My office staff all walked in this afternoon with a look on their face.  Half joking, half not, they said “Please don’t kill yourself.”  They’ve been hearing about my riding class all week and I’m sure have wondered to each other whether or not this was such a good idea.  It’s probably fair to say I am not the slowest driver on the road in my car.  So wouldn’t the same hold true on a bike?

“Just tell me where you’ll be doing your riding practice this weekend so I can be sure to be someplace else,” said one of them.  Thanks for the vote of confidence.  I had to talk them all off the ledge for a good 10 minutes or so about what I have already learned about safey from my homework.  I told them about SEE — search, evaluate and execute, the MSF “safety strategy.”  Hmmmm, they said.  Sounds good.

Guess I’ve got my work cut out for me to prove to them — and myself — that I know safety is the first priority on a bike.

I’m going to learn to ride my own bike.  After 20 years of marriage, I admit it is a bit tough to think of creative and exciting things to give to one another.  But my husband outdid himself on this one.  He was almost giddy when he told me, after all the other Christmas presents had been opened, that I was really going to love what he had gotten for me.

And he was right – at least I think so.  The Basic Rider Course is this weekend.  I hope I love it as much as I do riding on the back of his bike, which I have been doing for a year now.  “You were meant to ride,” he has told me several times since as I have checked the calendar to see if I had some open time to take the weekend-long class.  “You’re going to love it.”  Why, I’m not exactly sure.  But I am sure there are a few universal reasons people latch on to this incredibly popular sport and ride like the wind whenever they can.

The first thing that comes to my mind is speed.  Not kill-yourself type of speed, but just the sensation of having nothing between you and the elements as you move along down the road.  I imagine it to be a little like water-skiing, snow-skiing or even snowmobiling, if you have ever engaged in those sports.  I fell in love with all three the first time I learned and became addicted to that feeling of flying.  When I was a kid, I used to think the greatest thing would be if man could fly, and wondering if they were ever going to invent those packs you strap on your back that let you fly around like in the sci-fi movies.

The other obvious reason to ride is control.  How does it feel to have all that power in your hands, to make the decisions about how to take the turn or just simply starting the thing up under your command?  As the passenger, I wouldn’t know, but I imagine it’s pretty great.  Like anything in life, there is a thrill that comes from being in charge, of successfully maneuvering obstacles, of making something powerful work for you.  This time it happens to be a two-wheeled, 400-pound, 100-plus horsepower, sleek driving machine.

Better learn how to control that.

I didn’t get into it my last post, but there are plenty of other reasons to learn to ride, such as the pure joy of driving, the sights and smells of the open road, even the physics of the sport like understanding the angles of curves or the science behind counter-steering. How does that really work to turn the wheel AWAY from the direction you want to go?

I am sure I will find out a lot of that tonight in the classroom part of the course. We meet right after work at a local motorcycle dealership for what looks to be an entire evening of the intellectual side of riding. I have studied my 54-page handbook and took the test in the back. As I thought it might be, on closer study of the sport you realize this is a pretty involved thing. The materials are fairly detailed and enough to scare off those who might think they can just hop a bike and ride if you show them how to turn a bike on. Great way to end up in the ER with a broken something.

The risks involved in riding are many and should not be taken lightly. I have underlined a lot of sections in the handbook about risk, preparation, caution, advanced planning.

I am determined to put my fantasies about the thrill of riding aside tonight and focus on the mechanics of it all.