biking

Test tomorrow

Yikes! We had a much better session today so I don’t feel so despondent about passing, but there is still some panic when occasionally I loose control of the clutch in the middle of town. But worst of all is the dreaded U-turn. On the few occasions that I managed it, it felt so easy but more often than not I messed it up big time, just by lack of confidence and panic, once slamming my crotch into the petrol tank – ouch. This time tomorrow I will either be euphoric and hugely surprised to pass or feeling heavy and annoyed to have to maintain the tension longer to re-take the test.

I must have poise, teh poise of a Zen swordsman.

Motorcycle trauma

Yikes! Riding a bike is so difficult! Its so scary for a start. Today we Camriders were on 500cc machines for the first time. And we drove down onto the A14 going north out of Cambridge, jostling with the articulated lorries that look just big from a car but look enormous from a bike. As our instructor urged us to wind it up to 70mph, the signs flashed by detailing how many deaths that stretch of road had claimed last year. We survived, me and a female school teacher who looks around my age or a bit younger, but with so many faults pointed out by our increasingly grumpy instructor (who has a bad knee injury that we could see was getting more and more uncomfortable) that by the end of the day I am feeling despondent about it.
I have one more four hour session then on Thursday morning I take the test. I will have to really focus and sort out my faults in that four hours or there is no chance at all to pass. Hmmm. Interesting. Learning new skills later in life is interesting and certainly an opportunity for reflection: how do I deal with criticism and lack of confidence? Do I deal with it better now than I did 30 years ago? Is it harder to learn? Do I understand physical learning? I’m also keen to know what brought the instructors into the job. Maybe I will ask. I notice some similarities in how I respond to a tough day on the bike to my experience as a student nurse when I was in my early thirties coping with very high stress situations (e.g. first ward of training on a head injury unit). There’s something similar about the vulnerability of being in these situations with little confidence. However now, its not so ghastly….
Watch this space (if anyone ever does) to see how I got on with the test on Thursday.

more on motorcycling

Getting a full bike license in the UK involves various stages now. I remember when, if you had a car license, you could ride a 250cc machine as long as you had L plates. Not any more. Last Sunday I did a day long CBT (compulsory basic training) on a 125 bike at Cambridge’s CAMRider. It involves some classroom teaching followed by trying out the bike on their site, starting up, going around cones, practising slow speed manoevering etc. A morning is exhausting enough, then after lunch they lead you out onto the road. Its nerve-wracking! We drove, not just around the lanes of the quiet village where CAMrider is sited, but straight into the middle of Cambridge. Yikes! All with the teacher giving instructions into a earpiece. At the end I got the CBT certificate and an aching body and ringing ears for days after. Next week I do another 1/2 day which includes an introduction to riding a 500cc machine. Its a heady mixture of excitement and fear – mostly fear. Now I have some more padded trousers – I fell off on sunday onto a grass verge luckily.

Moving relentlessly on

Yesterday I snuk upto the theory test centre and passed my motorcycle theory test. The two men running the centre made jokes about ageing bikers. I expected the hazard perception part – where 14 one minute videos are shown on your pc screen of road scenes and you have to click when you notice hazards developing – to be tricky, not in the spotting of them (I have been driving for many years) but in what is the right technique to convince the computer programme that you have spotted them early and are not clicking at random which gets you a nil points. I had spent a few weeks with the highway code and a thick book of bike theory test questions. Some are easy e.g. you need to replace your battery. how do you dispose of the old one? a) at a garage b) at a recycling centre c) leave it on waste ground (I can’t remember d).
I got 100% (35 out of 35) for the multiple choice and 54/75 for the hazard spotting (the pass mark is 44). So I am on course for the riding course in July. There is still the question of finding the money to buy a bike – assuming that I pass (and my son today passed his driving test first go and that is something to live up to.))

My latest scheme: learning to ride a mo*orcy*le

I’ve had a few rather stereotypical male things I’ve wanted to step out and do for years (an earlier one was shaving my head). This one has been lurking since my late teens when as the assistant to an ageing biker youth hostel warden in Litton Cheyney in Dorset I was ferried around by gentlemen riding large machines. I remember one ride on a beautiful Sunday evening in summer riding from Dorset up to Royal Crescent in Bath on the back of a BMW bike. Getting to ride a bike is complicated and rather costly now. First there is a motorbike theory test which I take this week, then a 5 session course starting with a CBT (Compulsory basic training) that nowadays anyone who wants to ride anything with a motor needs to have, and ending with taking the bike test on a 500cc machine. Hoping I pass, after that there is the question of buying a bike. I already have a rather nice jacket from ebay for a tenner.