Idiot

[MarkW]

So, my wife and I had another lesson yesterday, and the instructor decided we'd spend the first hour going around the Mod 1 circuit. We started with a couple of emergency stops, and then moved on to the slalom, figure-of-eight, slow-speed ride and u-turns. And I was struggling. Whilst my wife was tootling around like a natural I kept losing the biting point on the clutch and riding the thing on the throttle, with all the lurching and jerking that entails. After about 40 minutes I was definitely showing improvement, but it still wasn't great. I couldn't understand why manoeuvres that were easy out on the road were so hard in the car park.

The instructor decided to give me a demo, and jumped on the bike. A couple of seconds later he looked at me and said "Mark, when you've finished your emergency stop, don't forget to click down into first." Yup - I'd spent 40 minutes in second gear wondering why I was such a no-hoper.

Funny thing is I had almost the same problem when I learned to drive. My first lesson was in my mothers knackered Austin Montego, which had about the worst gear box ever made. What I didn't know at the time was that it wouldn't go into first from stationary without a bit of double declutching, and consequently my first couple of hours were spent setting off in 3rd. On the upside, when I got into the instructors Nissan Micra my clutch control was pretty hot

[Guest]

LOL!!!

You plonka!

[CGD217]

Haha brilliant !

[klingelton]

Good work!

[Dav3y]

I think a lot of older british cars had no syncromesh on first gear which basically made it impossible to engage first gear with the car moving. I wouldn't have thought this the case with modern bikes being used for bike tests though