sailorstarrr wrote:so if I'm driving around in 3rd or 4th gear at 5k, that's not damaging my engine, right? is that about normal? and also, when I am going from a stoplight, about what rpms should I be at as I release the clutch?
ty for all the help
Di, there's a lot of very good advice here for you to take on board, but I can't help thinking that you'd do best to start learning directly from the bike, and not worry too much about revs and gears and what your dials are telling you at this stage.
Sev is right, learning to ride is not about instinct, but it is about experience, and it's experience that you need to acquire right now. Apart from the basic advice that has been given here, listen to the bike, get the feel of what it is doing. Just trust it to tell you when it is happy and working efficiently, and, more important, trust yourself to know it when you hear/feel it.
Until you start to become part of the bike, and operating the controls becomes second nature, you've got a hell of a lot of information to process, often all at once. And it is just too much to try and process it all through your head. If you are sitting at a traffic light ready to move off into traffic at a busy intersection the last thing you need to be peering at is your rev counter. As somebody said, just keep the bike from stalling. Listen out for that. Feel for it. Be gentle and progressive with the controls and you should be fine. Over time you'll learn, and in the meantime you'll make a few mistakes. That's what learning is about.
BTW. There have been a number of posts here discussing what revs and gears to use, but you can bet your last penny these guys didn't get this info out of a manual, they got it by listening to their bike.
