Learning To Ride III - Practice

As I’ve said before my girlfriend has a bike so I have ridden pillion numerous times, which has ranged from Terrifying, Freezing to Quite Pleasant Actually. However I have never actually ridden a motorbike before so Katy kindly offered to let me try her’s. So off to my work’s car park we went (Orchard Brae House in Edinburgh). Katy started by going through the same basic controls that an instructor would: Clutch, Throttle, Front Brake, Back Brake, Gears etc.

My 1st thought?

“B#£%&Y H£*L this thing is heavy.”

It’s not quite the same as a push bike where if you really needed to you could just lift it up and turn it round.

So 2 hours later, I was getting the hang of it, though turning the throttle a little hard a couple of times did make me realise quite clearly:

“Hey you could kill yourself on one of these!”

All in all it was really enjoyable, a good start.