Training Course - Day 2

I made it through day 2 of my riders training course. It was all hands on riding, I did pretty good I think. I had fun and liked doing all the exercises we did except the last one. The last thing we did before wrapping it for the day was emergency braking. The exercise was to take off, shift into 2nd gear, get it up to 18-20 mph then stop the bike using both brakes and downshifting at the same time. During the field test tomorrow we have to correctly do this emergency stop. We ran through it about 10 times, half the time we accelerated up to a box then stopped. We also did the same thing only we weren't looking for the box, the instructors would raise their hand up which meant stop now. Then they would tell you how that run was and want to see if you went back down to 1st during the stop. I was getting pretty tired and I think that's part of the reason I didn't feel as confident with that maneuver. We were out there for almost 5 hours. It got up to 76* today, and for the last 45 minutes or so I was feeling pretty drained and ready to wrap things up. Plus having the helmet on for that long was getting to me.

The bike I rode today was a black Honda Nighthawk. Here's a picture of one. I'll try to take a few pics of my own tomorrow.

They required us to wear boots. The only boots I had were my Doc Martins. They are heavy and have steel toes. It was sort of a pain to use the gear shifter, I kept looking down because with the steel toes I couldn't feel if I was under it to do the upshifting. They called me out for looking down several times. Tonight I went and bought some hiking boots. They are much lighter and the top and toe area have much thinner material. I'm hoping I'll be able to feel the gear lever without having to look down. We'll see how it goes.