so, I went and did the Ride Like A Pro course....
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08-01-2014 2:27pm#1...for Santa, I treated myself to the above. Well, I was in the area anyway, as Santa gave the kids a holiday to Disney, and the chances of me being back that way soon are slim for a while.
Rather than regurgitate all the stuff on his site, you can read the premise of Jerry's training here: www.ridelikeapro.com and he has a youtube site which has tons of seemingly impossible manoeuvres in the most improbable motorcycles here: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=www.ridelikeapro.com&sm=1
Right, that's that out of the way then.
So, why did I want to do it ? Well, I've spent the last year doing a lot of marshalling on the bike and so spent a lot of time going slow, and there's an art to it. I learned to ride my bike - a Harley Davidson Road King Custom - and get far more .....involved with it....than any bike in a long time. I did my RoSPA on it, Road Kings are popular in the US amongst police, and so they must have some innate properties that lend themselves to that kind of use, and I ended up reading about Jerry Paladino through Google and YouTube. Once I knew I was going to be in Florida, I worked out how to fit that in with the domestic arrangements....;)
As I was fresh from a bout of training and RoSPA test, as well as having started a rota on Blood Bike West, I was also in the right frame of mind I thought, and vowed to keep on the 'training' gig as well. Besides, I reckoned it was a reasonable price - $175 for 4 hours - in fact, I ended up paying less due to an offer they had via Facebook - so worth checking that out too.
Here's Jerry's setup on the day: motorhome/transporter with bikes & all the gear to run the class: cones (lots & lots & lots of cones !!), and a bloody big car park (the local High School, as it happens - can you imagine the rérá here if you tried that !)
Now, most people do this on their own bikes (which makes sense), but that wasn't practical for me, so I rented a bike from Jerry as well - a Honda 750 (VT ??). I picked this over the Harley Sportster they also have on purpose: from a riding perspective and size perspective, it is very close to a Road King. Mind you, it's about half the weight !! :pac:
Here's the bike:
Now, it's a long time since I passed my test, so you might think that some of the exercises are a bit simple, but there's method in the madness as they say: the idea is to give you a level of confidence in your ability - and that of your motorcycle too - to allow you to ride better. I don't think I exceeded 15mph all day. Yet it was a hoot.
Jerry works using 3 key things:
Friction zone: riding on the biting point of the clutch, and balancing it with throttle use
Using the Rear Brake
Heads & Eyes
I arrived bright and early, after a notably dismal and cold week in Florida (clue: I had to wear my Dainese bike jacket and a wooly hat to Disney on the Friday...), after a 2hr drive from Orlando to New Port Richey, arriving in the car park at 08:30 or so, and he was laying out the various courses for the morning's activities. Preliminaries (paperwork) and payment made, I was told to take the Honda up & down the carpark to get used to it, and eventually at 9:00, we kicked off.
First up: slow bike riding. As slow as possible, he either walking or using a small electric 'wheelchair' thingy beside you. The idea is to get used to the biting point of the clutch. The measure that you're riding it correctly is that you should be able to blip the throttle but the bike should stay at the same speed. And use the back brake, keep the revs up a bit to keep the whole plot together. All this is stuff you can do yourself, but some people who turn up, apparently, have no idea.
Next up: slow weaving between cones. The idea here is to get you to swing the bike from one side to the other, and keeping the bike moving forward - not hitting cones obviously - but importantly, to change from looking at your immediate cones, to way, way further up the road - keeping your 'heads & eyes' up. In my case I was told by Joe, Jerry's instructor on the Sportster, to focus on the RV (motorhome) parked at the end of the parking lot. Either way, looking just in front of the bike at the next or immediate cone is a recipe for..........hitting them. If I'm honest, I didn't find this hard, but as you do it over & over, you do get a rhythm going and then you begin to push the bike a bit, which is a good thing. Trying to just 'skin' the cones is a recipe to hit them, 'swinging' the bike actually helps as there's inertia in the bike, and it does more of the work for you.
A second line of cones, closer together, repeats the process. And you go from one to the other on opposite sides of the lot, repeatedly.
Then there's the offset cone exercise, and I'll be honest, I thought this would be.........well, not a breeze, but certainly not as hard as I found it to be . If you have a look at this you'll see the pattern the cones are laid out in https://www.ridelikeapro.com/images/PracticeGuide.pdf
You enter the 'gate' from one end, and alternate between pairs of cones down the length of the lot. You'll get through the first, second ok, the third a little harder and then you realise you'll not make the fourth one.......and thus not the fifth, and.......you've made a balls of it. Which I did. Several times. Note the appropriate 'wollox' face to match....
...and so, I'd go back and try it again. Every time I thought I had it nailed.......I didn't. Jerry was telling me that I was losing consistency after the first few gates, and that the small error was compounding everything making successful making them all, impossible. Think about it - if you're 50mm out on the second one, after 10 gates you're 500mm out...........and that is just way too much on this exercise !! I was also still 'target-fixating' a bit, especially as I began to make an error - if you look at this pic I am looking in the wrong place, which is a guarantee of failure ! -
So, the key to the exercise seemed to be: bigger, more deliberate movements of the bike, exaggerated even, and, key, 'heads & eyes' UP !! Jerry helped me here. He stood to one side and as I traversed the grid I was to keep looking at him over (say) left shoulder, he would then shout 'turn' and I'd just commit the bike and turn - AWAY from him, and turn my head completely around and look at him from over my right shoulder.......as we headed over to the next gate, and he'd shout 'turn' again and I'd repeat the process.....this still took a bit of getting used to. This photo - kinda - illustrates this technique: the bike is going one way, and I'm looking the other (in fact, I'm about to dip the bike towards where I'm looking, but it's just I'm looking for the NEXT task already...)
More, anon.........Ode To The Motorist
“And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, generates funds to the exchequer. You don't want to acknowledge that as truth because, deep down in places you don't talk about at the Green Party, you want me on that road, you need me on that road. We use words like freedom, enjoyment, sport and community. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent instilling those values in our families and loved ones. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the tax revenue and the very freedom to spend it that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a bus pass and get the ********* ********* off the road”
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Eventually, after many passes, I began to get better at it:
Jerry put up 3 videos on YT of me doing it, here:
Some things to note, as I got better, I became kind of being more.....'aggressive' at the exercise. Bigger swings, more revs, speed increased a bit. Let the inertia of bike do more of the work. And key: Heads & Eyes !! Listen to the bike as well. This is not something you do on a trailing tickover throttle. Note the brake light is on: I'm trailing the rear brake to allow engine speed up, but using the brake to control the ground speed. Keeping revs up keeps the bike more stable too.
Listen to the end of the last video: that's the footboards I'm grounding out - yet keep going - and - getting comfortable with doing so. It's no longer the sudden fright you get of having run out of clearance. When you're that far over, you know you're doing something right.
Ode To The Motorist
“And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, generates funds to the exchequer. You don't want to acknowledge that as truth because, deep down in places you don't talk about at the Green Party, you want me on that road, you need me on that road. We use words like freedom, enjoyment, sport and community. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent instilling those values in our families and loved ones. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the tax revenue and the very freedom to spend it that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a bus pass and get the ********* ********* off the road”
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So, if you take the exercises in isolation, you might think they simple, or haphazard, and wonder at their usefulness. But when you move onto the U-turn and Intersection exercises, you'll see how each of the individual exercises is actually performing one part of the bigger maneourves.
I mean, weaving simple cones gets you used to 'dipping' the bike.
The offset cone weave gets you adding that to effectively, repeatedly u-turning.
Then comes the Intersection test which is actually an amalgam of all of the above.
You move through Jerry's pattern at a typical 'intersection' (crossroads in our speak
) dipping out into each 'leg' of the pattern, then performing a 'weave' manoeuvre, and then a 'dip' out into the next 'leg' of the 'intersection. On all 4 exits. Repeatedly. Continuously.
And then run it backwards.
A (moving) picture is worth a 1000 words, as they say.....
You will hear the footboards ground out several times - this became second nature after a while.
Dunno about you, but I find that I have a 'side' I prefer. Like being right-handed or left-handed, you may find that you prefer clockwise over counter-clockwise. But until you do it, you don't know. And one side might take more work than the other.
Then, when I'd got this 'nailed', Jerry sent me back down to the offset cones again..........and things made even MORE sense to me now.
If you look at this pic, for example, you'll see I've progressed to now 'skinning' the outside cone, without looking at it, and already looking at the next gate. As soon as I commit to that I turn my head to the gate after that, before the front wheel has even passed the gate in question......
Ode To The Motorist
“And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, generates funds to the exchequer. You don't want to acknowledge that as truth because, deep down in places you don't talk about at the Green Party, you want me on that road, you need me on that road. We use words like freedom, enjoyment, sport and community. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent instilling those values in our families and loved ones. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the tax revenue and the very freedom to spend it that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a bus pass and get the ********* ********* off the road”
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Then finally, some variations on a theme: continuous circles clockwise and counter-clockwise on full lock.
The figure 8, which is simply two of the above linked in one exercise.
Then the 'snowman', which is 3 circles tangentially placed and going clockwise one/cc the other/c the last. Repeat. Then start it again with going the opposite to begin.
U-turns. Standing start, U-turn inside 24 feet, feet up. Then inside 18 feet.
Then standing U-turn, with bike on full lock, head looking BACK over your shoulder and pulling away to where you're looking. Repeat for the other side.
A mountain of pics of me in action, here on Jerry's FB page: https://www.facebook.com/RideLikeAPro/photos_stream
My favourite pic of the day is this one:
[edit] fwiw, technically I'm leaning too much in this pic. Me, that is, not the bike. This is something I have to work on. Joe, the other guy there on the day showed me the technique of leaning the bike more, whilst keeping the rider a bit more upright. Joe is a keen Supercross fan so for him it's more second nature to move the bike under him like you might off-road, than you'd be used to on a road bike. This is something for me to work on, as they say. [/edit]
Finally, after just under 4 hours, it was time to pack up and go home: my thanks to Jerry and Joe for the time - being 'winter' and 'only' 80 degrees on the day, nobody else had signed up, so I had 1:1 instruction the whole time and 1:1 riding with Joe too !
Here's me and Jerry at the end.
I've probably forgotten more than I've written, and I've probably remembered somethings slightly out-of-sync, but the gist is right.
Would I recommend it ? Absolutely: look at the next bike meet you go to and watch how many people 'paddle' their bikes with their feet, or can't turn them inside a (reasonable) space. These manoeuvres are also good for urban riding and obstacle avoidance (think pedestrians who step off paths, cars that change lane at the last minute, etc)....
A brilliant way to spend a sunny half-day. If you can, do go do it. Jerry has instructors in other locations too, so even if you can't get to Florida it might be do-able for you (see his site).
Any questions, etc, just let me know.
Ode To The Motorist
“And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, generates funds to the exchequer. You don't want to acknowledge that as truth because, deep down in places you don't talk about at the Green Party, you want me on that road, you need me on that road. We use words like freedom, enjoyment, sport and community. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent instilling those values in our families and loved ones. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the tax revenue and the very freedom to spend it that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a bus pass and get the ********* ********* off the road”
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Ode To The Motorist
“And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, generates funds to the exchequer. You don't want to acknowledge that as truth because, deep down in places you don't talk about at the Green Party, you want me on that road, you need me on that road. We use words like freedom, enjoyment, sport and community. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent instilling those values in our families and loved ones. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the tax revenue and the very freedom to spend it that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a bus pass and get the ********* ********* off the road”
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Thanks for that, I'll definitely mention it to her. I've bought Jerry's DVDs and have been trying to practice but it's very hard to find a safe, quiet spot to do it - his venue looks ideal.
His venue in Port Richey is actually the car park of the local high school. Can you imagine trying to get permission from the H & S bunch here to do it. I practice at work Ode To The Motorist
“And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, generates funds to the exchequer. You don't want to acknowledge that as truth because, deep down in places you don't talk about at the Green Party, you want me on that road, you need me on that road. We use words like freedom, enjoyment, sport and community. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent instilling those values in our families and loved ones. You use them as a punch line. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the tax revenue and the very freedom to spend it that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a bus pass and get the ********* ********* off the road”
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