Taking a break during the Basic RiderCourse

Well folks, I finally made it to the MSS Basic Rider Course and I’m smiling from ear-to-ear.

The course started after work on Friday evening at 5.30pm which meant knocking off work a couple of hours early. The course has a strict lateness policy and I had no idea how long it would take to get there so I gave myself plenty of time to get up there.

Turns out, it’s a short ride from Manhattan, just one 6 train stop into the Bronx, and a short walk from there down to the “range” at the waterfront in the South Bronx.

Friday night was all classroom work held in a port-a-cabin on-site. I arrived early to watch other course riders out on bikes which got me excited about the weekend ahead.

In the classroom I met the group of 12 riders who were taking the course and we were all assigned work books as a structure for discussion and broke into small teams of 4 to tackle the questions, and then share with the class as a whole. The questions were then punctuated with video segments from the MSF’s Motorcycle Safety DVD. The course book was similarly structured to the NY State Motorcycle Manual.

Overall it was a very informative discussion, but you could tell that everyone, myself included, were itching to get out on the bikes.

We wrapped up around 9pm and were instructed to get a good night’s sleep and to eat well before the next morning when we’d be starting at 7.30am!

I spent the night at my Girlfriend’s place in the East Village rather than go all the way back to Sunset Park and have to come all the way back into the Bronx.

Saturday is when the fun started. Sure enough one student was turned away for being half-an-hour late and forfeited his money (so be warned).

We we’re out on the bikes in a light drizzle by 8.00am and spent the first hour or so pretty much going through what I had done on my private lesson. Walking through the bike’s features, mounting and dismounting, starting them up safely, pushing them by hand and power-walking them in low gear.

I snapped the picture above during a brief break but we were on the bikes solidly until around noon. By which time we’d covered a lot of ground. Moving through the gears, riding circuits and doing high-speed and low-speed cornering. You can see from the photo that the range has 12 identical 250cc bikes so there’s no argument over who rides what.

After a brief lunch everyone in the group was getting pretty chatty after a quiet Friday night in the classroom and you could tell everyone was happy to be finally riding.

A couple of the folks had driven bikes for years but without full licenses and had gotten fed up of evading the cops one last time. Several more still already owned bikes but couldn’t ride them, and others were in the consideration phase. One guy was also looking to ride a scooter, and is eyeballing a Yamaha Scooter at his local store in Queens. Ride safe Joe!

Saturday afternoon, and it was time to get back in the classroom to round out the second half of the work books and the DVD segments.

The day finally ended with the multiple choice DMV written test answering questions that had all been thoroughly covered in our work book sessions. We got our test results pretty much immediately and everyone passed. MSS has certainly structured the course so that provided you’re actually listening it’s hard to fail. One test down. Tomorrow it’s the actual DMV bike test.

We wrapped up around 4pm and I headed off to Brooklynbretta on my way home to Sunset Park.

Overall a great day, and I can’t imagine getting on a bike anywhere, much less New York City without the course. I can see now why the folks on the New York Scooter Club Forum say this is the way to do it.

Related posts:

1. Signing up for the Basic Rider Course With Spring fast approaching, I knew that MSS would be...
2. Basic Rider Course test waiver delays. If you've been following our learning to ride section you'll...
3. Getting my permit If there’s one useful thing I learned from the New...
4. Taking an MSS private motorcycle lesson Once I signed up for the MSS Basic Rider Course,...
5. Safety First! Thinking of obtaining your license by taking the Motorcycle Safety...