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ANY TIME YOU SEE THE WORD “MOTORCYCLE”, EXCHANGE THE WORD “BICYCLE”. ALMOST EVERYTHING STATED CAN BE SAID OF A BICYCLE ALSO.

Motorcycle School: Be Very Afraid

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By RICHARD S. CHANG
Published: October 14, 2007

Massapequa, N.Y.

HE first session of the Basic Rider Course at Trama’s Auto School is spent learning about everything that can go horribly wrong on a motorcycle and how to prevent or minimize the danger. The session takes four hours.

Side streets and driveways, not much of a threat when you are behind the wheel of a Ford Explorer, become major hazards on a motorcycle. The right side of an 18-wheeler is a giant blind spot, grimly called the “no zone.” Riding in improper clothing could lead to hypothermia. Really.

Trama’s Basic Rider Course is spread over two and a half very intense days, but not all of that time is spent straddling a motorcycle. As a complete novice who hadn’t even sat tandem on a Vespa, I took my first motorcycle lesson here in a small classroom in the company’s office with 12 other students, basically relearning the road.

Using a course designed by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation, a not-for-profit organization in Irvine, Calif., that is sponsored by several motorcycle manufacturers, Trama’s instructors emphasized the mental commitment that counterbalances the physical act of riding a motorcycle.

Don’t ride if you’re in a rush, we’re told. Don’t ride if you have something on your mind. Never take your eyes away from the road in front of you. And never, ever, become overconfident.

“What about looking at the speedometer?” a student asked. “I never look at the speedometer,” Lori Taube, one of the instructors, answered. She wasn’t joking.

I was raised to be afraid of motorcycles. My father, a devout hypochondriac, not only filled my siblings and me with a phobia, but also said motorcycles should be illegal. The focus of his argument, which he routinely laid out over family dinners, was that cars are bound by a set of safety and crash rules, none of which motorcycles are required to abide by, and that was simply illogical.

My experiences have only reinforced this belief. Most of my friends who ride have had accidents. I’ve driven past bodies lying on the road, where the accident damage seemed otherwise minimal. One night while I was living in Los Angeles, a friend called me and said that her boyfriend had died in a motorcycle accident on Interstate 10. She was inconsolable.

For these reasons, I found myself more timorous than thrilled on the morning of my second day, as I drove to Farmingdale State College, also on Long Island, for the first riding session.

Low-power 250 cc Suzukis and Hondas were lined up in three rows at the edge of a large parking lot. I chose a Honda Nighthawk and took a quick tally of the scratches and dents on the gas tanks and chrome.

The instructors, Ms. Taube and Stacey Begalla, ran the $350 course like field marshals. There’s a right way and a wrong way to do everything on a motorcycle, meaning there’s a safe way and a dangerous way. To make sure we learned the safe way, Ms. Taube and Ms. Begalla were specific and detailed with every one of their commands.

The first task was miming turns with the engine off, slow turns first: Look left, turn the handlebars left. Look right, turn right. Fast turns required a slightly different procedure: Look left, press down on the left handgrip, and lean left. Look right, press down on the right handgrip, and lean right. It might sound obvious, but looking is very important in motorcycle riding.

After looking, turning and leaning for around 20 minutes, we fired up our bikes. And then we spent the next 20 minutes learning the friction zone, where the clutch engages and begins to transmit power to the rear wheel.

The early stages of learning how to ride a motorcycle are all about developing muscle memory, repeating combinations of hand-foot movements until they’re instinctive and precise, leaving your eyes and mind free to search and avoid hazards in the road.

Progressing slowly was fine by me. I found simple pleasure in accomplishing gear changes and matching engine r.p.m. with road speed for smooth downshifts. And by the end of the day, all my earlier fears were gone. In fact, I became too enthusiastic and had to be reminded several times to slow down.

Something else had happened as well, and I didn’t realize it until I was driving home on the Long Island Expressway that night. I had become hyperaware of the cars around me, and my eyes were more active than usual. I also noticed two bikers who weren’t in proper gear. Two others rode too close to the cars in front of them. All of them split lanes.

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