Two Wheels are better than Four

It's Wednesday now, so maybe I've rested enough to write about my weekend. The weekend wore me out; I had to go back to work Monday in order to chill out.

Last Thursday after work, I headed straight for my Novice Riders Motorcycle Safety Course. Thursday was three hours of class time, and largely quite boring. From the class, it was straight home and to bed to get up for work Friday morning.

Friday was work, and then straight from work to my second sleep study - this time they needed to fit me with the right mask and get the air pressure set right. Saturday morning was straight from my sleep study to my motorcycle class.

Saturday's class was half riding time, half class time. Much more fun, and more intimidating. During Saturday's riding time, one woman went a little out of control on her motorcycle and actually bumped into my back tire. I kept my bike upright and perfectly safe, for which I received kudos from the instructor. Unfortunately, it meant the woman failed out of the course immediately. At the end of classroom time, we took the written test, which I totally kicked ass on. I only missed one question, and in fact had initially chosen the correct answer but started doubting myself and went back and changed it. If I hadn't done that, I would have aced it with 100%.

Straight from my motorcycle class to my weekly poker game, where my wife won. She played well and deserved it, while I made a few huge mistakes that cost me the game. From the poker game, it was home to sleep for a whopping four hours before getting up and heading to my motorcycle class again.

Sunday's class was all riding time, topped off by the riding test. The riding test starts with figure-eights, which I had done poorly on during practice. Sure enough, I blew the figure-eights in the test. What's more, the first test was figure-eight followed immediately by the "swerve to avoid danger" maneuver. I had done fine on that in practice, but in the test I was so thrown off by how massively I screwed up the figure-eight that I messed up on the swerve. The rest of the test I did fine on, but I was sure I had failed.

I was second in line to do the test, so I was also second in line to get my score. Lo and Behold, I passed, with an 84 out of possible 100 (and a passing score of 80). I actually had to verbally verify with the instructor that I passed, so great was my disbelief, and I cheered loudly when he confirmed my passing score. Yippeeee!

So now I can go to the DOL and get my motorcycle endorsement just by handing them the card the instructor gave me saying I passed. Then, it's just a question of getting my old clunker motorcycle up and running again. And then going somewhere relatively safe and doing some practice - lots of practice - because passing by just 4% doesn't seem that great.