Being a Motorcycle Safety Foundation (MSF) RiderCoach and teaching the Basic Rider Course (BRC) repetitively I get reconnected with the memories of being a new rider around a dozen years ago. It is one of the most exciting times to be a motorcyclist because your eager and everything is new but equally one of the most frustrating times because your just not there yet. Limited by your experience, comfort level and general ability you want to get on the bike ride into the sunset instead you are more concerned with making to the local gas station without killing the engine (or yourself).
Purchasing your first motorcycle can be as vexing as learning to ride it. Problem being that you don't know what you don't know. Do you purchase used and risk getting taken advantage of or worse, buying a real piece of junk or do you buy new; no worries of prior ownership but run the risk of damaging a brand new, beautiful bike in addition to making more of a financial commitment? In BRC we teach a section on risk management, risk awareness and risk acceptance. I believe this applies to the purchase as well. I did not want to risk a lack of confidence in the bike itself so I decided to purchase new. Not really knowing much about motorcycles (other than I really wanted one) I enlisted the help of all the people closest to me that had any motorcycling experience and expertise; my friend Jeremy who purchase a very used 1975 Honda CB750 that he had owned for about a year, his first motorcycle, and my brother, Art, who purchased a brand new Yamaha FZ-1 about 4 months prior, his first motorcycle. Rallying all both of my troops for input on a purchasing decision, with a combined experience of about 16 months in motorcycling I was ready to find my ride.
I believed then, and still believe now, that you should match your motorcycle with what your coriders have; at least in the beginning because it makes things a lot easier. Differing bikes have differing purposes thus, differing behaviors. With that in mind I chose to go the naked/standard bike route and purchased a new old stock 1999 Kawasaki ZR-7S from Cycle City on Gravois which no longer exists. To be honest I wasn't in love with that bike then, it just hit all the requirements on my mental motorcycle checklist; affordable, not overwhelming in terms of power or size, sporty and not used. Regardless of being on the fence with the overall appearance and technology of the bike I was giddy with excitement of taking possession of my first motorcycle. A dream was going to be achieved.
With the bike now in my possession it was time to figure out how to ride it. There I was, in a vacant parking lot of a banquet hall next to my appartment, my brother enjoying the nice warm heat of my truck, somewhere around midnight in the middle of January. Layers of clothes on to keep me warm albeit none of those clothes being real riding gear outside of my helmet. At this point I had purchased the motorcycle, I had studied up and played around on other bikes enough to be familiar with the controls but I had yet to successfully ride one. Step 1: Start the bike, put it first gear and ease the clutch out while simultaneously providing enough throttle that I didn't stall the engine. Seems simple enough in theory, substantially more difficult when put into practice. Within a couple of hours I even found second gear in that parking lot; it's located between hypothermia and adrenaline if you were wondering.
Eventually I made my way out of the parking lot and moved on to neighborhood roads, then main roads and then finally the highway. A few months later my brother and I enrolled in the Harley Davidson Rider's Edge Course. For those of you who don't know; it is MSF's BRC course with a healthy dose of H-D KoolAid. Taking the Rider's Edge course helped me refine my newbie skills and build confidence in my riding ability in addition to learning what to do when stuff goes wrong. Now every time I am teaching a BRC class and I see the looks on my students faces (the holy crap I was just going mach 3 with my hair on fire when really they barely broke 10 mph) I have a flashbacks of being in their shoes, or rather, riding boots.
Purchasing your first motorcycle can be as vexing as learning to ride it. Problem being that you don't know what you don't know. Do you purchase used and risk getting taken advantage of or worse, buying a real piece of junk or do you buy new; no worries of prior ownership but run the risk of damaging a brand new, beautiful bike in addition to making more of a financial commitment? In BRC we teach a section on risk management, risk awareness and risk acceptance. I believe this applies to the purchase as well. I did not want to risk a lack of confidence in the bike itself so I decided to purchase new. Not really knowing much about motorcycles (other than I really wanted one) I enlisted the help of all the people closest to me that had any motorcycling experience and expertise; my friend Jeremy who purchase a very used 1975 Honda CB750 that he had owned for about a year, his first motorcycle, and my brother, Art, who purchased a brand new Yamaha FZ-1 about 4 months prior, his first motorcycle. Rallying all both of my troops for input on a purchasing decision, with a combined experience of about 16 months in motorcycling I was ready to find my ride.
I believed then, and still believe now, that you should match your motorcycle with what your coriders have; at least in the beginning because it makes things a lot easier. Differing bikes have differing purposes thus, differing behaviors. With that in mind I chose to go the naked/standard bike route and purchased a new old stock 1999 Kawasaki ZR-7S from Cycle City on Gravois which no longer exists. To be honest I wasn't in love with that bike then, it just hit all the requirements on my mental motorcycle checklist; affordable, not overwhelming in terms of power or size, sporty and not used. Regardless of being on the fence with the overall appearance and technology of the bike I was giddy with excitement of taking possession of my first motorcycle. A dream was going to be achieved.
With the bike now in my possession it was time to figure out how to ride it. There I was, in a vacant parking lot of a banquet hall next to my appartment, my brother enjoying the nice warm heat of my truck, somewhere around midnight in the middle of January. Layers of clothes on to keep me warm albeit none of those clothes being real riding gear outside of my helmet. At this point I had purchased the motorcycle, I had studied up and played around on other bikes enough to be familiar with the controls but I had yet to successfully ride one. Step 1: Start the bike, put it first gear and ease the clutch out while simultaneously providing enough throttle that I didn't stall the engine. Seems simple enough in theory, substantially more difficult when put into practice. Within a couple of hours I even found second gear in that parking lot; it's located between hypothermia and adrenaline if you were wondering.
Eventually I made my way out of the parking lot and moved on to neighborhood roads, then main roads and then finally the highway. A few months later my brother and I enrolled in the Harley Davidson Rider's Edge Course. For those of you who don't know; it is MSF's BRC course with a healthy dose of H-D KoolAid. Taking the Rider's Edge course helped me refine my newbie skills and build confidence in my riding ability in addition to learning what to do when stuff goes wrong. Now every time I am teaching a BRC class and I see the looks on my students faces (the holy crap I was just going mach 3 with my hair on fire when really they barely broke 10 mph) I have a flashbacks of being in their shoes, or rather, riding boots.
