7 Tips For New Motorcycle Riders

Part of my blogging here will be about motorcycles, because motorcycles are great, more on that in the future.

I ride a 1980 BMW R100T. It’s a classic bike, not as classic as I’d like, not as classic as my dad’s ’76 R90/6. It’s also a big bike – I can’t comfortably put both feet down. In hindsight it probably wasn’t the best bike to start on, and I’ll admit I brought it down more than a few times.

After a few years of riding, I consider myself a proficient rider, if we’re using Dreyfus Model. My girlfriend is a beginner, and I’ve been tasked with teaching her the art of motorcycling. She’s about to take her driving test, and will soon be unleashed upon the world. Here is some advice for her, as well as anyone who has just started riding.

7 Tips For New Motorcycle Riders

Pretend You’re Invisible

Because you are. Do what the safety manuals, driving instructors, and commen sense says and dress for visibility: light-colored helmet, reflective material on your jacket, holes drilled in your pipes etc. Once you’re on the road though, you’ve done what you can. The safest thing to do now is to pretend you’re invisible. You can’t control whether a car swerves in front of you, you can control how you react.

Ask yourself, “What would that car do if he didn’t know I was here?”. That way, when they do cut you off, you’re prepared, you can safely and calmly manouvre out of his way, with the added benefit of being able to safely honk and flip them the bird.

Dodge Invisible Obstacles

I ruined a very nice shirt while riding to my brother’s graduation ceremony. I was making a simple left turn onto a side street, but I didn’t see the loose gravel that would end up bringing my bike down.
Most of my dodging has been to avoid hitting things like sand and gravel. Occassionally branches and trash, and on trips to my parents house, a dog or two. You can do yourself a favor by familliarizing yourself with your bike ahead of time, so you know how to handle these hazards safely.

I’d reccommend doing this exercise when no one is around, lest they think you’ve been drinking. I often do this on longer, less interesting, rides. Go through Nebraska once, and you’ll be an expert. It’s a pretty simple exercise, just pick a spot down the road, drive towards it, and at the last second, avoid it. You can adjust this many ways. Try quickly changing your lane position, from left tire-track to right, or from one lane to another. If it helps, pretend a car has stopped quickly in front of you, or a meteor has smashed into the pavement. Doing this exercise keeps you alert and your muscle memory tuned.

Practice Accuracy

I spent some time riding trails in Wisconsin a few years ago. I was riding a Honda CT110 Trail Bike. We made up about 1% of the traffic on these trails as motorcyclists on this popular ATV path, but our bikes were great for following their tire tracks. The only problem was the occasional bridge. These bridges were old and rickety, and their driving surface was made up of 4×4 boards laid lengthwise across the bridge. About half of these boards were missing, leaving for us motorcyclists a sort of high-wire act. The holes weren’t wide enough for our tires to fall through, but they were big enough to get ‘stuck’ in, making maneuvering impossible and likely sending one head-over-heels.

This is why you should practice accuracy. An expert rider should be able to put both of her tires exactly where she wants them. You can practice this everyday by doing something as simple as confining yourself to stay within a tire-track, or on long lonely roads, try to ride the center line for as long as you can. This skill will blend with your dodging skill, and soon you’ll Ringling Bros. will be knocking on your door.

Turn Once

This is an easy skill to learn when driving in town, it’s a bit harder on long winding roads. Basically, you want to make sure you only turn once. Turning once means once you start leaning, your don’t exit the lean untill you’ve exited the turn. Inexperienced riders will often turn too sharply at the start of their turn, drive straight for a bit, then turn sharply again to contine in the new direction. If they were driving around the block, it would look something like an octagon. What you want is a rounded rectangle.

On those long winding roads, you want to practice adjusting your lean, rather than completely cancelling it. Try adjusting your turning radius with your throttle, rather than by leaning. If you go faster, you will turn wider, slower and you will turn sharper.

Park For Escaping

I learned this one the hard way. In my hometown there is angle parking around the town square. Like most roads, these too are rounded, being higher down the middle to allow water to run to the shoulder and into the gutter. This means that if you angle park properly, you will be pointing away from the road and downhill. Add to this picture a younger me and a 225kg motorcycle. With cars parked on both sides of me, my only escape was to walk my bike backwards, uphill. Not fun.

Why not make this easier on yourself? Park with your escape in mind. In the situation above, the best thing to do is to back into the parking spot. This not only allows for an easy escape, but also makes a more stable use of your kickstand. In general, it’s a good idea to park pointing out, but also pay attention to slope and surface type – Don’t put your kickstand down onto hot blacktop.

Make Yourself Bigger

Cats do this, so do puffer fish, you can too. I’m mostly talking about lane position. You’ve heard enough suggestions on lane position already, but there really are a multitude of situations out there in which all lane positions get their share of preference. My general rule is to make myself as big as possible. Imagine a bubble around you that most cars, regardless of how big of a douchebag the driver is, won’t drive inside. You want to both make yourself visible and make it less likely for people to cut you off. You do this by making your bubble bigger.

• Two Lane Undivided: Ride in the left tire track. Your biggest threats are oncoming cars and passers. Riding closer to the threat makes you bigger, your bubble extends from the centerline to the shoulder. If you ride in the right track, your don’t-drive-here bubble won’t reach the centerline, and people will cut you off when they pass you.
• Four Lane Divided – Left Lane: The right lane on something like a divided freeway can be treated like a two lane undivided. The left lane however, is a different scenario. Your most immediate threat is not oncoming traffic, you have a median to protect you. Instead you need to watch out for drivers to your right. This means you want to drive in the right tire track.

The point here is to force other drivers to treat you as they would any other car, not as they would treat a bicyclist or horse and buggy.*

Learn The Wave

This is perhaps one of the most important things you can do. By riding a motorcycle you’ve joined a special group of people. Our secret handshake is the wave: left arm outstretched, 45 degrees down. It’s a simple gesture that says “You and I know something that all these other drivers don’t. There’s something great about what we’re doing out here, don’t forget that. Keep the shiny side up.”

* For the record, bicyclists and the Amish should be given their fair share of space too.