Motorcycle Safety Foundation basic rider course- Thursday, Saturday and Sunday

It all started Thursday night- 4:40 PM to 10 PM - the Motorcycle Safety Foundation basic rider course classroom instruction. The instructor, Skip, kept the pace going and was a lot of fun too. Gave some very down to earth advice, and the evening flew by. It ended with a written test. Thanks to some studying before and some good teaching, I got 50/50.

Saturday was day one of the actual riding part of the course. Not the best day to sign up for, with temps over a 100F and the tarmac added another 15 degrees- put that together with a hot motorcycle and it was extremely hot. The instructors were very good about getting us in the shade as often as possible and reminding us to keep drinking water often. Skip was back with us, and Ian was the other instructor.

We did lots and lots of practice turning, stopping, weaving, changing gear and generally getting to know how to control the bike. The day went past pretty quickly but it was very hot and tiring and I made some silly mistakes towards the end, so I didn't finish the day overly confident.

Today however was a different matter. This time Phil joined Ian, and we went back over the exercises from the previous day and joined a few of them together. It was supposed to be as hot, but somehow, it didn't feel that way. Maybe because we were expecting it and had got a little used to it after the day before. After many many practices, we finally had to be marked in a test. We never found out the scores but were all given the card that said we had completed the course. We have to wait 10 days to receive the certificate in the mail. Then I still have to go to the DMV to take their written test. After that I will have my license!