Breaking 300 Miles

I’ve driven 311.9 miles. Its been fun and educational. I approach this with my eyes wide open. It is dangerous and you can die or get hurt. I never lose sight of that. But on the same hand, I can’t live in my life in fear. And the key to staying well in this venture as other things is practice practice practice. I try to get out when I can and practice.

I’m getting pretty good at curves. In fact, as I approach 298 miles, I made for a road I practice on that has 2 90-degree bends. I hadn’t been on it for a week. Those curves were much easier than I remembered. They don’t feel hard anymore. I’m still not perfect and can still get better, but I’m amazed at how easy that road is now. Now when I went to make a U-turn on that same road to try it again, I notice I didn’t go so smooth on my U-turn, so a bit out of practice on that. And on that note, as I look ahead, I debate what is best to practice, the street driving, higher speed driving, low speed maneuvers, or what?

I still want to do many more runs on the 55 mph road. I’m feeling good with it, but I keep going over the last milestone over and over again until I’m past the feel good and into the been there and done that phase. I want the mastery level without question. Because the next big phase I want to do is to try out a mile stretch of 70 mph interstate outside of rush hour. It should be a pretty safe road, the newer thing is just being comfortable with the even higher speed. And once I get good with that, I want to be able to work up to driving to the harley dealership and to my work. Though that might not be until next year. I’m not in any rush. I’ll take each phase as I feel comfortable with it.

I’ve been making good progress in my practice, been getting in the hours and miles. But it is getting colder and the days are getting shorter. Soon it’ll be dark when I get home and maybe even snowing. I think there’s still some riding left this year, but I don’t really know just how much is left. So I expect my practice time to slow down. This isn’t completely bad.  They say the first 5 months of driving is the most dangerous, so this helps stretch out my 5 month risk window.  Also, I’ve started reading books on motorcyling. (Future review posts pending.) Plus, I’ve got all the other things going on, so plenty to do.

Looking back, I’m feeling good with the controls now. Still can get better, always can better, but just feeling good with my progress.

Still impressed by all the morons on the road. Much of my street practice is really learning to watch other people and try to predict the situation and the safest course of action. I’ve concluded while I still have lots to learn about motorcyling, most car drivers still have lots to learn about car driving :) Of course, the bike lose in the clash, so I’ll be doing what I can to be defensive and safe.

Also, I’ve upgraded my riding gear. (which btw, is just as confusing as models of bikes.) I started kind of cheap and low end because I wasn’t sure how this was going to go. But once I decided to stick with it, I invested in quality gear. Future posts there too.