some "awards" the instructors created in jest. I was awarded the "Superhero of Swerve", based on my not needed much instruction at all and having no trouble getting stuff down. Let me tell you, three days ago, I never would have thought I'd have an instructor say something like that about me. I then proceeded directly to DMV to get my endorsement.

To conclude this little series, here's what the course did for me. Three days ago, my experience on a motorcycle was limited to riding a friend's dirt bike, and feeling very uncomfortable doing it. And it was these memoried that I took with me to the course. I didn't think I was going to fal or anything, but I expected to have some trouble getting over my discomfort, especially when it came to leaning the bike. And while I didn't really take a huge amount of direct attention from the instructors, they did provide some pointers here and there. Mostly, the exercise were structured excellently to get me comfortable with the basic, and then building on those skills. I never felt outside my comfort zone at the end of an exercise; the progression was outstanding, and took me from a guy kind of scared of leaning to dragging a peg 24 hours later. That's what I call progress.

The only thing I have to keep in mind from here on out is to remember that I'm not a pro by any means, and it'll still take lots and lots of practice before I'll be competent to ride in daily traffic situations. And I don't really have to convince myself of that, because I can remember many little screwups from the course. Maybe it was losing focus and riding outside that turn after I got the peg down. It's an "oops" on the range, but it might be a tree encounter on the road. And then there were little things like the time I stalled the bike in a slow-speed turn, and came really close to laying it down. I've come a long way, but there's plenty more to learn.

As my instructor said, "The day you know everything there is to know about riding, call me and give me your keys, because you'll be a danger to everyone on the road."

Thanks for reading, and feel free to bombard me with questions.

[RayOSV]

Congrats and great write-up. Glad that you put some apprehensions to rest in addition to learning so much. Try to remember as many of the exercises as you can and practice them on your bike when you get one in a nice clean parking lot. Also practice panic braking from whatever speed you intend to ride.

Ride safe, have fun, and welcome to riding!!