Hey everyone. I joined awhile ago but this is my first post. I failed my MSF about 3 months ago. I failed on the u-turn and the weave, everything else was just fine. I was determined to improve, got my own bike (Honda SCL500), was super nervous, tried and failed at a u-turn and damaged my left wrist. I misjudged the space I needed, rode into a curb at about 2mph, fell over, smacked my wrist on the asphalt. And then in my adrenaline I basically dead lifted up my bike with an already hurt wrist. Bad idea. As of this past week I was cleared to ride again. My core issue is definitely throttle control. I failed on the MSF because the bike kept lunging around seemingly at random whenever I would put any throttle on it. It's awful hard to do a u-turn or a weave when your bike is kicking you in the butt unexpectedly every 2 seconds. I THOUGHT I was being smooth on it, but clearly I am not. Dan's video about "Learn without the MSF" kind jumps right from Friction Zone, to Friction Zone + Front Break, to doing parking lot exercises. There's not a lot of information about how to build smooth throttle movement that I could find. Today I went out on the bike with the simple goal of riding up my street and back a few times, and then riding around the block and seeing if I could figure out what was going on. I did it successfully. And was able to focus a bit more on what was going on. First, I'm super anxious in general. This is a new skill. I have not had great times with riding leading up to now (my MSF was un-fun), so I just wanted to take a day to have fun with it without someone watching and end on a positive note. Second, I don't think I'm gripping the bike enough with my legs. Because of that, I'm leaning on the handlebars, which means anything I do with the throttle is being done while I've got my bodyweight on my arm. Once the weight was off, I felt a little bit smoother. I tried following the advice that I've seen about trying to hold the throttle like an ice cream cone, but that position feels really uncomfortable.

Mom is gone back home so i can ride again! Got in a nice 2 hour round trip lunch ride. Got the microphone working and I hate my voice. I managed to delete almost an hour of footage from the first leg while editing 🤦🏻‍♀️. Got that second leg to edit let’s see what comes out of it. That second leg I led the ride and I’m definitely more comfortable leading than the first time I did it around our area. Is so nice to be able to ride but lunch time is now too hot for me. I was a bit gassed when we got home. Well definitely do earlier rides for the next few weeks. Question: if you are using a camera how many times have you switched the position. I’m still not happy with my setup, I may end up doing the “drone” shot and see how that goes.

Thought this might be a decent place to share my thoughts on the placement of car side view mirrors, as most real-life conversations I've had on this are met with slight annoyance. I learned this from Car Talk on public radio, and in the years since it still seems as though 99%+ of drivers do not have their side view mirrors positioned correctly. The point is to eliminate the blind spots between the rear view mirror and your peripheral vision. Nearly everyone has the sides set up to look... directly behind the car. So now, they have 3 rear view mirrors, and the concept of "side view" is lost. If you're right behind a car and you can see their entire face, it's poor placement. We were actually taught this in drivers ed; Barely see the side of your car on each side mirror when sitting straight up in the driver's seat. The correct way to do this (in cars with the wheel/driver on left) is to put your seatbelt on, lean your head allllll the way to the left so you bonk it on the window, and adjust the mirror outward to line up the edge of your car. Then lean allllll the way to the right like you're right in your passenger's face, and adjust the mirror outward to line up the edge of the car. When it's perfect, a car coming up behind you and passing you will perfectly move from the rear view mirror into the side view mirror and into your peripheral vision with zero blind spots.

Here are my submissions. Can't wait to finish out the rest of the videos, pages, and all the back end to make these public. More updates to come. CHECK OUT THE VIDEOS AND UPDATED PAGES HERE CLICK HERE FOR ALL THE VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE

Honest question, looking for an honest answer. Why do so many sport bike riders strive for body position and getting a knee down on public streets? Of course there is the group of beginner riders that think that's "just how you do it", but I'm talking about experienced riders that do it going 20mph around an easy curve. (spoiler: The answer I'm looking for is "it's definitely more dangerous, but super fun and I can't help myself!")