The USS Quad Damage

Lunch

Next we had another theory talk followed by a lunch break. We walked to Macarthur Square via Macarthus Station and all grabbed some Subway and a drink for lunch. Which was good. I only had riding boots. Which was bad. Infact I’ve got blisters on my heels and the walk back was painful.

Not only that but I walked down with my bike pants on with the sun out in it’s full, lets rain my Michaels P test parade, glory. So not only did I get blisters I was very, very sweaty and hot when I arrived back. Luckily there was aircon on inside the daycare centre and I ate my lunch and chilled in there.

Road ride

After lunch we went on the road ride. It wasn’t too bad, everyone passed, the only problem was the intense heat and that we stopped every 5-10 minutes of riding for a quick chat.

The worst part was when we stopped for about 5 minutes to talk about cornering in the heat.

Final Practice

Alright back to the daycare centre we went and we talked about the ride, more theory stuff and then finally got 15 minutes to practice for the MOST. It was hot, the sun was out, I’d been sweating most of the day and I was tired from all the riding and heat.

The track was left up as before with the other two guys doing their thing. I went through once, not very well and was like. Ok I’m fucked, hello fail. So then I was like. Hey if I’m going to fail then I might as well fail my way. So for the next 15 minutes I think I did the course 3 maybe 4 more times and skipped the obstacle and quick stop everytime. For comparison there was probably time to do atleast 20 attempts.

What did I do with the rest of my time you ask? Well I just did like I’d normally do out the back of some industrial area. Slow speeds, switching between holding my clutch in and rolling, finding a good throttle/friction point, stopping and generally just turning and getting comfortable with my bike. Nothing too fancy and I felt alot less tense and not at all cramped or constrained by the cones on the course.

For some reason the car park has 4 marked joint P/L courses with only 3 being used so I found the left hand turn and did two then found the U-Turn bay and did one U-Turn and then it was time for the test.

The Test

It was hot, took the instructor a while to setup the course, oh and I was first up. He ran through the first left and turn and where I had to stop. I waited for him to saw go and I went off. I made the turn and stopped with my wheel in the white box. Yay I done the easiest one. Oh crap!!! I forgot to head check!

So yeah one test, the easiest one, and I’d already lost 3 points.

Obviously I was freaking out by now. I tried to remember to head check everytime before I moved the bike. I did my best on the cone weave, the U-Turn, emergency stop and put both feet down and finally did the obstacle avoidance test and headed into where the instructor was and prepared to be told I’d failed.

The outcome

So obviously I’d failed, rocked up to the instructor to hear the bad news. “ok here’s your points, 5, congrats you passed”. It was kinda disappointing, 2 weeks really wasn’t enough, I really should have gone out and practiced more, 1200km’s total. What was I thinking. I’m faily sure Harpreet is upto 5000k’s on his ZZR. Wait did he just say I passed? It didn’t sink in, I think he said I passed but maybe I was mistaken. It still hadn’t sunk in.

We headed back into the class room and I got my certificate. It still hadn’t fully sunk in yet.

I headed home told my parents I’d passed. Nope still hasn’t sunk in yet.

Infact it’s only now that I have my P plates and a licence in my hot little hands that it has fully sunk in that I passed.

Test Summery

I failed to perform two head checks which was 5 of my 8 points down the drain.

Other that that I pwned the cone weave, was the only one to do the U-Turn without putting a foot down or touching a line, stopped on a dime for the emergency stop and breezed through the obstacle avoidance like it was nothing. Infact I had to pick some rocks out off the grooves and rubber, yes they were stuck to the rubber and left a mark because there was that much down force on the front wheel by the end of the emergency brake. So except for the two failed head checks it was a flawless technical ride.

Oh but our story doesn’t end here. Next we went inside, got our certificates, had a debriefing and then it was time to head home. You know what happened then? It started to rain. My wet weather gear finally paid off.

How did I manage to pull it off?

With only 1200k’s to my name, 2 weeks since I got my L’s this time, 18 months since I last had my L’s, screwing up all the organised training before hand?

Apart from already having my full car licence…

Probably because almost every single time I went out to ride when I previously had my L’s I’d do atleast 10-20 minutes of slow speed practice in the industrial area next to Blair Athol. It was all their in my head, earlier in the day I’d just been trying to relearn in a way that simply wasn’t working. So when I finally just did my thing without trying to do it as the instructor told me and instead just concentrated on doing it that when it all came together. Just like when I was practicing the course with Harpreet and when I’d practiced the few other times to remind myself of how I used to slow speed manouver.

Thus I passed because I drew on all my previous practice rather than the limited and poor practice attempts on the day.

Intro

Well not everything but alot of stuff was stacked against me for my pre-provisional licence course and test. Not the least of which was the fact that I’d only had time to ride my bike about 1/3-2/5’s of the days I’ve had my L’s for the 2nd time. Which wasn’t alot as I’ve only had my L’s for 2 weeks as the RTA couldn’t work out how give me the month I would have liked. Yes normally it’s 3 months minimum however I’ve held my L’s before so I don’t have to wait 3 months.

The sleep

First up, I had very little sleep. For some reason I lay in my bed until atleast 12pm before I nodded off to sleep only to wake up for some reason at 4:40am. Yeah my sleeping patterns suck.

I got out of bed at 6am, had a shower, breakfast, got everything ready, put on my gear and moved my bike out of the garage. I then proceeded to stall my bike prior to attempting to move it.

I somehow got bogged/wedged for a minute or two in the grass between our driveway and our neighbors driveway. Ok it was more like a really bad angle which wedged the bike between the elevated side of our driveway and the large rocks are used as a border to seperate my neighbors garden and lawn near our drive way.

So far so good, I headed off to the UWS Macarthur Daycare centre.

Now the course starts at 8am. I was there at around 7:10am. Way too early so I just stood around for ages wishing I’d have slept in for 30 more minutes.

The course starts

Now anticipating rain I’d taken all my wet weather gear which ofcourse had to be worn. This obviously was a mistake because not only did it not rain on the way there but as we entered the daycare centre at around 10 minutes to 8 the sun came out. Which ofcourse spelled the beginning of a hot and humid day.

Alright next we did some road theory in one of the class rooms and headed out to the training area / weekday parking lot for UWS. Yes I was starting to feel the heat even then. The instructor checked out our bikes and mine was fine. Or were you expecting something to be wrong with it? :P

By some twist of fate I happened to be other only person doing the course on their own bike rather than one of the hire bikes.

Training Starts

The first exercise was a slow straight ride for about 30 meters with your throttle constant and your clutch held at friction point. Speed was controlled by the application of your rear brake. I wasn’t crash hot at it but I managed to do it.

Leading on from that as the second section of the exercise which was an acceleration up to 20-25, a shift into 2nd gear and a controlled brake. Easy as.

We went inside, had another talk about, well about something but I can’t for the life of me remember right now. Anyway it would have been about how to avoid accidents on your bike as they are all talks about how to avoid accidents on your bike.

Next we went out and started practicing more specifically for the MOST (Motorcycle Operator Skill Test).

For those whom aren’t aware there are 3 sections to an “oval” or rectangular area with the track followin a counter clock wise direction. Each section deals with some aspect of slow speed manouvering.

The first is weaving in and out of cones and I was terrible at it. Now ideally your supposed to keep your throttle constant, your clutch at friction point and control your speed, which should be really slow, via your rear brake. Just like the straight line in exercise one except with cones to avoid.

I couldn’t figure out why I was sucking so horribly. My revs kept jumping up on right hand turns, falling and almost stalling on left hand turns, I kept putting my foot down, stalling, messing up the turns, almost dropped my bike atleast twice, once with the clutch comming in and reving really high. In general I sucked da big one.

Next was a right hand U-turn into four cones marking the boundaries of a tight left hand turn.

Again I messed it up time and time again. To be fair the “U-turn” was more like a 270+ degree turn which lead into a 135 degree left hand turn. Atleast thats how it played out on my bike. I had alot less trouble with it when instead of trying to stay inside the cones the instructor had placed for the U-Turn I ignored them and lined up my “U-Turn” to end facing the sharp left hand turn. However I still generally stuffed the turns up, stalled, put my foot down, etc,… I felt tense and really cramped on the course and it was showing.

Next we had the duel purpose emergency stop and obstacle avoidance section. My braking was sub par and I’d always prelead into the left or right of the obstacle and possibly turn early.

All in all things were not looking good. Infact I was semi scared I’d fail and had no real idea what was going wrong because I thought I’d been able to do everything satisfactorily when I’d come down here earlier in the week and Harpreet ran me through the course.

I’m not entirely sure but I think everyone else expected me to fail the MOST as well, though I didn’t find out that until after the test.