#msf

You’ve taken a basic rider training course. Got a few thousand miles on the your new motorcycle. Lost your fear of traveling on the Interstate. Got caught in the rain and made it home safe. Great! Don’t get cocky. Overconfidence at this stage of the game is a dangerous enemy. Congratulate yourself on your two-wheel accomplishments then humble your ego. Motorcycling, like life, is an unending learning curve.

So, you’re considering joining the ranks of motorcycle riders. Congratulations! Motorcycling is an activity that many riders immediately fall in love with and even claim to be life altering. You won’t hear any of the MO editorial staff argue with that. After all, we’ve devoted the bulk of our lives, professionally and personally, to motorcycling. Consequently, our opinions skew hugely motorcycling-positive. However, we won’t sugar coat it either. Riding a motorcycle is a challenging sport that requires diligence and constant self-analysis to be done proficiently while limiting danger. With the stakes being so high out on the road, you don’t want to depend solely on the advice of a riding buddy (though it’s always good to have more experienced friends as resources) or just plain dumb luck. With that in mind, we’ve put together this rider training primer to help start you rolling down the highway the right way.

We’ve all been there. Really. We were new riders once. We understand where you’re at: You’ve just bought your first motorcycle. You’re all excited to be riding your new (or new-to-you) bike home, you park your bike and stand back to admire it – and then it hits you: Now what do I do?

“It’s clear to me that more of us are dying because there are too many people who really shouldn’t ride motorcycles and the industry and advocacy groups do nothing to discourage them.” – Me, “So Why Are we Dying?,” CityBike Magazine, August 2012.

“They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work…”
– Punch line from an old joke in the former Soviet Union

The cliché about doctors is that people are always asking them about their health concerns – even when they’re not in the office. Well, one of the occupational hazards of being a motojournalist is having people feel compelled to tell you their opinions about motorcycles.