Why I walked out of the MSF course
Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 10:11 pm
Ok, so I finally feel that I'm able to talk about it. Not sure how to present it so I'll start with a little background info about me.
My brain and I have a ..uh…interesting…yeah that's it…an interesting relationship. It's constantly thinking behind my back, while leaving me to wait for it to pass information to me…eventually…if it feels like it…which usually just means that I'm standing kind of slack-jawed while waiting for it to finally pass something over to me. Ok, not quite that bad, heh. But it does feel as if there are two separate parts of me. The one part that does the talking and deliberate thinking (aka "me") and the other part that just goes and goes and goes and doesn't shut up and wakes me up in my sleep because it finally figured something out from a few days ago and its really excited and it wants me to wake up so it can share the info with me and if I don't wake up or if I try to go back to sleep then it'll just insert some crazy a** dreams with its new found information and I'll have those kinds of dreams where I wake up..and then wake up..and then wake up..never knowing if this time I'm really awake or if it's just another dream of me waking up. (it's revenge on me I guess)
*deep breath..in….and release…*
Sometimes I can't even answer a simple question because the question gets asked and suddenly I'm bombarded with multiple possible meanings/reasons for the question and multiple possible answers for each of those multiple possible meanings/reasons for the question. Sometimes I'll just snag the first one of those I can and blurt it out. Which isn't always the best answer…nor even really ..uh..relevant..to the question. But by then it's too late for me to attempt to describe just how my brain connected my answer to the question, and sometimes I don't even know until a few minutes, a few hours, or even a few days later how it was connected.
I can't say that I'm a "thinker", because the vast majority of this is not deliberate and conscious thinking. That road would lead to crazy-ville. So, since I've never figured out how to get it to shut up (except for a cup of coffee…which numbs me up and knocks me out for about four hours), I've learned to just let it do what it does, and for some situations make allowances for it.
This however also means that I have a difficult time concentrating on any one thing for longer than ..oh..maybe 5 minutes…if even that long. It's not ADD, it's just information overload, and the best way to not get overloaded is to just hop a brain ride for a bit, then jump off to refocus, then hop another brain ride, and so on.
Learning to ride the scooter has involved setting up a game plan with multiple (but somewhat limited) options to choose from at any moment. Working on each skill as the mood strikes, multiple skills at any one practice section. And allowing my brain to figure out what mistakes I'm making, maybe why I'm making them, how I can do it right, imagine doing it right, what's the purpose for doing it that particular way, and making the proper connections. If I consciously interfere with this process, it can really screw things up. So I just have to let it do what it does, and make sure that I have the opportunity to give it more information or physical feedback from the scooter's response. Importantly, riding the scooter has actually helped me quiet my brain somewhat because the constant scanning for risk factors on the roads provides it a ton of information…leaving me space/energy to focus on what I'm doing and where I'm going.
Ok, so now, enter the msf course. There was already some concern that an entire weekend course might be too much for me. (There's a reason I'm on disability.) But there was hope that maybe, just maybe, knowing that it will end in just three days would give me enough oomph to make it through the whole thing.
The Friday class was easy. I'd already read the book and had answered the study questions (before finding the pdf with some of the answers/locations). So what was talked about in class there was pretty much just a review. My table even called me an 'one of those over-achievers' ( if only they knew ).
Saturday morning I was up before the alarm clock, surprised that my mind had even allowed me to get some sleep since we (me myself and i) were so nervous about the range section. The class was expected to be on the range by 7:15am. I was there by 6:15am. (I'm not very good at timing things, and thus prefer to be way early rather than constantly worried about time and timing and traffic, and what if this happens and what if that happens, etc. Being early means I'm there, period. If anything happens it'll happen here and won't likely make me late.)
Some of us stood around talking and joking. Some of us nervous. Some of us confident. Me both nervous and fairly confident, lol. Our class splits up with the instructors, and we begin the lessons.
Now, the exercises themselves are not at all bad. It was a good progression from absolute beginning to gradually building up on previous lessons. The only complaint I have is that there wasn't enough basic stopping early on. But about 3 hours into it there was more stopping related exercises.
However, I can actually pinpoint now where my trouble started.
We were doing an exercise that involved us sorta power-walking a line of cones, stopping at each cone, with the intention to begin riding between each of the cones, and eventually riding the full line with only stopping at the end of the cones. The instructor stood at the end of the set of cones to offer further instruction or send us around to the other side and the other coach and another set of cones to stop at. Again, the focus of this exercise wasn't stopping. It was learning how to get the mc moving so that we are actually riding it instead of power-walking it. He kept saying that we would get to the stopping specific exercises later.
In this exercise I quickly recognized that I didn't feel comfortable with my ability/knowledge regarding the stopping controls. It felt to me like something hadn't quite clicked in my brain yet. Like it was still working something out. And stopping on a mc is different from stopping on an automatic scooter. And part of me kept wanting to stop like one would stop on a scooter, thus having some difficulties with the changes of the controls. The instructor kept telling me to let HIM do the thinking and for me to just DO. (How the heck do you get your brain to stop thinking?? Particularly when you're trying to learn something? I can see not doing it consciously..maybe. But in 36 years I've never learned how to stop my brain from thinking (except via coffee).) I had wanted more time to practice the stopping controls so I could get that clicked into my brain. But there is no time to do that. Solo practicing would allow me that time, but this kind of class setting doesn't allow that.
The second part of this exercise was riding the full length to the last set of cones where the instructor was standing. I began making some minor mistakes that I think only I was aware of at the time. Sure the usual mistakes of 'hands off the brake unless you're going to use the brake' and 'all four fingers on the brake when you do use it'. Lol, that was a constant they kept telling me, lol. Poor guys. Anyways, so as I'm making these other minor mistakes (because of whatever it was not yet having clicked in yet, regarding the control differences), my brain became..uh…separated…where part of it was focusing on the mistakes and, I assume, how to resolve the mistakes. Basically its usual thing. And with each mistake, a little more mental energy got sidetracked from ME, and went towards IT…the behind the scenes thinking.
Then we had an exercise that dealt with going into second gear, and then passing a set of cones which were a signal to go into first and come to a stop. For a few times some energy went to figuring out the upshifting and then downshifting thing, and once whatever was needed there clicked, the mental energy was given back to me. But….some of the braking mistakes were become much more noticeable to me. And thus began using up more mental energy as my brain tried working out the issue. Now, if I had been learning solo, I would have taken time to backtrack a bit and get that whole stopping issue worked out. But I wasn't learning solo, so there was no time/ability to do that, just have to keep going. And then somewhere in there I made a simple error of going into first without pulling in the clutch first. The engine revved suddenly, the instructor was really close to me, I didn't know what was happening and I feared I might do what I'd read about and lose control…I didn't want to hurt nor scare him. But I did come to a stop next to him, the engine was still revving, and I'm deliberately racking my brain trying to figure out what was happening. Finally the instructor explained to me that I hadn't pulled in the clutch before downshifting. And we got me squared away again. However, that was the pinpoint of when everything went downhill. Because once that strong emotion comes in, it starts to pervade other aspects. Combine that with now my brain REALLY had something to work on and had pulled out about half of MY mental energy. So now I've got the task at hand to focus on, but I've also got my brain running a mile a minute working on two problems…the stopping issue which was now raised to a higher brain priority than it had before (due to that surge of fear of losing control and hurting the instructor)…as well as the remember to pull in the clutch issue.
So now there's much less energy for me, and my brain's going a mile a minute and the instructor is telling me to stop thinking to let him do the thinking, blah blah blah. And the clutch mistake happened again with the other instructor. Which meant even more mental energy got pulled away from me and my brain became almost obsessed with figuring out these two issues. The best analogy I can think of is you know how they talk about "target fixation"? How a person will fixate on a target and keep moving to that target and likely hit it? Something similar seemed to be happening. My brain became "error fixated". And one of the psychological things that happens for that stuff..is ..mmm….like if you keep saying 'don't forget, don't forget, don't forget, damn, I forgot'. It in a way sends a message to the brain to forget. Whereas saying something like 'remember to, remember to, remember to, yeah I remembered', the message is more positive. It's like saying "don't think of a dog". In order to process the meaning of that statement requires you to think of a dog before you realize that the message is asking you to NOT think of it. (hypnosis technique) Anyways, in some cases (if not most?) of target fixation, the person is telling themselves 'don't hit the curb, don't hit the curb don't hit the…ooph'. The image they had was of hitting the curb, which in essence an instruction to hit the curb. So I think the same thing was happening with the error fixation thing. Because I wasn't allowed the time to work it out with my brain and to help guide it, it just kept running the errors over and over and over again in imagination trying to figure out where the issue was and how to resolve the issue. Which did what? Became subtle 'instructions' to make those errors. And I did. The small mistakes kept getting more pronounced, irresolvable at the pace I was having to go, and began happening more and more often.
At the end of this exercise, I was seriously considering quitting right there. But then we had a break and I figured ok, the break will help calm my brain down.
The break wasn't long enough for me to resolve anything. The next exercise came up, which was basically cone weaving with the cones in line with each other. I made it through that, but again kept screwing up the stopping. Then we began an offset cone weave, and I was third in line, and there was already very little mental energy left for ME, and the first person went down the middle as we were instructed, paused at the pause cone, continued on with the clutch control section, followed by the second person, followed by me. I made a 'stopping' error again at the pause cone, which grabbed up nearly all the remaining mental energy, leaving only a small portion left to me. Then the first person turned to the left, which, for some reason was where I thought we were supposed to go next. The second person turned right. And at the moment that that second person turned right, everything in me shattered. What few connections had been made since the beginning of the riding range to that moment just broke apart. Nothing left. As if I'd never been through any of it. I wasn't even sure how to pull over out of the practice area to stop. Somehow I did. And I numbly shut down the mc (thankfully it didn't require the fuel off valve), got off, and stood there, dazed. I didn't know where to go nor what to do next. My brain had finally shut down. What little energy was left was put forth into self preservation. I pulled off my gloves, then my helmet, waved one of the students who had paused to look at me..waved him on to continue, and then sat down on the curb. I couldn't think at that moment, nothing. Just reminding myself to breath.
Then I saw one of the instructors walking around the range towards me…and my brain somewhat kicked into gear. I began feeling bad because his walking to me meant he wasn't helping the other students. That my stopping might affect one of the other girls who was nearly to tears already. That I wouldn't get a chance to hug her like she seemed to need nor give her any words of encouragement. And this brought me to holding back tears. And still the instructor was coming towards me. I stood up to meet him.
He seemed surprised that I had stopped. Thinking that something major must have happened. I told him that I had just reached the straw that broke the camel's back. Noone knew I was even entering that area. Yeah I was making some stopping mistakes and there seemed to be some control confusion issues, but they knew I was coming from a scooter so the confusion mistakes were to be expected. He kept telling me that I really should come back, not to quit, that I could ride, that if there was anything major wrong they would have told me. I couldn't. I couldn't go back at that moment. My brain was fried and I didn't want to risk hurting anyone. I didn't feel that I was safe at the moment. He agreed that if I didn’t feel safe then I shouldn't get back out there for the exercise. And we both knew that that meant I was out of the course. And again he tried to assure me that I could ride, that I should come back, that I had been doing better than some of the other students. And again it seemed like my breaking down hadn't been noticed by them. (which in all fairness probably wasn't, as when I start getting overwhelmed I withdraw and withdraw and withdraw until I finally burst).
I asked him if he wanted me to push the mc somewhere other than where it was (I wanted him to get back to the other students), he said he'd take care of it. He walked me back to where my stuff was. He asked me what I intended to do (regarding licensing). I said I would probably just take the state's test. He said that it would be just as hard or harder than their own test (I'm not sure which..just that there was a comparison with the msf course being in the favored position, heh). He asked if I had my permit, yeah I do. He said to go ahead and sign up for the next course which would probably be a month or so from now, that would give me time to practice the exercises I had learned…to practice them on my scooter, and to use my scooter when I go through the course the next time. He assured me that it's common for even seasoned riders to get confused when moving back and forth between scooter and mc. And that since I was going to be riding the scooter I had, then I should learn on that.
I then numbly walked to my van, got out of my gear, called my brother to go for a walk with me (walking and talking with him almost always helps me sort my thoughts/emotions out), drove towards his house, and half way there I pulled over and just bawled and bawled and bawled…releasing the majority of all that tension.
After our rather short walk (back was hurting), I finally made it home, glad that I wasn't riding two wheels because I was so much on automatic pilot (and glad that there were not many other vehicles around, and listening to my mind crack jokes about how the point I was at is what many two wheelers complain about, heh). And then went straight to bed. I was pretty numb for that night and most the next day.
It was sometimes during Sunday that my brain popped up some useful information after being kinda hushed. But apparently it was working away at the problem of what happened. First it seemed to have been working on what could have been done to prevent the straw, how could I have made it through the course? But ultimately, I wouldn't have. Possibly I could have made it if I'd used the scooter. But even my mind didn't think that I would have made it all the way through on Sunday. The course format just doesn't suit me, personally. In real life I would have never pushed myself to ride for 5 hours straight one day and then 5+ hours the next day. Not for many years to come. That had the course been more of a few hours each evening for about a week, I would have done ok. But not the intense weekend thing. Not with the way my mind works. Knowing this actually helped reduce the guilt and self-criticalness.
Then my mind worked on some of the other issues. Finally got things sorted and clicked into place, I guess. Of course, I also haven't even looked at Buggy since bringing her home on Friday. I personally don't even want to think about the course and stuff. But I know I'm going to need to do so soon as I need to spend some time practicing on her with her new 'quirk'. And I want to practice traveling on a road that'll lead to one of the towns down south so I can meet up with some other Buddy/scooter enthusiasts. But I've just now reached a point where I can actually think about it and talk about it…(as long as certain not-so-smart people keep their mouths shut, heh)
And so, that, my friends, was my msf experience.
I wasn't kicked out…but I did walk out after almost four hours of range time.
Things I learned:
Use a scooter for the class if you're going to be riding a scooter.
Use a mc for the class if you're going to be riding an mc.
For some people, the weekend format won't work. Different strokes for different folks. And there's nothing wrong with that, despite what some people here might think.
My brain and I have a ..uh…interesting…yeah that's it…an interesting relationship. It's constantly thinking behind my back, while leaving me to wait for it to pass information to me…eventually…if it feels like it…which usually just means that I'm standing kind of slack-jawed while waiting for it to finally pass something over to me. Ok, not quite that bad, heh. But it does feel as if there are two separate parts of me. The one part that does the talking and deliberate thinking (aka "me") and the other part that just goes and goes and goes and doesn't shut up and wakes me up in my sleep because it finally figured something out from a few days ago and its really excited and it wants me to wake up so it can share the info with me and if I don't wake up or if I try to go back to sleep then it'll just insert some crazy a** dreams with its new found information and I'll have those kinds of dreams where I wake up..and then wake up..and then wake up..never knowing if this time I'm really awake or if it's just another dream of me waking up. (it's revenge on me I guess)
*deep breath..in….and release…*
Sometimes I can't even answer a simple question because the question gets asked and suddenly I'm bombarded with multiple possible meanings/reasons for the question and multiple possible answers for each of those multiple possible meanings/reasons for the question. Sometimes I'll just snag the first one of those I can and blurt it out. Which isn't always the best answer…nor even really ..uh..relevant..to the question. But by then it's too late for me to attempt to describe just how my brain connected my answer to the question, and sometimes I don't even know until a few minutes, a few hours, or even a few days later how it was connected.
I can't say that I'm a "thinker", because the vast majority of this is not deliberate and conscious thinking. That road would lead to crazy-ville. So, since I've never figured out how to get it to shut up (except for a cup of coffee…which numbs me up and knocks me out for about four hours), I've learned to just let it do what it does, and for some situations make allowances for it.
This however also means that I have a difficult time concentrating on any one thing for longer than ..oh..maybe 5 minutes…if even that long. It's not ADD, it's just information overload, and the best way to not get overloaded is to just hop a brain ride for a bit, then jump off to refocus, then hop another brain ride, and so on.
Learning to ride the scooter has involved setting up a game plan with multiple (but somewhat limited) options to choose from at any moment. Working on each skill as the mood strikes, multiple skills at any one practice section. And allowing my brain to figure out what mistakes I'm making, maybe why I'm making them, how I can do it right, imagine doing it right, what's the purpose for doing it that particular way, and making the proper connections. If I consciously interfere with this process, it can really screw things up. So I just have to let it do what it does, and make sure that I have the opportunity to give it more information or physical feedback from the scooter's response. Importantly, riding the scooter has actually helped me quiet my brain somewhat because the constant scanning for risk factors on the roads provides it a ton of information…leaving me space/energy to focus on what I'm doing and where I'm going.
Ok, so now, enter the msf course. There was already some concern that an entire weekend course might be too much for me. (There's a reason I'm on disability.) But there was hope that maybe, just maybe, knowing that it will end in just three days would give me enough oomph to make it through the whole thing.
The Friday class was easy. I'd already read the book and had answered the study questions (before finding the pdf with some of the answers/locations). So what was talked about in class there was pretty much just a review. My table even called me an 'one of those over-achievers' ( if only they knew ).
Saturday morning I was up before the alarm clock, surprised that my mind had even allowed me to get some sleep since we (me myself and i) were so nervous about the range section. The class was expected to be on the range by 7:15am. I was there by 6:15am. (I'm not very good at timing things, and thus prefer to be way early rather than constantly worried about time and timing and traffic, and what if this happens and what if that happens, etc. Being early means I'm there, period. If anything happens it'll happen here and won't likely make me late.)
Some of us stood around talking and joking. Some of us nervous. Some of us confident. Me both nervous and fairly confident, lol. Our class splits up with the instructors, and we begin the lessons.
Now, the exercises themselves are not at all bad. It was a good progression from absolute beginning to gradually building up on previous lessons. The only complaint I have is that there wasn't enough basic stopping early on. But about 3 hours into it there was more stopping related exercises.
However, I can actually pinpoint now where my trouble started.
We were doing an exercise that involved us sorta power-walking a line of cones, stopping at each cone, with the intention to begin riding between each of the cones, and eventually riding the full line with only stopping at the end of the cones. The instructor stood at the end of the set of cones to offer further instruction or send us around to the other side and the other coach and another set of cones to stop at. Again, the focus of this exercise wasn't stopping. It was learning how to get the mc moving so that we are actually riding it instead of power-walking it. He kept saying that we would get to the stopping specific exercises later.
In this exercise I quickly recognized that I didn't feel comfortable with my ability/knowledge regarding the stopping controls. It felt to me like something hadn't quite clicked in my brain yet. Like it was still working something out. And stopping on a mc is different from stopping on an automatic scooter. And part of me kept wanting to stop like one would stop on a scooter, thus having some difficulties with the changes of the controls. The instructor kept telling me to let HIM do the thinking and for me to just DO. (How the heck do you get your brain to stop thinking?? Particularly when you're trying to learn something? I can see not doing it consciously..maybe. But in 36 years I've never learned how to stop my brain from thinking (except via coffee).) I had wanted more time to practice the stopping controls so I could get that clicked into my brain. But there is no time to do that. Solo practicing would allow me that time, but this kind of class setting doesn't allow that.
The second part of this exercise was riding the full length to the last set of cones where the instructor was standing. I began making some minor mistakes that I think only I was aware of at the time. Sure the usual mistakes of 'hands off the brake unless you're going to use the brake' and 'all four fingers on the brake when you do use it'. Lol, that was a constant they kept telling me, lol. Poor guys. Anyways, so as I'm making these other minor mistakes (because of whatever it was not yet having clicked in yet, regarding the control differences), my brain became..uh…separated…where part of it was focusing on the mistakes and, I assume, how to resolve the mistakes. Basically its usual thing. And with each mistake, a little more mental energy got sidetracked from ME, and went towards IT…the behind the scenes thinking.
Then we had an exercise that dealt with going into second gear, and then passing a set of cones which were a signal to go into first and come to a stop. For a few times some energy went to figuring out the upshifting and then downshifting thing, and once whatever was needed there clicked, the mental energy was given back to me. But….some of the braking mistakes were become much more noticeable to me. And thus began using up more mental energy as my brain tried working out the issue. Now, if I had been learning solo, I would have taken time to backtrack a bit and get that whole stopping issue worked out. But I wasn't learning solo, so there was no time/ability to do that, just have to keep going. And then somewhere in there I made a simple error of going into first without pulling in the clutch first. The engine revved suddenly, the instructor was really close to me, I didn't know what was happening and I feared I might do what I'd read about and lose control…I didn't want to hurt nor scare him. But I did come to a stop next to him, the engine was still revving, and I'm deliberately racking my brain trying to figure out what was happening. Finally the instructor explained to me that I hadn't pulled in the clutch before downshifting. And we got me squared away again. However, that was the pinpoint of when everything went downhill. Because once that strong emotion comes in, it starts to pervade other aspects. Combine that with now my brain REALLY had something to work on and had pulled out about half of MY mental energy. So now I've got the task at hand to focus on, but I've also got my brain running a mile a minute working on two problems…the stopping issue which was now raised to a higher brain priority than it had before (due to that surge of fear of losing control and hurting the instructor)…as well as the remember to pull in the clutch issue.
So now there's much less energy for me, and my brain's going a mile a minute and the instructor is telling me to stop thinking to let him do the thinking, blah blah blah. And the clutch mistake happened again with the other instructor. Which meant even more mental energy got pulled away from me and my brain became almost obsessed with figuring out these two issues. The best analogy I can think of is you know how they talk about "target fixation"? How a person will fixate on a target and keep moving to that target and likely hit it? Something similar seemed to be happening. My brain became "error fixated". And one of the psychological things that happens for that stuff..is ..mmm….like if you keep saying 'don't forget, don't forget, don't forget, damn, I forgot'. It in a way sends a message to the brain to forget. Whereas saying something like 'remember to, remember to, remember to, yeah I remembered', the message is more positive. It's like saying "don't think of a dog". In order to process the meaning of that statement requires you to think of a dog before you realize that the message is asking you to NOT think of it. (hypnosis technique) Anyways, in some cases (if not most?) of target fixation, the person is telling themselves 'don't hit the curb, don't hit the curb don't hit the…ooph'. The image they had was of hitting the curb, which in essence an instruction to hit the curb. So I think the same thing was happening with the error fixation thing. Because I wasn't allowed the time to work it out with my brain and to help guide it, it just kept running the errors over and over and over again in imagination trying to figure out where the issue was and how to resolve the issue. Which did what? Became subtle 'instructions' to make those errors. And I did. The small mistakes kept getting more pronounced, irresolvable at the pace I was having to go, and began happening more and more often.
At the end of this exercise, I was seriously considering quitting right there. But then we had a break and I figured ok, the break will help calm my brain down.
The break wasn't long enough for me to resolve anything. The next exercise came up, which was basically cone weaving with the cones in line with each other. I made it through that, but again kept screwing up the stopping. Then we began an offset cone weave, and I was third in line, and there was already very little mental energy left for ME, and the first person went down the middle as we were instructed, paused at the pause cone, continued on with the clutch control section, followed by the second person, followed by me. I made a 'stopping' error again at the pause cone, which grabbed up nearly all the remaining mental energy, leaving only a small portion left to me. Then the first person turned to the left, which, for some reason was where I thought we were supposed to go next. The second person turned right. And at the moment that that second person turned right, everything in me shattered. What few connections had been made since the beginning of the riding range to that moment just broke apart. Nothing left. As if I'd never been through any of it. I wasn't even sure how to pull over out of the practice area to stop. Somehow I did. And I numbly shut down the mc (thankfully it didn't require the fuel off valve), got off, and stood there, dazed. I didn't know where to go nor what to do next. My brain had finally shut down. What little energy was left was put forth into self preservation. I pulled off my gloves, then my helmet, waved one of the students who had paused to look at me..waved him on to continue, and then sat down on the curb. I couldn't think at that moment, nothing. Just reminding myself to breath.
Then I saw one of the instructors walking around the range towards me…and my brain somewhat kicked into gear. I began feeling bad because his walking to me meant he wasn't helping the other students. That my stopping might affect one of the other girls who was nearly to tears already. That I wouldn't get a chance to hug her like she seemed to need nor give her any words of encouragement. And this brought me to holding back tears. And still the instructor was coming towards me. I stood up to meet him.
He seemed surprised that I had stopped. Thinking that something major must have happened. I told him that I had just reached the straw that broke the camel's back. Noone knew I was even entering that area. Yeah I was making some stopping mistakes and there seemed to be some control confusion issues, but they knew I was coming from a scooter so the confusion mistakes were to be expected. He kept telling me that I really should come back, not to quit, that I could ride, that if there was anything major wrong they would have told me. I couldn't. I couldn't go back at that moment. My brain was fried and I didn't want to risk hurting anyone. I didn't feel that I was safe at the moment. He agreed that if I didn’t feel safe then I shouldn't get back out there for the exercise. And we both knew that that meant I was out of the course. And again he tried to assure me that I could ride, that I should come back, that I had been doing better than some of the other students. And again it seemed like my breaking down hadn't been noticed by them. (which in all fairness probably wasn't, as when I start getting overwhelmed I withdraw and withdraw and withdraw until I finally burst).
I asked him if he wanted me to push the mc somewhere other than where it was (I wanted him to get back to the other students), he said he'd take care of it. He walked me back to where my stuff was. He asked me what I intended to do (regarding licensing). I said I would probably just take the state's test. He said that it would be just as hard or harder than their own test (I'm not sure which..just that there was a comparison with the msf course being in the favored position, heh). He asked if I had my permit, yeah I do. He said to go ahead and sign up for the next course which would probably be a month or so from now, that would give me time to practice the exercises I had learned…to practice them on my scooter, and to use my scooter when I go through the course the next time. He assured me that it's common for even seasoned riders to get confused when moving back and forth between scooter and mc. And that since I was going to be riding the scooter I had, then I should learn on that.
I then numbly walked to my van, got out of my gear, called my brother to go for a walk with me (walking and talking with him almost always helps me sort my thoughts/emotions out), drove towards his house, and half way there I pulled over and just bawled and bawled and bawled…releasing the majority of all that tension.
After our rather short walk (back was hurting), I finally made it home, glad that I wasn't riding two wheels because I was so much on automatic pilot (and glad that there were not many other vehicles around, and listening to my mind crack jokes about how the point I was at is what many two wheelers complain about, heh). And then went straight to bed. I was pretty numb for that night and most the next day.
It was sometimes during Sunday that my brain popped up some useful information after being kinda hushed. But apparently it was working away at the problem of what happened. First it seemed to have been working on what could have been done to prevent the straw, how could I have made it through the course? But ultimately, I wouldn't have. Possibly I could have made it if I'd used the scooter. But even my mind didn't think that I would have made it all the way through on Sunday. The course format just doesn't suit me, personally. In real life I would have never pushed myself to ride for 5 hours straight one day and then 5+ hours the next day. Not for many years to come. That had the course been more of a few hours each evening for about a week, I would have done ok. But not the intense weekend thing. Not with the way my mind works. Knowing this actually helped reduce the guilt and self-criticalness.
Then my mind worked on some of the other issues. Finally got things sorted and clicked into place, I guess. Of course, I also haven't even looked at Buggy since bringing her home on Friday. I personally don't even want to think about the course and stuff. But I know I'm going to need to do so soon as I need to spend some time practicing on her with her new 'quirk'. And I want to practice traveling on a road that'll lead to one of the towns down south so I can meet up with some other Buddy/scooter enthusiasts. But I've just now reached a point where I can actually think about it and talk about it…(as long as certain not-so-smart people keep their mouths shut, heh)
And so, that, my friends, was my msf experience.
I wasn't kicked out…but I did walk out after almost four hours of range time.
Things I learned:
Use a scooter for the class if you're going to be riding a scooter.
Use a mc for the class if you're going to be riding an mc.
For some people, the weekend format won't work. Different strokes for different folks. And there's nothing wrong with that, despite what some people here might think.