Ride Diary

Experienced RiderCourse

I took the ERC at No. Va. Community College Loudoun Campus today. It's hard to believe, but out of eleven bikes, mine was the only representative of our beloved Honda Motor Company, except for the instructor, who demonstrated all the exercises on his Gold Wing. We had two BMW K1200 full dress tourers, a Suzuki Intruder, another "metric cruiser" and the rest were Harleys, with the exception of a Ducati Monster. One of the BMW guys dropped his bike in the first exercise, but other than that there were no casualties. Our group was pretty sedate: no peg dragging, etc.

Anyway the course is worth the time investment. It's good to have a reality check and to break some old habits. They're still harping on me for looking down at the ground too much, something I got zinged for when I took the novice course. I appreciated the braking tips and the rear wheel lock up exercise was worth repeating. It was also good to have structured training on my own bike, instead of a clapped out trainer.

Some of the classroom portion was a bit dull, especially if you taken the novice course recently, but it's still good information. I'd be willing to pass the hat for some new training tapes, though. One of them was a trip down memory lane to motorcycling 1980s style.

One Harley had extremely loud straight pipes and during the first batch of exercises I was right behind him. The blasts from his exhaust reverberated inside my helmet like a jackhammer.