First Group Ride

It's technically not a group if there's only two people, right? We had three on this one. After meeting up at my house we headed off to the Lake. The first stop to see my dream house! Love it. Next was at the shooting range - just to watch. Every 10 seconds or so we saw skeets fly through the sky followed by a series of "bang!"

I'll have to look up the standard hand signals b/c all I knew how to do was signal way ahead of time and gesture to slow down before pulling over.

Winging it isn't always the safest path. I pulled over fairly quickly shortly after getting onto a higher speed limit road (still within the capability of the 80cc Honda Elite scooter one of us was riding). My worry about my friend on the Kawasaki 250 R was the opposite. With twice the engine size as my Yamaha Vino 125, I was worried he'd speed by too quickly to notice the two of us had stopped. That sorta happened. He had to loop back a bit to get to the next stop which was a place for a photo op. Boy, cell phones these days take some awesome pics! We used theirs b/c mine can hang with the rest of them. The LG Versa might've been cool when it was in the Transformers movie, but it's museum material now.

http://www.bestbeginnermotorcycles.com/motorcycle-hand-signals

We finished off the day with some $1.08 soy milk. Nice and hot for that chilly afternoon. It started to sprinkle by the time we got back on to head home. Wishing for better weather next time.

Followers?

I hadn't realized people were actually reading this blog. I would've kept up on the posts if I knew. Sorry guys. Nothing new happening with the scoot other than it's still been a blast. I love the thing. I've been practicing my footwork that I mentioned in my last post. It's been working out well. It's definitely a safety benefit that's worth doing. It's great that I can hop up off my seat in a fraction of a second in order to avoid the impact of the crazy bumpy roads around here.

The weather unfortunately hasn't been cooperating lately. It's both cold, windy and sometimes rainy - not the best conditions for riding. Where's all the sun? Ugh.

Another distraction I've had is my new 2-wheeled project:
http://e-bikeconversion.blogspot.com/

Left Foot Back. Right Foot Forward Technique

As far as I know, this technique is developed by "Yours s Truly"....today.

Some seasoned riders may have already noticed that when placing your feet more forward, you are much more stable when coming to a stop. Your body's inertia is going forward and your feet help hold you back balancing out the weight of the bike and rider diving into a stop. However placing your feet here in the front doesn't enable you to easily stand upright in preparation for a bump or running over some sort of obstacle. For that you need to keep your feet back.

So my technique?

Rather than switching back and forth moving both feet forward when coming to a stop and both feet back when there's an obstacle, place the left foot back and right foot forward. This provides a stable stance that allows you as the rider to be well prepared for either scenario w/o having to change stances.

It's great to be prepared at all times. After all, you never know when you need to stop abruptly. You don't want to be thinking about foot placement during these maneuvers. By using my technique, both feet are planted and ready for these two situations - both of which can come up without much/any warning.

So why left foot forward and right foot back and not the other way around? The left leg typically is the one that comes down and rests on the ground during a stop. Having the left leg being the one in the back allows for a longer reach to step down. This allows us to keep our right foot planted in the forward position during and immediately after stops w/o having to move it.

Have fun. Good luck and ride safe.

Advanced Motorcycle Training Course

After a long waiting list, my name finally came up and I was invited to join the Bay Area Motorcycle Training course. I had already taken the first Basic Rider Course for getting my M1 license. It was time for the more advanced course offered at motorcycleschool.com. There you go guys - your free plug in a blog that no one reads.

So how about a quick review of the course?

The class is maxed out at 12 riders so that everyone gets the attention they need and we can run as many drills as efficiently as possible. We stand in a group as two coaches talk about the drill. Then one of the runs the drill on his bike as an example. We line up in one or two groups (depending on the drill) and go through it.

After each person goes who needs extra coaching, the coach would stop them at the end of the drill to give pointers. Everyone else is in line. This repeats.

Once the drill is completed and everyone's had a chance to run through it a few times, we meet back up in a group off our bikes for a "discussion."

This is where I wish there was more instruction. A lot of this section was just the coaches reading from a book and asking useless questions like, "What did you learn?" I had hoped the coaches would tell us what we're supposed to learn and give tips then and there. Instead, we were teaching eachother.

For $125 for a 5 hour class of safety instruction, I guess it wasn't so bad. I missed the first Recumbent Convention for this class and I suppose it was worth it. Better to be safer on the road then not.

The above would repeat for 5 hours with 10-15 minute breaks every 1.5 hours.


TYPES OF DRILLS:

1. Ostacles:
We ran a circle on the track. One long stretch was an offset cone weave. The other long stretch was a more extreme offset cone weave. Once completing a few laps, we were asked to do the laps w/one throttle hand. Left hand remains in the lap or anywhere away from the handlebar. Pretty scary! The next few laps were over obstacles. In this case it was a 2x4 laying in the middle of the track. In this portion of the drill, we learned to put weight on our feet and stand more upright. Get our butts off the seat so that when we land after the bump, we don't get knocked off. That's happened occasionally and it hurt my jewels. Now I know it's alright to get up off the seat. That's the accepted safety technique.

2. Emergency Swerve:
We'd go straight and hit 15-18mph before the coach would direct us to either swerve left or swerve right. We don't know which direction we're supposed to go until pretty much the last second. If we don't turn in time, we end up in the "truck" zone where cones lined up in a box shape representing an imaginary truck. We practice counter-balancing for this drill - keeping the center of gravity where it is and just push to turn out of the way of the obstacle and quickly turn back into the the original direction of motion.

In addition to the swerve, the coach sometimes surprised us with the stop command. We were to stop wherever we happen to be while running through the drill. This occurred only while going straight.

3. Tight Turns
Cones were lined up at the corner of the track and the drill was to make the turn w/o hitting the cones.

4. Clutch Control
Go as slow as we can and control the bike using just the clutch. I obviously couldn't run this portion, so I just road as slow as I could and practiced balancing.

5. Turning:
I learned that I really need to accelerate through the turn - not brake through the turn. This means I need to slow to a pre-turning speed as I'm going straight approaching the turn. It's at the beginning at the turn that I should be accelerating until its completion. This allows me to judge and decide how fast to make the turn. I get much better control than coming to a turn at speed and hoping I'm braking enough to complete it safely.

The coach thought I was pumping the brake on this drill. So I guess the safety brake light flashing module works! I always knew it functioned but it's good that it can be seen and is obvious to onlookers.

6. U-turns:
There were 3 boxes - a box inside of a box inside of a box. All three boxes share the same single corner. The drill was to gradually make tighter and tighter U-turns. I did this with a breeze. The scooter (as I was the only one) is a lot easier to maneuver than those big touring bikes and race warriors.

7. S-Curve
The S-curve was pretty short. It was probably about 30' at the most. Considering the bike is probably 4'-0 long, that's not a lot of travel before the S-curve track ends. This literally was a drill. Super short.

8. Stopping During a Turn
Sometimes this may happen, so this drill helps us prepare for it in a safe enclosed environment while coaches watch us and provide feedback (limited). Some students got more feedback than others. I suppose some needed it more than others. I don't know, but I wish I got more feedback. I can't imagine I'm so good that they didn't need to talk to me most of the time.

We were to pretend to make a turn and stop in the middle of it. Rather than stopping while the bike is in the turned leaning position, we moved the bike upright abruptly and applied the brakes while in this upright position. This was tough to do in a hurry since we're expecting and are deciding when to stop during this so-called "emergency" turn stop. I got the hang of it and acted it out after the first few runs. You can be successful at this drill if you're good at lying to yourself.

9. I don't remember all the rest of the drills, but the last one was a "Peanut run." It was running a short lap in a peanut formation. One long stretch followed by a turn. The second stretch included a curve forming a peanut shape. The class ended with this drill.

All in all, the course was good. Would I recommend it? Yeah, I suppose. Not super excited about it. But given that it's the only safety riding course I could find in SF, I took it w/o regret.

2 Incidences

A couple traffic things happened this morning on my way to breakfast. Not good. I survived. So lessons learned?


1. Motorist at my 9 o'clock is on the right side of the lane signaling a right turn. I'm normally cautious about driver's signals thinking they won't actually do what they intend to do. This time however, I trusted her since she:

a. Maintained her position behind a slow driver
b. Was pulled to the right
c. Had just engaged her turn signal light

What does she do? Zoom through the intersection going straight! This was probably only the 5th time I've ever used my horn. This chick was crazy. From now I'm I'm not trusting anyone's turn signal....ever.

2. As I'm looking to the right to see if it's clear for me to change to the right lane, I look forward again to see someone on my left pulling into my lane! I hadn't even left the lane yet and this dude in his mini van pulls closer and closer. At one point we were sharing the lane side by side. I should have known better.

I'm always careful that I'm not in people's blind spots for too long and when I am, I assume they're pulling into my lane. It just so happened that I was changing lanes though and my attention was to look for possible cars zooming up in the lane I intended to go into. From now on, I'm not changing lanes while in someone's blind spot....ever.

No sigs and no mirrors?

On my ride home today from having lunch with Gordon, I came up behind a scooter. The rider had a passenger. At the traffic light, I had a moment to check out this scoot. Vespa is synonymous with higher end stuff, but I was surprised to see that it didn't have mirrors. Even more surprising is that it doesn't have signal lights! Wow, how can someone ride a scooter w/o either? That's way unsafe. Glad I'm not riding that thing.

2 tires fit in the trunk!

Of all things that fit in the under seat compartment, I never thought I'd put these in there! Two 26x1.95 bicycle tires! Originally, I intended to strap them over my shoulder on the way home like a messenger bag but then realized I had learned a month or so ago that these things can fold.

I couldn't remember the details and wanted confirmation from an expert how to do this, so I walked back into Performance Bicycle from the parking lot and asked the tech. He put one of them in a figure 8. I did the same with the other and it fit!

The best part? When I got home, I checked the bead and nothing was bent! It worked perfectly! This is definitely something I wouldn't be able to do on a motorcycle. I love the Vino 125! Cheaper than a motorcycle, it gets respect on the road and it's got under seat storage too!