The classroom part of the class was earlier in the week and consisted mostly of going through the MSF wookbook and watching short videos. We worked in three groups of eight going through the practice exam questions, but took the final written test at the end individually. The test consisted of 50 multiple-choice questions with 40 being a passing score. I finished the test in about 10 minutes and got them all right. Most of the questions were pretty basic and not hard if you read the wookbook and paid attention to the videos.
The riding part of the class was split over two days. Half the the people in the class had the morning session and the other half were scheduled for the afternoon. I was in the afternoon session, which was nice since I didn't have to get up at 5:00am to make the 7:00am start time. More than half the class had prior riding experience and arrived for the class riding everything from liter bikes to huge Harleys. We initially had 10 people in our session, but this was reduced to nine when one of the participants just wasn't getting it and was asked to leave.
We had a choice between a dual-sport bike or a small 250cc cruiser. I chose a dual-sport as I'm tall and felt cramped on the cruiser.
The rider coaches started us out learning the friction zone by having us rock the bike back and forth using the clutch. Then we "power walked" the bikes, and finally got to ride back and forth across the range. We then moved on to turning, weaving, shifting, and finished the day doing maximum braking exercises.
Sunday was much hotter than Saturday (90deg. vs. 70 deg.), which made things more difficult for everyone. We started out riding around the range to get used to the bikes again and then did the dreaded U-turns in the box exercise. Only about three people in the class could do this excercise consistently without going outside the box or putting a foot down. The keys to this, I found, are: a big head turn, speed control using only the clutch, and stay off the brakes! Of all my attempts, I only managed it once, and then just barely.
We then moved on to more swerving, braking, and cornering exercises, and then a 30 minute session where we practiced three of the four excercises that would be on the evaluation. I screwed up the U-turns exercise every time (again) and didn't have much hope of doing it right during the evaluation.
Right before the evaluation, the coaches explained the scoring rules and the drop-the-bike-and-you-fail rule. Scoring was simple: you start with a score of 0 and get points added for mistakes. A score of 20 or fewer is passing. Three of the four evaulation exercises were timed with a stopwatch to make sure we met the minimum speed requirements. Several riders were asked to repeat exercises because they did them at too slow a speed.
Wonder of wonders: I nailed the U-turn exercise! I thought I didn't have a chance given my previous performance and the added stress of being evaluated. I decided not to even look at the lines and just concentrate on making good head turns and keeping my speed steady. The other three exercises seemed easy in comparison.
I ended up passing with a perfect score of 0, which really surprised me considering how nervous I was.
What really amazed me was the distribution of the scores. For the most part, the riders with the least experience did better than the riders with more experience. I don't know why this should be, but perhaps it has something to do with unlearning old, bad habits.
