the biker's progress

Last weekend I managed to head south and ride the Suzuki for a while. This is the same Suzuki Ryan purchased much to my chagrin. Although I recently ended up spending most of my bike funds on parental home repairs, so it's just as well I guess.

I decided to start out in a parking lot, as it had been so long since I'd ridden a motorcycle. And they're kind of complicated, especially for those of us with no aptitude for this sort of thing (like me). You have clutches and throttles and two brakes and non-cancelling turn signals and six gears to fiddle with. In addition to all this, you have to re-learn how to get into first gear without killing the engine. Which I did several times.

And there's also the Beginning Biker Irony to cope with: the slower you go, the easier it is to fall over. But this never happened.

So, at the end of the exercise, I managed to ride the bike through some residential neighborhoods without splattering myself or anyone else. I was just getting to the stage where you stop obsessing about brakes and clutches and begin to enjoy yourself. But then it got dark, and was time to return the bike and head home.