Road King Blog

On Sunday, 11/8, myself and 4 other students had the pleasure of attending the Ride Like a Pro course in Port Richey, Florida. If you’ve seen the video, you have a good idea of what the general flow of the course is like. If you haven’t seen the video, you really ought to go get it. It’s one of the best investments you will ever make in your riding safety and enjoyment. We had three female and two male students representing a variety of experience levels, riding a mix of cruisers and touring bikes.

Like the video, we began by discussing the proper use of the friction zone, rear brake, and using the head and eyes to direct the path of travel. Then we made some slow, straight “slow race” passes down the parking lot, maintaining a walking pace with the rear brake and the friction zone.

That mastered, we moved on to the slow cone weave. There were two lines of cones set up, the first on 15 foot spacing, and the second at 12 feet. With “Motorman” Palladino offering commentary on the PA and Donna Palladino at the far end of the line pantomiming the rhythmic rocking of the handlebars, we swayed our way through the cone weave one after another. With just five of us in the class, we were pretty continuously moving, and in short order everyone in the class had the weave down.

This brought us to the circle exercise, and the introduction of serious lean angles. Starting with a large circle, we did a few slow passes, and then moved into the 24′ inner circle. Wandering out of the circle elicited commentary from Motorman - “hey, it’s a free country, ride wherever you want”. After a while, everyone in the class was handily orbiting inside the line, and after a break, we moved on to the Offset Cone Weave.

As Motorman says, the Offset Cone Weave builds a quick left-to-right transition and a quick left-to-right transition is exactly what you need on the road when someone violates your right of way. In order to successfully negotiate the Offset Cone Weave, you have to learn to trust the bike and follow the natural preference of the motorcycle to make large ‘S’ shaped turns between the gates. As with the cone weave, we started off with wider spacing, and soon the group was scribing sweeping S turns through the gates.

It is worth noting here that the staff of the course was excellent in offering advice and guidance on all of the exercises, showing where us where we should be looking and helping us get a feel for the proper speed and turn in points. When a student was having problems with an exercise, there was significant individual attention and encouragement, and even at one point Motorman even had a student ride through the exercise as a passenger with him, so the student could get used to the feel of the bike running through the maneuver. I was very impressed with the instructors and the quality of the instruction.
After the Offset Cone Weave gates were moved to the tighter spacing, the exercise became much more challenging, requiring more precision in the positioning of the bike through each gate and consistent, quick left to right transitions. More challenging and more fun, with the exercise being punctuated with the occasional sound of floorboards scraping as a student executed a very tight turn through the gates.

From the Offset Cone Weave, we moved into the Intersection Box, and moved through the Plus shaped box doing a series of U-turns (and even 540 degree turns) and then back out to run the Offset Cone Weave again.

Once Motorman was comfortable with our skills, we started putting multiple bikes into the intersection box. This required a bit more concentration, as the other bikes in the exercise provided another factor to consider. In short order, we were all comfortable with running through the exercise in multiples, and we were having a lot of fun with it.

From the Intersection Box we moved to the Figure 8. Although the turns were the same radius as the Offset Cone weave and the U-turn box, the different appearance required some adjustment (but less than when moving from the circle to the Offset Cone, at least for me). In short order, we were looping through the figure 8 singly and in pairs, with one of the instructors riding with us.

From the figure 8, we moved on to the high-speed weave. Not really high speed, but about 20 miles per hour. The object here was to do the cone weave at countersteering speed as opposed to the handlebar direct steering speeds we had been running all day.

Next, we moved to a braking exercise, entering the box at 20 mph, and stopping firmly and in control. Everyone had this down quickly, and we moved into the next to the last exercise, making a turn from a stop. Starting off with the bars turned is a different sensation, and it definitely takes getting used to. Fortunately for me, this is an exercise I have practiced quite a lot, so when I came up to the line, I cranked the bars over to full lock.

Eventually, everyone in the class was making turns from a stop with the bars turned well over, and we were on to the last riding exercise, a game of “follow the leader”. With Motorman in the lead and Rick running chase (and occasionally yelping his siren), we ran a 6 bike nose-to-tail line around the range, doing circles and figure 8’s and running through the intersection box in both directions.

Over 4 hours, we learned a lot about our bikes and how to negotiate a variety of exercises with them, and we had a lot of fun. Motorman’s instructional style makes the lessons fun as well as educational. Over the span of the day, Donna had taken a great many pictures of the class, and she’ll be sending out picture discs. We picked up the course cones, and got our course certificates.

I’d highly recommend this course to any motorcycle rider who wants to develop and enhance his or her riding skills. An excellent, very worthwhile investment of time and money in the safety and enjoyment of one’s riding. You’ll leave the class with the skills to handle your bike in slow, tight quarters where other riders fear to tread.