Harley-Davidson Riding Academy - Day 1

The first day met at the dealership. I arrived early to have a chance to look around at the bikes, gears, and accessories. I easily spent an hour and still had more to look at when the class was starting. That helped, getting a feel for things by looking around.

The class started with signing a waver and introductions of everyone. Then we had a tour of the store. They divided us up with sales people who went over some of the bikes. Then around to the motor gear section where they showed us the helmets, jackets, and so on. And the accessories section where they talked about all the add-on you can get. And lastly the service, where we got to tour the back service room. We asked questions about servicing and accessories. I think it helped.

Finally in starting, we had two books. A little Harley-Davidson leather bound journal. It looks nice, but it is a pain to lay flat and actually write anything in. And the MSF Basic Rider Course Handbook. This handbook is about 70 pages long and is what the classroom portion is mainly focused on.

My class had 9 people, but one canceled last minute. We divided into 3 groups. We went through the handbook as a class. Each group was responsible for summarizing a section of the handbook to the rest of the class. The instructor then highlighted anything important that needed to be stressed or was missed. It wasn’t a bad way to go through the handbook. However, I’d really advise reading and studying it individually.

The handbook starts off with the basics of the controls. This is helpful for true newbies, like myself. It goes over the how to change gears, brake, etc. It was interesting to learn that the front tire provides the like two thirds of the braking force. This is because as you brake, the weigh pushes forward. Overall you get a feel for the layout of a motorcycle, but it is still different when you actually go to drive one.

In addition, there's a few slides and videos the instructor plays as you go through the handbook.  They didn't really add that much material the first day.

The first session was 6pm to 9pm Thursday and pretty well started and ended on time.

My classmates varied in background. All were men. (The week before, the dealer had did a special women’s only class, so I don’t know if that’s why it was all men or if that is normal.) Age varied widely. Some were fairly young, in 20s. And some were already retired. One guy was already driving a motorcycle and wanted to get better. It was an good group of fellows to take the class with.

My only complaint with the class is that it is billed as a starter course, but I was the only one who was really new to driving a motorcycle. Only 4 people claimed no experience. One of them had lots of experience driving a dirt bike. The other was a pilot and had driven motorcycle decades ago. That left me and one other who had no experience. (The other one dropped shortly into the actually riding day.)