Bungleaio

Enjoy the cbt today!

Great right up, the hazard perception is a bit weird but you are right, multiple clicking is the way as things are happening, it's like a game really. I'm sort of on a similar path as you at the moment but I need to sort booking the DAS so it's interesting to see someone else's journey too. You will have a full on weekend going from CBT to mod 1 but it will be fun. Have you ridden before? I hadn't and was wiped out after doing my CBT.

In preparation for my CBT, I've enjoyed reading other people's experiences so I thought I would add mine. I'm no literary genius but I hope it's useful to someone. Some history about me - late thirties and been driving for 20 years, fairly keen cyclist (both road and mountain bikes) but never ridden a motorcycle until the CBT. My CBT was done after a couple of days of very hot weather, I was a bit worried about it being too hot for me but thankfully it was cloudy so it was ok. I didn't have my own jacket, gloves or helmet so I was borrowing these from the school which was fine apart from they had been used in the heatwave so were a bit stinky but after a couple of minutes, it was fine. I'm glad I didn't have to buy the kit as I wasn't sure whether it was something I would want to take further so I appreciated being able to borrow it even if it did smell a bit. There was three of us on the course, I was the oldest and only driver, there was a lad in his early thirties who had a 125 a few years ago and there was a lad that had only just turned 16. The youngest lad was riding a 50cc twist and go moped so some of the exercises were different for him. I was training on the 125 so I won't mention what he was up to. Before doing anything we did a sight check from a few meters further away than the legal minimum then we went through the talk about kit which took a while but I knew quite a bit of this from my online research beforehand. Then the main event for me really - hands on with the bikes. The school had Yamaha YBR125's. We were run through safety checks, pre-ride inspections and how to get on and off the centre stand which was simple enough really. We then got to walk the bikes from where they are stored to the training area. This had a gravel base so we could experiment with the front brake to get a feel of how much was required to lock it up. We sat on the bikes and learnt how to move away in 1st, slipping the clutch seemed bad to me from a mechanical sympathy point of view, I understand the theory but an engine at 2-3k revs and a slipping clutch really felt bad to me. It took me a few starts to get away smoothly. We moved onto turning right and braking, again more clutch slip then getting up into 2nd gear. The more time we spent doing this the more natural it felt to me. I was a bit worried at the start as it felt awkward. I just had to remember I was operating a bike throttle, clutch and gearbox rather than a car. Next was onto emergency stop, I wasn't the best at this and stalled it a couple of times, I was also conscious of not locking the front wheel so I wasn't pulling the brake as hard as I could. The instructor got on my bike and gave me a demo and then I had another go and I was a lot better. We then got shown how to set the mirrors and what shoulder checks were then we had a go at U-turns. I was getting a lot better with the clutch, and I'm also quite used to checking over my shoulder on my pushbike so this went pretty well. This concluded the morning session at about 12:30. We went back to the training room and had lunch (I had lunch, the other two had ignored the instructions to bring a packed lunch so they didn't have anything) during this time we went through road positioning and junctions as well as don't drive when angry or drunk etc. At the end of this we were then asked if we would like to go out on the road. I think we all felt a bit nervous but we all said yes. I was to go out with the other lad on the 125 but we were asked if we would like to go out on a bigger bike and we both said yes. We were shown around the Yamaha MT07's and they immediately felt more comfortable, I'm 6"3 so had felt a bit squashed on the YBR. We had 15 minutes to toddle around the training ground then onto the road. This is where it all started to come together for me, despite the bike being bigger it felt so much better. We did 20-30 minutes of slow speed residential areas with loads of roundabouts then onto a NSL road. Feck me these things are amazing! The wind on the chest and helmet was a surprise, I'm not sure why I was surprised, a naked bike at 60mph is bound to be windy! We were out for about an hour before we stopped for a 5 minute break. I was fine but the other lad looked worried. Turned out he had lost his wallet at some point. We were about 10 minutes from the base so we went back so that he could look for it there then we went out and retraced our steps. I was happy to do that as we'd been on a really good mix of roads. We didn't find it. On the 2 hour+ drive i still stalled a couple of times but I recognised what was going on and soon got on the move again, it takes me back to my learner driver days. When we got back to base the instructor said it was one of the best rides he'd seen on a CBT for quite a while. Seeing as I'd never ridden a bike until 5 hours before I was very pleased. Overall I loved the experiance, theory is booked now and then onto DAS soon hopefully.

My sister went to a wedding recently, Nick Mason was there and was pointed out to her. She didn't know who he was. I've disowned her.

What school did you do your training on mate? I'm looking for recommendations for Leicester.