I took the MSR MC course at Georgetown DMV this past thurs and weekend. I was extremely nervous. Jerry, Ken and Dan were our instructors. They were very encouraging and great working with us. We started with 12. SAT came and it was time to get on the bikes. Now the last time I was on a bike was at 19. I had ridden dirt bikes etc on the farm since 14. I have driven just about everything that has a clutch. We went through all the procedures FINE-C etc. It was time to pratice gears. (We used Honda Rebels)
Neutral, everybody in netural raise your hand when your there. I struggled to get it in netural which I thot was weird since I knew where N was. Again and again for 10 min I strugglied to find N. Now I am a educated man but have some common sense. Finally one of my classmates who had ridden a lot and more mechinally inclined than I asked the instructor if it was a certain kind of clutch. The instructor said yes. So you had to do a little something different to get N. Whew I said to myself because i was sweating bullets because this was like day one of ride and well if you cant find N your not riding. Anyway I got a different bike and it was a much different course experience. I ended up successfully passing the course as did 10 of my other classmates. (One dropped out on his own) I ended up nailing the quick stop (the one I was afraid I was going to mess up) and lost some points on the turn for deaccleration. While the instructors were adding our scores from the eval one classmate suggested we go celebrate with a drink.
We all were certain we had passed and when Jerry announced we had, it was whoops hollers and high fives all around. so about 8 of us went to JD's in Georgetown to celebrate. My first post biker experience and as new as we all were it was a great feeling. I think the gal at JD's was glad to see us cause things were pretty slow. Mon I went to DMV and got the "M" on my license. What a great feeling. I have much to learn yet but I am looking forward to this new chapter in my life.
Blake