I passed

[storysunfolding]

Nothing other than it's a new bike so if you do drop it (which you most likely will) cheap parts on ebay will be hard to come by. Then again, that's why most harley owners accessorize* so why can't that work for you too?


*personal late night theory

[jonbailey19808]

I would buy some $1000-$2000 beater bike and ride it for 6 months. Then after you can buy that VStar 1100. Belive me you will drop that beast if your new. And it will probably cost you $1000 to repair it.

I bought a GZ250 and rode it for a year. Cost me $1800 for an 2002. Then i sold it for $1900!

Bought my M50 Suzuki and i was way more confident on it.

[blair]

Thanks for the response. I understand that you're not busting my chops, I was actually kind of hoping that someone would try to steer me away from the 1100, mostly due to financial reasons.

Don't do eeet!

Oh, first, congratulations. Motorcycles are better than crack. And kill you a lot quicker, so you don't have to suffer. Much.

Anyway, yes, $10K on a bike you will almost certainly drop at least once.

It's how humans learn not to do the thing that causes things like that to happen

You really have no physical conception of the weight and awkwardness of a motorbike torquing to the side between your knees the first time you stop on uneven pavement that twists the front end and leaves one foot splayed wrong. And your instinct for how to keep it from falling will be wrong. MSF only teaches you how to pick it up. They probably should keep an 800-lb beater bike around so people can practice dropping it and get a sense for how small and weak we are compared to these gravity-sucking hulks.

Do that to a $2-4k bike first. Preferably one that you bought with a scratched up brake lever, exhaust pipe, and rear taillight pod. I have a theory that the bikes go easier on newbies if they've experienced laying on their side on the past, too.

Plus, a lighter bike will be easier to deal with in every situation: turning, stopping, taking off at a light.

So unless you're a bruiser yourself, avoid the bruisers. When you're confident that you've outgrown it, you'll be able to sell a good used bike for about what you paid for it, and you can still have that money to spend on your V-Star/Boulevard/VTX/Vulcan/whadeva.

[anarchy]

They probably should keep an 800-lb beater bike around so people can practice dropping it and get a sense for how small and weak we are compared to these gravity-sucking hulks.

the lightweight 250s used in class are enough. students are quite surprised at how heavy the bike gets (even light ones) when you try slow speed maneuvers or try to stop with handlebars not quite squared...

[storysunfolding]

The MSF course doesn't have a segment on picking up a motorcycle. Sure it happens sometimes but often the instructor is picking the bike up OFF the student and doesn't stop to comment on the technique

Student- ouch it hurts!
Instructor- Notice how I turn the wheel, what do you think that does? (Remember it's adult centered learning so we ask probing questions)
Student- OW OW OWIE
Instructor- Exactly, it shifted the weight of the bike onto your foot.

[blair]

They don't have a practical exercise on picking up a bike, but they do cover the right and wrong ways to do it.

And while a 250 cc bike is heavier than you think, it's still reasonable for all but the smaller people to stop one from dropping if they let it get past 30-40 degrees of lean. Even the big people are going to have a surprise coming when that bike is 3-400 lbs heavier and trying to twist out of their hands and roll backwards while it's dropping.

I still refuse to stop in the right-hand side of the lane at the stop-sign where I dropped mine. The road there dips to the front and right into a downhill right turn, leaving my feet on uneven ground and my right foot far too extended to balance right. Did a normal stop there, realized too late I wasn't actually standing on both feet, couldn't make the bike lean to the left without my right foot, and when my right foot finally hit, my leg just crumpled. And I race bicycles, so that ain't because I wasn't trying. Big weight, bad angle, splat.

But practicing anything gives you enough sense of how it will go that you can predict the situations viscerally and avoid many of them entirely. So drop-the-junked-goldwing practice should be a part of BRC, IMO.

[storysunfolding]

They don't have a practical exercise on picking up a bike, but they do cover the right and wrong ways to do it.

That may be something offered by the site you attended either company or state specific, but it's not part of the BRC curriculum.