Buying your first Motorcycle? First in years? pt 1

So you want to buy a bike and ride like the wind.  What do you do first?  Hey.  I have an idea.  Why not learn to ride BEFORE you buy a bike.  How do you do that?  There are classes available through most Harley dealers or through the Motorcycle Safety Foundation (www.msf-usa.org). 

You would be surprised how many people buy a bike and have no clue how to drive them.  If you take a course, you will figure out for yourself whether or not this is something you really want to do and you will only have the cost of the class.  A big plus for this is while you are learning the basics, if you drop the bike you are riding, it isn't your bike!  The classes let you drive their bikes.  Now isn't that just too dang cool? 

What do they teach?

It starts with the basics like pre ride check.  It moves quickly on to mounting a bike to actually riding the bike.  The progresses to the point where you are taught how to handle a bike in most common situations that arise.  This includes low speed driving, highway manuvers and even accident avoidance.  The instructors want you to succeed but also want to be safe on the highway. 

How do they teach?

There is quite a bit of class room instruction but there is also multiple days of actual riding a bike with the instructors watching and giving you corrections.

Some experienced riders will take this course with a significant other who is learning to ride.  They will find that even they learn quite a bit that they either did not know or were doing wrong. 

Riding is a lot of fun and this course is actually quite fun itself.  If you pass the class, most insurance companies will give you a discount on your rates.  Some dealerships offer a discount to folks for having taken the class.  Some states like Florida will not make you take the state test to add a motorcycle endorsement to your license. 

More later on the actual first bike...

Biker Ragz