Winter overstayed its welcome this year, and one of the biggest prices we’ve paid is not riding in months. Well, at least I haven’t ridden. Can’t say the same for my husband, who is a bona fide cheater.

Since at least November, when we stole our last late autumn tour through the crisp Ozark countryside, I’ve walked past, around and beside my beautiful red bike leaning on its stand in our garage. Riding weather’s just around the corner, I’ve told myself on numerous occasions. Not really, but my optimistic tendencies kept me going through the depressing gray weeks of January and February particularly. At one point, Raye and I got so down about the inhospitable conditions we spent a week or two planning and eventually booking our next big European riding trip this fall – 10 days touring the Pyrenees in Southern France and the coast of Spain.

Within the past few weeks, however, the weather has started warming up, I am sure the bulbs in our front yard will eventually find a way to bloom, and I find myself thinking about riding nearly every day. I called home from the office late one afternoon this week and asked my son where his dad was – “he’s on motorcycle rides” he told me. Rides? Yes, he’s taking out one bike after another, returning long enough to hop another one of his bikes and disappear again. This is a man who believes you can’t have enough bikes – some of which are theoretically in our garage only because they are beautiful to look at.

Cheater, I told my husband when I got home. What was he doing sneaking out for “rides” when I was glued to a keyboard with a cell phone sticking out of one ear? Just making sure everything was in good working order, came the reply. Cheater, I repeated, acting a little ruffled. But he wasn’t fooled. He knew I’d be interested in the details, so he pressed on, telling me how each bike performed, how the roads felt, how long the afternoon light had held up.

I got up this morning and saw daffodils blooming everywhere in our front yard. Riding weather has arrived, indeed. Good bye winter. Hello warm wind, soft leather, endless road.

My husband can hardly wait for the debrief when I walk in the door. Even though he got to see some of our riding test, he wants more details – how did it all go, what did I learn, did I like it? Funny how when I want the same level of detail from him in conversation I usually get some sort of one-word answer: good, fine, great, super. I am exhausted, so my attempt at the same kind of reply is met with further prodding. I remind myself this is what he loves, and the class was a gift. Part of the satisfaction for him is in knowing what I think about motorcycling now.

Over the next several hours, I slowly begin recounting everything I can remember – stories from Mike, challenges of the range, what was hard, what was easy. He asks me: “What was the biggest take-away?” Easy. I have a greater appreciation for the power of the machine. Part of that new knowledge produces apprehension I had not anticipated – like imagining everything that could go wrong while riding and many of those things being accidents I did not cause. Just stupid things other drivers – especially cars – will do around bikes. Part of it is the desire I now have to see just what that power can do. What would it feel like to ride faster than the 15 mph we did on the practice course? How consumed will my mind be while making the many decisions necessary to control the bike? Will I like that mental challenge, or will I prefer the mental escape of riding on the back of the bike instead?

On Saturday night, I am not sure of these answers. But after a 12-hour recovery sleep, I wake up Sunday to find myself surfing the Internet comparing different starter bikes. After church, we compile a list of my best options based on my husband’s nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the many makes and models of bikes. We consider key criteria such as seat height, weight, handlebar and foot peg position – not to mention looks.

While I am sure I need to test ride the short list, I am drawn to one or two that seem perfect for me:

Color preference: red. Both bikes come in right around 400 pounds or a little less and have a fairly low seat – about 30 – 31 inches. I am really tall, so this doesn’t seem like it should be a huge factor for me, but in straddling the different bikes my husband has at home now, each is tall enough to make me question my ability to keep them from tumbling over if I am not careful. The Honda Rebel I rode as my loaner bike was very low, probably ideal for new learners and not a bad starter bike for the average height person.

But I admit I love the signature trellis frame of the Monster. “Bike snob,” my husband says with a grin when I keep coming back to the Ducati website. I find this a bit ironic since his bike of choice is either a BMW or a Ducati – we have four bikes in the garage now in spite of the fact I have told him for years that as far as I knew you can only ride one at a time. Still, this is better than many other things he could collect, so I have never complained about his obsession with motorcycles. Especially not since I hopped on last year, and have not been able to get enough of riding since.

My husband also digs out a book he read many years ago called “The Perfect Vehicle,” by Melissa Holbrook Pierson.

The author writes about the mysterious attraction of the motorcycle, its history, the type of people who ride, why they love it and her own experiences with the machine. “You gotta read this,” he says. “You write like her.”

I also recall the many bike movies we have enjoyed together and that I always found fascinating even before we rode together. “On Any Sunday,” “The Fastest Indian,” and the iconic “Easy Rider.” Maybe bikes were meant to be a bigger part of my life than just riding on the back, yet even after the course, I don’t feel like I’ve mastered it all yet. But then again I can’t remember any sport I’ve felt entirely comfortable with the first time through. The challenge comes in perfecting your skill over time; otherwise it wouldn’t be very interesting.

We decide the next step, after getting my motorcycle license, is for me to get some road practice on more isolated streets near our home out on the edge of town. And maybe a shopping trip is in order.

“You’ll get the hang of it,” my husband says with complete confidence. “Like I’ve always told you, you were meant to ride.”

I guess we’ll see.

As the morning wears on, we encourage one another through the increasingly difficult assignments, and then unfortunately find ourselves saying good-bye to yet another classmate who’s having difficulty keeping up with things due to a nagging back injury.  We’re now down to five men and five women.  We break for lunch as some rain clouds begin to threaten and mercifully hide the summer sun for a while.  The ladies head off for a bite to eat, where I learn more about their riding interests and experiences.  We talk about the camaraderie of motorcycling and how you feel a part of a larger club once you take up the sport regardless of what you do or where you’re from.

Tresa, the most capable rider in the bunch, tells me about a women’s group called the Lady Riders of Northwest Arkansas.  The group meets every fourth Saturday at the Sunset Grill in Springdale “ready to ride at 9 a.m., come for breakfast if you like at 8.”  Tresa says the group attracts women of all ages from all walks of life and who ride all kinds of bikes.  “We’re ‘non-denominational,’” she says with a smile.  All bikes are welcome.  While the group has fluctuated in size through the years, the goal is to encourage women to ride and give them practice riding with others on trips that are not too difficult but offer some skill challenge.  Some go on to ride with the men in their lives such as husbands or boyfriends, while others continue to come every month or drop in frequently to enjoy the companionship of other women riders.

I got to wondering how many other women in the U.S. were spending their Saturday with a bike.  As it turns out, probably quite a few.  According to the Motorcycle Industry Council, women are the fastest growing segment of motorcycle riders, and one in 10 bikes sold is bought by a woman.  I ran across a great website devoted to women riders: www.womenridersnow.com, which was packed with information, resources, products and stories about women riders. Coincidentally, I also just found out July is Women’s Motorcycle Month.

We talk about the skills of our entire class and decide everyone is doing pretty well considering the amount of learning being thrown at us, and in fact the women are holding their own compared with the men.  We agree there doesn’t seem to be a gender factor in the learning process.  If anything, this is more a thinking person’s sport than anything else given the complexity of the techniques, the physics involved and the constant decision-making required by the driver.  Mike and Jim both told us the night before “Motorcycling is a skill of the mind and the eye.”  I look forward to the time when I feel riding is more of an art and less of a science, when my skill becomes more instinctual and less remedial.  “Muscle memory is critical to riding success,” Mike tells us more than once.  He encourages us to practice, practice, practice so that over time your reflexes take over many of the things you must do on a regular basis to ride safely.  I suppose this is like learning to drive a car but with less protection and more to lose from a mistake.

We spend the better part of the afternoon continuing to tackle more exercises including sudden stops in a curve, lane changing, swerving to avoid obstacles and maneuvering tight corners.  By this point, I have to admit I am starting to get a little tired and a bit overwhelmed by the constantly changing combination of old skills and addition of new skills.  I maintain my focus by talking with fellow riders about what we’ve just learned and discussing the finer points of each exercise.  Mike stops to tell us how well everyone is doing, and we are hopeful that the testing is coming to an end and all will pass the course.

In fact, we do.  Shortly thereafter, Mike and Trey prepare and hand out our official Rider Course wallet cards along with some safety literature, and we have a brief graduation ceremony next to our bikes.  They remind us to ride safely, to encourage others to take the class and above all to use what we have learned.  I take a group shot of the happy graduates and everyone disperses, hopefully a little wiser and ready for the road.

I am pleased with the parting words from my fellow female riders as they head out: “Come ride with us sometime.”  I mentally calculate that the next time the Lady Riders of Northwest Arkansas will meet is just a few weeks away.

Twelve of the 14 students from last night arrive Saturday morning ready for the 7 a.m. start time on our practice course.  The range turns out to be the parking lot of a local manufacturer in Fayetteville who kindly allows the training center to conduct its riding course work on site.

We wonder why the married couple had not shown up, and we learn they had chosen to take the riding portion of the class in Fort Smith.  As the day wore on, though, our group gets even smaller as two students drop out for various reasons.  It would be a challenging day.

Mike introduces Trey, another instructor, who will help us on the course.  We start off by retrieving the demo bikes we would ride from where they are stored nearby.  Pushing a 400-pound bike a few blocks will teach you why you never want to run out of gas.  Before we can get on the bike, Mike ensures we are all properly outfitted in helmets and gloves (loaners are available), long pants, long-sleeved shirts or jackets, and rubber-soled boots.

The first time I sat down on my black Honda Rebel, I feel the adrenaline running through my body to the point of my fingers tingling.  Of course whether that was nerves or excitement, I’m not sure.  Probably a little of both.  What would this be like?  Could I do it?  Would I like it?  Honestly, I wasn’t sure of the answers, but I was determined to find out.  Learning to ride a motorcycle is like any sport where you have to become proficient in the basic skills if you want to play.  While you often ride with others, clearly motorcycling is an individual experience that challenges the rider to master the machine every time the engine starts.  I remember the first time I learned to snow ski, it took the better part of the first day before I could come down a run without falling.  I hoped riding might be a bit easier, certainly without the falling part.
We took baby steps for the first hour or two, power walking our bike from one end of the parking lot to the other while sitting down, learning the all-important “friction zone” where the clutch begins to engage the rear wheel and the bike is powered forward (this is just like using a clutch when you’re driving a stick shift).  We move on to actual riding where we go through the simpler skills such as riding in a straight line, stopping, turning right, turning left and weaving.  Those who need extra help get more reps on the range, which ensures everyone is ready to move on to the next skill.

At this point, we take a short water break and as we are gathered around the bikes visiting, one of our classmates, an older gentleman who was getting quite a bit of extra help on the last few exercises, walks over with his helmet and gloves off to shake hands with everyone.  He is leaving the class.  We are sorry to see him go, but as he explains his difficulty in getting the hang of it, he says with a smile “It’s okay.  That’s why I took the class, so I would know I shouldn’t be doing this out on the open road.”  No kidding.  We are all a little more sober at the thought of any of us on the road at this point.  As the old saying goes, the more you know, the more you know you don’t know.

About this time, my family arrives to watch me in action: my husband, our kids and my father-in-law, who is an avid rider and often takes our son on the back of his bike when my husband and I ride.  They hang out on the edge of the course for a front-row seat, and they have arrived just in time to see our attempts at some more complex riding.

Our next round of exercises gets a little harder.  We are now working on accuracy, balance and using the friction zone to control speed.  A combination of assignments also challenges us to concentrate on combining a variety of actions either in the proper sequence or simultaneously.  For instance, driving out of the first gate, shifting from second to third, turning a corner properly, slowing by downshifting, then coming to a complete stop using both the front and back brakes.  This is a series of actions we would use on virtually every ride we might make.  Yet it’s not as easy as it seems.

Several of our group take some extra reps on things like cornering, trying to master the “slow, look, press and roll” sequence of actions to get through turns comfortably.  It’s more of a challenge to the mind than the body to learn how to lean the bike into a corner by counter-steering (pushing your arm FORWARD on the side you want to go rather than turning the handlebars).  A few students talk afterwards about the difficulty of making a right-hard turn.  Mike tells us the story of the woman he knew who never could learn that particular skill and planned all her trips making only left-hand turns.  “Not a great way to ride,” he says with a chuckle.  But there’s a lot more at stake in getting this one down.  Right-hand turns have a much smaller radius than left-hand turns.  If you mess up going left, you could end up in a ditch on the opposite side of the road.  If you mess up turning right, you could hit a car head on.

One of the exercises I enjoy a lot tests slow-riding skills, where the goal is to ride as slowly as possible in first gear without putting your foot down or going outside the boundaries.  This is a test of your balance, your turning ability and how well you can stay in the friction zone at a crawling, steady speed.  We do straight lines, S-curves, weaving and “the box,” which is turning figure 8s inside a small rectangular space – that gets even smaller as the exercise progresses.  Mike tells us there are slow-riding contests at many bike rallies.  I liken this talent to putting in golf, where the best short-game players have both nerves of steel and the right touch.  You need both to do slow riding well, and I feel pretty confident about my potential in this area.

While I can think of lots of other places to be on a Friday night, I find myself at 5 p.m. after a busy week at work climbing the stairs of a local motorcycle dealership to find a meeting room for the evening. I hear the voice of the instructor welcoming everyone, and I quietly slip into the back of the room where 13 other would-be motorcycle riders have already found seats. We have all signed up for the Motorcycle Safety Foundation’s Beginning Rider Course, and our goal was to cram as much knowledge about the fundamentals of safe riding into our heads as possible before the night was through. Tonight is our required 5-1/2 hour classroom work while Saturday would be an all-day, hands-on driving experience on “the range” (a closed driving course at a local manufacturer’s parking lot).

Heartland Honda has allowed us to meet at their beautiful store in Springdale, where dozens of beautiful bikes are on display. I am sure it is no accident we have to walk through the showroom to get to our meeting room. Jim Meyers, one of the training organizers, greets us with an overview of the class and what our learning goals were for the evening. We take turns introducing ourselves, which was helpful to learn why people were there – what brought each person to the class, had they already been riding, did they own a bike and just wanted to fine tune some skills? Or were they like me and had ridden on the back of the bike but never had the handlebars put in my hands?

My fellow classmates include a pastor, a married couple, an older gentleman who had ridden many years ago but not since, one man who identified himself as a “middle age schizo” who wants to learn to ride, several men ranging in age from probably early 30s to at least 65 or so who say they have always wanted to ride and had begged their wives for years to do so. Their attendance in the class was part of the deal that had been struck at home before they could begin the motorcycle phase of their life they had been dreaming of.

There are four other ladies in the class in addition to myself and the wife, and as I was soon to find out, they all had bikes and in fact several were experienced riders. One was a newspaper reporter, two others were process servers and one was a former postal carrier now working in the healthcare field.

Clearly motorcycle riding attracts people from all walks of life, and the variety of attendees reminded me you cannot stereotype riders. While we are all very different from one another, we share an intense interest in both the machine and the sport as well as a longing to be able to comfortably and confidently riding a bike wherever we wanted to go.

Jim turns the class over to the evening’s leader, Mike Turner, an experienced rider who has spent a lifetime on bikes with the stories to prove it. An upbeat instructor, Mike is a great teacher who keeps the evening moving along through the learner’s workbook by mixing in numerous “you-won’t-believe-this-but” stories detailing harrowing escapes from certain disaster.

A few examples:

• The time he narrowly avoided crashing head on into the front of a Greyhound bus going around the curves of Lake Tahoe. The bus was cheating a corner by riding over in Mike’s lane instead of his own. To avoid “becoming a grease spot” on the front of the bus, Mike had to turn his bike quickly onto the gravel shoulder where he didn’t come to a rest until 200 feet later.
• The time he was riding through Death Valley at night and came across a group of burros standing in the middle of the unlit highway. Fortunately, Mike’s swerving skills were more instinctual than anything else, and he successfully threaded the herd without incident.
• The time he rode through thick, freezing fog from Bakersfield to Sacramento, never so cold in his life and barely able to see the road in front of him.
• The time he learned to control high speed wobble (read violent shaking of the handlebars) on a bike by standing up and leaning forward over the top of the handlebars to put more weight on the front wheel (that is, if your shaking legs would even hold you up at this point in such a horrifying experience.).

A Vietnam vet who is also the president of a motorcycle ministry, Mike has seen quite a bit of life and met many interesting people along the way. His work as a paramedic for many years has also put him on the front lines of the aftermath of many motorcycle accidents and deaths. These experiences plus his own years on a bike clearly have made an impression on him and he is passionate – insistent – about the importance of riding safely. Such wisdom makes for great teaching. I am certain everyone one of us will walk out of the class that night with a greater awareness for the risks of riding as well as a deeper understanding of how to plan for and avoid those risks.

Whether we would put that knowledge into practice would be up to us. Saturday’s work on the range would be our first test of that.

Mike mixes his stories and his teaching material throughout the evening with a number of short professionally done instructional videos that illustrate different driving environments and situations. These really give you a sense of what you will see from the rider’s point of view and how to avoid a lot of dangers. The class is treated to pizza and a short break before moving on to finish the lessons.

Before we leave, we take a multiple choice test over the workbook materials and the videos. I miss only one question — about what to do when coming into a curve. We are dismissed with instructions of what to wear and where to show up tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. to start the driving portion of the class.

Better get some sleep tonight.

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.