passed the MSF Basic Rider Course!

pimaCanyon · Post by **pimaCanyon** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 7:13 pm

Bottom line is that I passed, I'm headed to the DMV tomorrow to get the motorcycle endorsement added to my license, and I hope my helmet arrives today or tomorrow because I wanna ride on Wednesday!

Thanks to all who posted here re the Basic Rider Course. It was definitely worth the time and money, at least to me. Maybe I could have gotten a good book about riding and spent the better part of a weekend at a large parking lot practicing (and then still would have had to take the driver test at the DMV), and could have saved some money. But would I have done that? Probably not.

It's been a long time since I've had to take a performance test of any kind, so I shouldn't have been surprised to find that I got nervous during the test! One of the test exercises was to do a very tight U turn in a small box at low speed, drive to the other end of the box and do another one. I had done that successfully several times during practice, but blew the second U Turn on the test! (went outside the box boundary) grrrr! They award 8 points for each exercise, and they took off only 3 points for my blowing the second U turn. So you would have to mess up pretty bad to flunk the whole test. I'm just happy it's behind me. Now I can go out and ride!

iwabj · Post by **iwabj** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 7:23 pm

Dibber · Post by **Dibber** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 9:28 pm

Congratulations. My wife and I took the course even after riding for years. It's amazing how one develops bad habbits that need to be changed. You are now a much much much better rider because of the course.

pimaCanyon · Post by **pimaCanyon** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 9:58 pm

thanks!

One thing that was cool about this particular class was that they had scooter loaners as well as motorcycles, so you could take the class on either one. Eventually I may want to learn to ride a motorcycle, and if I do, I will take one to a big parking lot and spend a few hours practicing the shifting. I think it would have been tough to have been trying to learn how to work the clutch and shift as well as all the other stuff we were doing, so I was glad to have the scooter option!

oh, and no snow in Tucson, so I can ride as soon as the helmet shows up! (gloat, gloat

)

Cheshire · Post by **Cheshire** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 10:48 pm

:needpics:

iwabj · Post by **iwabj** » Mon Dec 21, 2009 10:48 pm

pimaCanyon · Post by **pimaCanyon** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 12:08 am

Cheshire wrote:
:needpics:

yes. my bad! One of the guys at the course took many pics of his girlfriend who was also on the course. Woulda been cool to have taken some shots of everyone doing the various exercises.

All that riding was a lot of fun. I especially liked the weaving, kinda like doing a slalom course on a ski run. Gave you lots of opportunities to lean into the curves and see just how flickable a scoot can be.

Stormswift · Post by **Stormswift** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 3:40 am

I wish I knew to do a scooter vs motorcycle. I blew it on the curb. I manged figure 8 with practically nothing off, the stop swerve. The MVA test does not require figure 8, just the U-turn I think. I've been practicing those in cul-de-sacs, making them as tight as I can. I am worried about the sudden stop more then anything.

pimaCanyon · Post by **pimaCanyon** » Wed Dec 23, 2009 5:12 am

Stormswift wrote:I wish I knew to do a scooter vs motorcycle. I blew it on the curb. I manged figure 8 with practically nothing off, the stop swerve. The MVA test does not require figure 8, just the U-turn I think. I've been practicing those in cul-de-sacs, making them as tight as I can. I am worried about the sudden stop more then anything.

sudden stop didn't bother me. just squeeze both brake levers hard and keep squeezing hard till you stop (which will be pronto!). I believe they do not take off points if you skid. I did not skid, but I believe I lost a point because they wanted an even faster stop. (I thought my stop was damn fast, much faster than a car, but they said a scoot should stop on a dime!)

Yes, it was cool to take the course on a scoot. Two places locally offered the course: Pima Community College and TEAM Arizona. The college did not have scooter loaners but Team AZ did, so I went with them.

If you're doing a lot of practicing, you should do fine on the test. I think you'd have to really mess up EVERY exercise really BAD in order to flunk. So just ride your best, if you blow something, know that you haven't blown the entire test, put that one out of your mind, and go on to the next exercise.