Experiences

Well, 6,000 km after I took my motorcycle rider course, it was time for me to ride with the pros and figure out if I had picked up any bad habits. I signed up for the Experienced Rider Course, offered by the Ottawa Safety Council.

The ERC starts with a two-hour discussion, itself preceeded with a tech inspection of the motorcycles -- for the ERC is done on one's own bike, as opposed to the 125-cc Brazilian Honda I had for my first course, in September of 2003.

The chief instructor took a close look at Brandywine, mostly to check the condition of the brake pads, the feel of the levers, the tread on the tires. (The result? Good, perfect and "you're going to have some fun in the rain, with a rear tire like that"). The discussion -- much more a conversation then a lecture, come to think of it -- was there mostly so we could exchange on our experiences, ask questions on how to handle certain situations. For someone who has read just about every book on roadcraft published in the last few years, there wasn't much new. But, hey, it was two hours of talking about bikes, you know...

On Saturday morning, before the 9 a.m. range rendez-vous, I took up the invitation extended during the discussion to meet with the instructors at a nearby Tim Hortons. OK, so I had to wake up earlier. But, hey, it was half an hour of talking about bikes, you know...

On the range, a large, deserted parking lot soon to be covered with little orange cones, I met up with the rest of the participants. All of the 12 motorcyclists, most of them on cruisers, were there as part of an M2 exit course, offered by the OSC and which includes an ERC. They needed their full M license, they decided to get examined (and prepped) through the OSC and they had to be there for the ERC.

Me? I just wanted to improve my skills.

We started up by circling the parking lot like vultures, to warm up the bikes and to let the three instructors take a look at our 3-2 downshifting techniques. Then, it was time to work out our left hands, with a good half hour of slow speed weaving through the cones. How slow? Take the speed at which you're sure to drop your bike, and then cut it in half. The secret is to slip the clutch, put a bit of rear brake to stabilize the chassis and look far ahead at the horizon, spotting the cones with peripheric vision.

Then, our left wrists exhausted, we practised braking, from the middle of second gear. Not the "emergency" (or panic, for some) braking, but just a nice, smooth, progressive squeeze on the right lever.

For lunch, most of us joined the instructors at a nearby pub, where the waitress' offer of beer was declined, and, for another hour, we talked about bikes...

There was a swerving exercice -- the photo above shows me going around cones in a quick left-right leaning of the bike. For someone who knows that it's impossible to lean a motorcycle without countersteering, for someone who is always aware of what's happening on the bars, it was easy. Not so for those who were clueless about the "push right to go right" principle. (Other participants on cruisers quickly figured it out, thanks to the instructors explanations, mind you.)

If doing a slow-speed, tight U-turn scares the heck out of you, if you feel that you'll drop the bike each time you're making tight, slow turns in a parking lot, the ERC is for you. We learned how to make tight turns. In this picture, you can see that I'm looking across the 15-foot circle, that my body weight is shifted, slightly, half a cheek, on the outside, that my throttle is steady, that I'm slipping the clutch and that I'm using a bit of rear brake. The proof that I've actually learned something is that after lunch, while the participants were lining up their steeds, I had to do a tight, slow turn to the right, to get next to another bike, parking to my left. Before the ERC, I would have put on the brakes, stopped, wait, then probably get in slowly. After that slow turn exercise, I was able to make the move in one smooth motion. Wow!

After we worked on emergency braking (motto: "Don't lock the rear wheel. If you do, keep it locked"), after a cool exercice where we discovered the feeling of a front-wheel lock-up, we worked on braking in curves, which was much easier than when I took the Gearing Up beginner rider course.

There was also a course set up which including constant radius turns, a chicane, a decreasing-radius turns. The instructors demonstrating it ont their 600-cc sportbikes did it in the middle of third gear. However, when we did it, it was in second gear, with the decreasing-radius turn in first. That happens when you're following a bunch of cruisers.

The underlying constant about the ERC is that sportbike riders, once they have mastered an exercise such as swerving or emergency braking want to try it again at a faster speed. That could not be said of all participants, unfortunately.

The best part of the course, however, was going over an obstacle, i this case a 4x4 piece of lumber. The pictures were all shot by Richard McDonald on his new Nikon D2H digital SLR. The caption explain the technique, as you jump from frame to frame.

The setup: in first gear, half throttle, don't know what speed as I was looking ahead, not at the speedo...

Click here for the next image.