After going through the posts in the group ride thread this weekend, it made me think about the learning process for riding and how we, the sportbike community, could do something to help new riders develop the skills necessary to ride more safely and be able to enjoy the sport more. I must admit that reading the thread as the weekend approached, I was willing to bet that there would be a crash. Many haven't been riding in months, the roads can be dirty this time of year, etc. and the excitement of the first warm day with a bunch of other riders historically leads to at least one person crashing.
Motorcycling is too fun for crashing and getting hurt, and with sportbikes it seems that many crashes are due to people riding past their skill level. Now, there are many people in this club who have been riding for a long time and have learned valuable things about how to have fun riding on the street while minimizing the risks, myself included. So, I asked myself how we could come up with a way of getting those skills from the heads of the experienced riders into those of the new ones with real riding feedback, not simply posts on the forums. The following is my initial idea of how to achieve that.
1) First, recognize that learning how to ride is the most important thing you can do to become a better rider. Aftermarket exhausts and fender eliminators might be cool, but they do nothing to make you a better rider. Invest your money in things like training, good suspension setup, making sure your brakes and tires are in good shape, quality gear, etc before you go spending money on bling.
2) For new riders, I very strongly recommend that you take the MSF Basic Rider Course (BRC). You will learn some very important things in that course. In fact, my first "put your money where your mouth is" action will be this: if you take the BRC from Bob Hasenhundl (Spiderman here on the CSC) or Jim Wilson (UglyDogRacing) though ABATE, I will pay for half of the cost of the course for five people per month. I'll look into a way of setting up a fund so that others can contribute if they can. I may add to the list of instructors as time goes along, but I want to confine this effort to the CSC. I'm saying that I'll pay half to help with cost, but I also want you to pay some of it as your recognition that training is important. If you can afford to pay for all of it, please do, so we can help more people.
3) Once you have taken the BRC (required), I will spend time riding with small groups (5 or less) on the street, and perhaps the track, working with you to improve your skills and hopefully impart some important lessons that I have learned in 30 years of riding, both street and track. I envision these rides occurring on weekends once or twice a month, and perhaps occasionally during the week for those whom weekends are difficult. Evening rides after work would also be possible. There will be no cost for this other than having your bike ready to go. I will have at least one other experienced rider with me and there will be plenty of individualized "we show and you do" on these rides. The atmosphere will be relaxed, there will be lots of time for questions, riding, and feedback.
I had the good fortune when starting out to get feedback from experienced riders, several of whom had raced for years. I have been helping new riders sporadically for a while, but this will formalize it a bit more. So, let's have some feedback. Specifically:
1) New/Newish riders: would you participate?
2) Would there be many people willing to donate even a small amount to helping people pay for the BRC?
Let's start helping each other out more and see if we can reduce the crashes and injuries.
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