You have to learn to stand with a motorcycle before you can ride one. And then you have to learn to walk with it. And then to push it. After that? You can ride and it’s better than you ever imagined.
As of Saturday morning, I’d never so much as sat on a motorcycle. By Sunday afternoon, I’d had my first crash and earned my M2 licence.
It begins in a classroom, one long Thursday evening. The Rider Training Institute (RTI) does just that. Across Ontario, 2,500 people take the $450 Riding Basics course every season and – if they pass – earn an M2 licence.
In my class were two men with white beards who had bikes, although not necessarily licences, when they were younger. There were two women whose friends all rode motorcycles. There was Anton, in his early 20s, from Ukraine who’d ridden there for two years. (“To get a motorcycle licence in Ukraine, you go to the police with a bunch of money and they give you a licence.”) And there was the young surgeon, who was vaguely indicative of the new urbane, lanky, tattooed generation taking up motorcycling for style, for something authentic.
On the weekend, we meet at dawn in a parking lot by Lake Ontario.
Motorcycles are heavier than you imagine, even the featherweight machines RTI uses to train students. You first learn to stand with one, balance it upright. Then you walk around the parking lot with it. It’s ungainly, awkward. The foot pegs hit your shins. If it leans over too far, you’ll drop it.
Our three instructors – Michel, Keeley and Milan – are patient. Keeley says, “the man in my life is currently a 900-pound, 1,600cc Harley Davidson.”
I swing a leg over a motorcycle, a Yamaha TW200 farm tractor of a dirt bike. We’re not ready to start the engines yet. We push each other around the parking lot on our bikes, trying to balance. It’s wobbly, farcical.
Starting a cold TW200 is a delicate process, something like CPR. Roll it back and forth to check that it’s in neutral. Turn the ignition on. Reach down and turn the fuel flow on. Flick the engine kill switch off. Pull out the choke. Hold in the clutch. Press the starter, and it coughs back to life, gurgling at a fast idle.
Letting the clutch out ever-so-slightly, the 200cc motor starts to turn the back wheel, pushing the bike forward at a walking pace by magic, by miracle, by the righteous explosion of octane and air.
The cylinder on the Yamaha is smaller than a can of pop. What does a litre-bike feel like?
More puttering around followed. Anton and the others with previous experience could’ve done all this blindfolded.
By Saturday afternoon we were up to second gear (even better than first), leaning the bikes through turns (tentatively), hitting apexes (nearly) and blipping the throttle on downshifts (attempted). Anton was going through the slalom nearly sliding his knees on the ground.
On Sunday, what happened – in motorcycle speak – is that I biffed it.
The sound of my helmet scraping along the pavement was loud. I had time to think, “Ahhh, this was an expensive helmet.” I was looking straight ahead at Keeley while the bike and I were falling, she said. It was raining. We were practising emergency stops. As I rode over a painted line in the parking lot at 20-something km/h, I grabbed a fistful of brake lever and then I was on the ground. I felt stupid.
Everywhere I wore protection, I was fine: head, knees, feet, no damage. My elbow, however, is currently a giant bruise the colour of fresh-ground meat.
I’m grateful for the fact my first crash was in a parking lot, on RTI’s bike, not mine. Milan, trying to make me feel less stupid, said he crashed his first bike 15 minutes after leaving the dealership. It happens. I learned my lesson. I will forever be weary of painted lines in the rain, and of mistreating the brake lever.
For the rest of the weekend, I rode between the lines, shifted gears properly, didn’t fall down and passed the test on Sunday with a perfect score.
Somewhere in leaning a bike through a turn might be nirvana. Or, at least I think so. I’ll have to ride out of the parking lot and out of second gear to find out for sure.
With riding a motorcycle, like golf, it is easy to learn the essentials. (Whack the ball into the hole.) But it is difficult to do it well. (One whack, from hundreds of yards away.) This is how Michel explained the addictive nature of motorcycle riding. You could spend a lifetime learning to do it well. And it’s roughly 1,000 times more fun than golf – give or take.