Bellboy1

Um, yeh, ....but not too close Looking forward to the ride!

I am also a newb, so take this for what its worth. Eveything posted so far is correct from what I have experienced, but there are two I experienced that I haven't seen The MSF class will help a bunch. I was kind of the same way last year when I first did the MSF. This year I did the class again, but with more practice time riding on my bike, so I didn't have to think about the controls or countersteering, I could just work on getting smooth for my cornering. Since last year this just clicked and I've found I'm getting faster through turns and corners. For me I found the herky jerky last year came from 2 factors. As a kart racer it pissed me off to realize what they were, but it was: 1. I didn't trust how far I could lean the bike. That caused me to hit brakes or roll off throttle in the middle of a turn. BAD! :nono:I have learned that the bike will lean over very far at low speeds. It just takes practice to get confidence in it. 2. And this was the critical one. I didn't have my eyes far enough up through the turn. If you get your eyes in the right spot, your hands will follow your eyes, and the bike will follow your hands. Really emphasize getting your head around and looking THROUGH the turn. Its racing 101 but can be applied to everything motorized. I realized I was looking at the apex and never moving my eyes up which was causing me to drive right at the apex and screw up the entire corner. Once you start in to the corner get your eyes up for the exit. When my eyes were in the right spot, I just kind of automatically roll in throttle and the whole bike just works and shoots through a corner perfectly stable. Anyhow flame away, but this is what helped me achieve smoothness zen.

…that kept ending up in a tree by the end of the day.

I think we're all feeling it. I've been looking longingly out the office window all morning trying to see if I can squeeze in a semi dry ride in this evening.

I've been very happy since I joined the forum. I haven't caught any sh*t from anyone yet with my newbie posts but I'm sure that's just a matter of time till they get used to me and start poking some fun! Talking some sh*t is ok and can be fun, but recently I've seen at least one motorcycle forum where some newbies were getting attacked for not knowing things and or asking relatively decent questions. That is not cool and one reason I starting coming to OR. Its just a little harder to find some newbie threads because as mentioned earlier, they are sprinkled throughout the site. Nice thing about that is I get to see a lot of different topics as I look around. On topic, I heard two radio commercials and saw a television add last night for motorcycle safety. The commercial looked like a direct clone of the one in England where a left turner pulls out in front a bike. Good to see and reminds drivers to look carefully and look twice for bikes when at intersections. Graphic enough that it might stick in their minds.

Yep, rain sucks. My MSF classes were in pretty extreme weather. In my short time riding I can say I have now ridden in Rain, sleet, fog, high wind and even light hail. So the conditions won't bother me too bad if I'm caught in them, but I just don't want to voluntarily ride out into it yet. My first real ride after msf took me out on 5 lane wide route 23 that I drive everyday to work. I remember thinking "Where did all this traffic come from and when did it start driving so fast?" Fortunately I only had to go a mile or so before turning off onto a side road, and now I realize traffic was very light that day!!! Over the last few weeks I've gotten used to it, but that first time got the heart pumping.

Ok so I am so stoked about riding now. At 40 I feel like a brand new driver. So much to learn, so exciting, so FUN! I learn something every time I go out and I can't wait to go back out again. Even back roads I have driven a million times are new and vibrant again. All of my senses are at 110% both on alert and also just taking everything in. The sound, the smells, you just can't get that in a car. I know at some point this feeling will diminish some,but what do you remember about your first rides?

Nice ride! I really like the color combo.

Good suggestions and reminders in there. BTW, I saw a better riding tips section in the tech forum. Where is the best place to post the newb questions? I've been using the daily ride area since it has more visibility.

I wasn't sure what to expect but I thought it was OK. I liked meeting some of the riding clubs and talked for quite a while with the AMA, Mid Ohio and Indy folks. I believe I may even give the little XR's down at Circelville a go the next time I'm down there and the Vintage Japanese club might be a good contact for an old Virago I'd like to get running. I almost enjoyed looking at other people's bikes as much as anything since I can't make it to most of the bike nights elsewhere.

I didn't mean to send this off topic, but Galland also arranged for Bader to have the prostetic leg he lost while bailing out replaced

^+1 Its good to be an example for others that a freak occurance does not mean the end of everything. Shit happens, how you deal with it is the part that others remember and respect. There was a guy named Doug Bader who lost both legs below the knee in an airplane accident in the late 30's. Not only went back to flying but went on to be a great ace flying Spitfires in WWII. I thought of him when I read BKizz's post.

Yeh, I just was a little surprised at how detached I was from it. My wife pointed it out to me. She asked how it was that it didn't seem to bother me in the least to hear about this stuff. The whole," I ride ATGATT, have taken the msf classes, listen to advice from experinced riders, and make good decisions" defense mechanisms kick in. I have been around both flying and SCCA racing for many years now and had similar experiences to KTM Brian, but fortunately only witnessed one fatality. Seems like if you are a moderate risk taker in life you have the ability to switch off to the bad stuff emotionally. You learn what you can constructively and move on, never giving it a second thought and just enjoying the sport and all that goes with it. I was just curious to see if it is the same for others.

I grew up in Dayton and idolized pilots at the airshow and fighter pilots in general. As such I always knew that there was a chance the people I got to know could become a smokey hole in the ground someday, but no one dwelled on it, we just concentrated on the good parts of flying. Now that I am riding, I finding myself in a similar mindset and trying to just concentrate on the good parts of riding. There have been several accidents around Columbus and I find myself trying to learn from them in an emotionally detached way. First a rider was killed at high speed near my inlaws house about 2 weeks ago. Some reports were he was fleeing from police but either way it was a combination of poor decisions. After my first commuting to work ride last week, the rider from OSU was killed at a busy intersection on the same road later that evening. I do some work with the SAE team over at OSU so I may have even met the guy in passing. This morning as I pulled out of my neighborhood I saw a large touring bike being picked up off 23 by some firemen and pushed into a parking lot. Fortunately it did not look too bad so I don't think it was in a collesion, but I didn't see a rider and the ambulance was still on site. Is the rider OK? Gravel? Left Turner? Lowside? All thougths running through my head because I rode through the same intersection yesterday morning. Do you just move on and accept that this is the price of enjoying motorcycling, or is there something to learn in each case? Maybe I just didn't notice before I started riding, but these three were all close to home for various reasons.

Good plan on getting stuck in the intersection Sparky. I didn't have that happen the other day, but it certainly could have. I would have had to improvise because I know I did not have a plan for that, but I don't think I would have just sat there as a target either!!

Finding good mentors seems key. I have a good mentor that I have not even been able to ride with but has a few years of experince herself. She gives me great advice all the time based on my new experinces and millions of questions. The key for me is that she thinks in similar terms as myself, makes common sense judgements and is not afraid to point out where I may have screwed up. She is also not so experinced that she has forgotten what it is like when you are first learning. It is too bad she lives so far away, so we can't really ride together. ( She just joined OR BTW) It was even nicer that she is the previous owner of my bike and has kept in contact with me to coach me along. So now I'm trying to figure out who to go riding with. There is only so much you can ask on forums and there is no subsitute for real world riding and coaching. That is why MSF is so good because they point stuff out right when it happens and how to fix it. Problem is the instructors are not with you in the middle of traffic when you are trying to figure out OK what do I do now, they didn't talk about this in class? Several OR riders have offered fill this gap to go ride, so I am reading old posts from them, trying to figure out what their riding viewpoints are and soon I'll PM some that seem to fit with my own views on riding. I agree that a large group ride seems the wrong way to get over the first part of the learning curve. If you already know good riders tap into their knowledge, but also temper it knowing that experience alone does not always mean a person will make a good teacher.

As a newb that was reading all winter getting ready for riding season: +1 Sport riding techniques- Good modern perspective for sport bikes and focus on riding mechanics of body position and interaction with bike and road as opposed to survival strategies. I think it should be read as a primer for Twist of the wrist 1 and 2 which are a little more technical but also excellant. Proficient motorcycling and More Proficient motorcycling by Hough for riding survival strategies and real world riding situations described well. Ride Hard Street Strategies- Good for understanding rsiks of riding and how to minimize them. Studies the Hurt report and what it really means. I liked it but there was also about 6 inches of snow on the ground and I was pretty much reading anything I could find at that point! Little dry and heavy handed on scare tactics, but only $5 at half price books so worth it.

No problem on the post. Since mistakes can be deadly on a motorcycle, I'd rather ask the questions so I have a plan and know what to do in new situations. As in flying you start with an empty bag of experience and a bag of some luck, but you don't know how much. Trick is to fill the experience bag without ever running out of the luck! Advice from experienced riders is good too. Problem is when you are starting out and making contacts with riders you don't know very well. There are plenty of riders I know that have habits I DON'T want to emulate either! On the visor I have now done both, but was glad I had it down at speed when I hit a bug.

The splitting idea was my emergency eject plan! Most of the road was 2 lane but the car in front of me may have had a rider in it as he stayed way to the right seemignly on purpose. I also made sure to fill his rear and side mirrors on the left. That allowed a gap big enough that I could have pulled up on his left and still been in "my" lane and not across the yellow. Should the guy behind have gotten too close I was prepared to pull up there. Everyone was well behaved so I never felt like I was going to get run over, but I never let down my guard either. I'm going to have to get better at the controlling the pace thing. Sometimes we were crawling, other times it would pick up a little for 20-30 feet.

Related to my earlier post about riding to work for the first time, I feel a little silly asking but here goes. Ok, so for the last 25 years I have paid attention to the existance of motorcycles in traffic, (Thanks to some good coaching early on), but now that I'm actually ON a motorcycle, I realized I didn't pay any attention to what they are actually DOING when I interact with them. Let me explain. Yesterday I was sitting in rush hour traffic on the way home. At several stop lights, I had to go through a couple cycles of the light to get through. Typical stop and go stuff. Heres my question. Do you: A. Power walk the bike forward as the cars move up? B. Let a gap open and just ride forward? C. Something else I'm overlooking? I tried A and B and both felt awkward. A. resulted in a reasonable gap to the car behind me and pumping the front brake seemed to keep them awake. ( A. worked OK but I thought the idea was to get feet up as soon as possible. Maybe not the case in stop and go?) B. Seemed to encourage the car to speed up behind me beacause he was watching me instead of traffic and we would have to stop again rather quickly. (I didn't really care for B!) I eargerly await your responses!

Wow, that's great C-bus. For now, I think I'll build into the daily ride. Ride home was a bit hectic tonight. Experinced my first tailgater as soon as I pulled out of the work lot. Did Roxy's brake flashing thing which helped, but real answer was to switch lanes as soon as I could and pull away. I didn't get a chance to try the wiggling thing tonight. Little by little. I'm impressed at how many people ride all the time.

Welcome to OR! You might recognize the Avatar. Still the best picture I have of the bike. Lol! I'll be up for a road trip up north pretty soon to go exploring!

I've had several more experinced folks warn me about riding when other stuff is on my mind. Seems like sound advice. I'd been told to position to lane split if you need a quick escape. I watched my mirrors pretty close at intersections but I probably still wasn't in the best position to do that if needed. I do have bright LED's installed in all my signals and brake lights. New info on the wiggling.

This may have been done somewhere else, but I thought I'd throw it out there. I bought a motorcycle mainly to get away for a couple hours on weekends and as a toy to just enjoy riding. I found I liked it so much I'm looking for new and additional ways to ride during the week. Today I rode to work for the first time. My first time in real urban traffic (although I went early enough to miss most of the rush) and it was still 98% exhileration and 2% terror. I had forgotten about traffic circles on my route since I normally use the free way to get to work. New and exciting experince for a newb to run through those as people are trying get to work. My heart was pounding as I went through, but I had a grin from ear to ear when I walked into work. How many folks ride to work as opposed to just have fun cruising on their bikes?

I was at a similar point earlier this year when I went shopping. My biggest problem was finding a boot that would fit over my calf. It seemed that most of the sport touring boots were made for skinny legs and I could not close the inner zipper on several brands. The $300 Sidi's were great, but I couldn't quite pull the trigger on them. I started looking at features that protect the most common injuries. I looked for toe protection, heavy contruction to protect the ankle, and quality of overall contruction. I also ended up with TCX's because they fit well and offered good protection features. Mine just don't have the full racing anti-twist ankle feature some of their upper end race boots have. Mine were in the $125-$150 range. Alpinestars have some decent mid price boots as well and they seem highly recommended, they just didn't fit me very well. There are lots of on line gear reviews. Check them if you find a kind you like.