I’m very happy to read on the forums I frequent that many people are getting their motorcycle endorsements by taking part in a Motorcycle Safety Foundation course or other Beginner Rider course, such as the ones hosted by Harley Davidson. Some courses allow students to use their own scooters in the course, some even provide scooters, but still, many of them require that you use the provided motorcycles. Either way, taking the course is a valuable experience, even on a beat up course motorcycle that doesn’t shift properly, or for that matter, even if you fail it the course. Twice.

Don’t make the goal of your MSF course the license. Make it the learning.

I first tried to get my motorcycle license back in 1993, when I lived in California. Most of my friends had motorcycles, and I really really really wanted to get one, too. I even subscribed to motorcycle magazines, went to motorcycle shows, and learned motorcycle lingo.

But I didn’t pass my first time 13 years ago. I walked off the course because I … how can I put it… I didn’t really appreciate the instructor’s teaching methods. I wasn’t getting a particular maneuver which made me more nervous (I can’t for the life of me remember what it was), and he was yelling at me to RELAX, JUST @#$! RELAX!!!. This unfortunately had the opposite effect on me. I was already afraid I was going to fail, and besides pissing me off beyond belief, this gave me the perfect excuse to give up: I could blame him for my failure rather than myself. I told myself that I didn’t really want to get a stupid motorcycle license anyway. So there.

Still, it bugged me for years, even though the urge to get a motorcycle faded away.

After getting a scooter and inadvertently falling in love with it, I knew I wanted to - no, HAD to - do the MSF course again, and not just for the license. I had a 50cc scooter, and I didn’t even need a motorcycle endorsement. But I still wanted to earn that M on my license.

I thought I could just sign up and take the course, but I had to wait over a year because the classes fill up so fast and the waiting lists are so long. I’ve read some posts of people bemoaning that they have to wait a couple weeks or a month to take their class: I tried to sign up that June, and around here, I found out that I would have had to sign up in January for the classes that run twice a week every week from April to October. So I marked my calendar for following January, and got signed up at exactly nine minutes after registration opened. I got scheduled for a class in July.

We all took the course on beat up 250cc motorcycles that hardly had any capability to shift left, but things were going well. Having quite a bit of two-wheel experience by that point - even if I didn’t have to shift - helped a lot. When we were ready to be tested, I made it through the stressful figure 8, emergency swerving, and emergency braking with only a couple of points off. I was still scared, but that excited kind of scared.

I felt confident when it came to the last part of the test, the hairpin turn. I had done it for what seems a billion times perfectly in class: build up some speed, shift into second, then shift down and brake with both brakes before the curve, roll into the curve, speed up and roll out. Here’s the easy part, I thought. Do this and you’re home free. At this point, I knew I had passed, and I just wanted it all to be over.

I didn’t really think about what I was doing. I went into the corner too fast, and too close to the inside of the curve, so when I came out of the curve, I went out of the line of cones. In real life, if you went off the road or into the oncoming lane on a hairpin turn, you risk scenarios like going off a cliff or going head-on into a car - and on the course, it is instant test failure.

I was devastated. After everyone left, I ran that course over and over with my scooter to practice. I went back as often as I could and rode that course. Over and over and over. I obsessed about what I did wrong, and beat myself up for being such an idiot for not doing it right. It played in my head when I was trying to fall asleep; I found that I was shifting in the air. I woke up thinking about it.

Part of me was trying to convince myself that I was happy with riding a 50cc scooter, and I didn’t want a stupid motorcycle license anyway. So there.

But I knew I had to do it. I called to schedule a retest. The earliest was two months away.

I was the only one in my class that came back for a retest, and one of two women overall that showed up. I was worried I’d forgotten how to shift, since I didn’t have a motorcycle to practice on. The retest instructor was awesome, and let us practice for almost 2 hours before we tested. He helped us individually with problem areas and areas of concern.

He told us that most people stress about the figure 8 test. But he pointed out that in real life, it’s probably the one thing you will never do, and it certainly won’t ever save your life, like the other maneuvers (emergency braking, taking a hair-pin corner, emergency swerving). That took a lot of pressure off, and we practiced the parts of the test that *would* potentially save our lives. It was great. I found that I was even sort of glad that I had failed the first time so that I got this extra instruction and insight.

When I did the retest, I got a point off for going too slow in that same curve. I knew I should be going faster but that “oh-crap-I-don’t-want-to-fail!!” fear kicked in just as I was going into the curve, and I slowed down more than I should. But going a bit too slow in real life around a corner probably won’t kill me. Going off the road can. I lost a point, but I passed.

A couple weeks ago, I went to the course and ran it - it’s laid out a bit differently, but the segments are the same, brightly painted on the parking lot of our local community college. I can still do a figure 8, and the retest instructor was right, I haven’t had to do one in real life. But I have had to do emergency stops and swerves to avoid being hit or hurt or to avoid hit something, and I pay attention when I take sharp corners. That is the real value of the course - not the license, but the learning.

Plus, I get to show off my stupid motorcycle license. So there.