Here’s a video of a Day 1 riding exercise. Did you watch the video? That wasn’t me anyway. Alex, Dan, and Jack decided to pay me a visit and started filming the wrong person!! I was actually with the riding group on the other side of the range.

The riding portion was held at the parking lot at City College of San Francisco. First, a couple of tips for your riding day.

- DO NOT BE LATE. If you’re late, someone WILL take your spot! There are always people who don’t show up to their riding day or who fail the first time that want to retake the riding portion. Don’t let them take your spot! There was a good 5 or 6 people ready and waiting.
- Get some good sleep the night before, especially if you’re in the 6:45am class. You’ll need to be awake and paying attention.
- Bring your own helmet if you can. I doubt they clean the loaners. Just imagine someone sweating in that thing for 5 hours…
- Bring some water and snacks. 5 hours of riding is more demanding than you think.
- Bring extra clothes. It got really windy and I wished I brought an extra sweatshirt.
- Take a pre-ride dump if needed. All they have at the range are porto-potties and they were really nasty…

Once I got to the range, the instructors called role and lead us to our bikes. I spotted a Ninja 250 (same as Dan’s!) and wanted that to be my bike. I was too slow though, and someone else took it. I got stuck on a little Honda Nighthawk that looked really beat up. It sucked! Maybe I’m spoiled after riding a Street Triple, but that Honda sucked! Throttle was really, really unresponsive. The clutch lever was so stiff. I had the hardest time finding neutral on that bike. I ended up having to turn off the bike, clicking into neutral, and then starting it up again. The brakes were very unresponsive. I will have to admit though that riding such a small bike is actually fun for some of the maneuvering exercises.

The basic format of the riding portion is two exercises followed by a short break. The first exercise we did was to become familiar with our bike and to locate the controls. After that, we got on the bike and put up the kick stand. This is to allow us to get a feel for the weight of the bike. Next, we practiced FINE-C and started the bike. The next exercise was to help us get a feel for balancing. We started at one side of the range and “powerwalked” our bike to the other side. This was basically sitting on the bike and using your feet to push your way across. After that, we turned around, put the bike in first, and used the friction zone to get us across. We still had our feet down “powerwalking.” Then, we were allowed to try out using the throttle with feet on the pegs.

The rest of the day was exercises to give you more practice using the friction zone, starting and stopping, riding in a straight line, weaving through cones, and turning. The instructors emphasized keeping your head up at all times. One exercise had 6 riders riding in a big oval. We were supposed to practice shifting into 2nd gear and hitting higher speeds (ok more like 15-20 mph), but some riders were really timid and held up the rest of the group. We also had exercises in turning, where they emphasize looking through the turn.

In total, there were about 8 exercises. Everyone in my riding group did very well. There were no drops or mishaps by anyone. I rode about 12miles the whole day and hit 20mph at one point (that Nighthawk has absolutely no pick-up).

Day 2 will be more exercises, and the MSF riding test. To read more, click here.

For the article about the classroom portion, click here.

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