I just got home from four hours of wrestling a Honda Rebel 250 around for the "riding" portion of the required motorcycle course to get my license.
The 250 is not a large bike (about 300 pounds), but there's also the added "wearing out" factor that comes with doing anything new and different. I am dog-tired (and, because sunscreen just didn't occur to me, sunburned), and will be heading off to bed soon. If there's a Garrison Center column for the weekend, it will get written tomorrow afternoon or evening, but what I will probably do instead is skip it and then not take a column off for Labor Day.
The good news:
- Only one person in my class wiped out, and it wasn't me (the guy was not injured; just one of those things).
- Only one person in my class scored 100% on the Florida written license exam, and it was me.
The not bad per se but somewhat interesting news:
- If I had it to do all over again, I'd have just gone to this course before purchasing a scooter. To the extent that I had difficulties, they had to do with trying to unlearn scooter behaviors. On the scooter, each of the two hand grips engages a brake. On a motorcycle, the left hand grip engages the clutch (a left-side foot lever shifts gears), while the right hand grip engages the front brake (and a right-side foot pedal engages the rear brake). Nothing insurmountable, but just a little extra work versus learning the motorcycle way from the beginning.
I'm about 90% decided against the 125cc "cafe cruiser" that was on my Amazon Wish List. If I go motorcycle, I want to go 250cc bare minimum (I've already established first-hand that I can handle it) and possibly as high as 500cc.
After completing the course tomorrow (and presumably passing and being able to get my motorcycle license), I'll start thinking harder about whether I want to go the "bigger scooter" route or the motorcycle route. I'm leaning ever-so-slightly toward the latter, but I do love scooters.
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