At 0845 yesterday, 11 of us met up at J’ville before heading out to Porirua for Mentor Training with Andrew & Lynn Templeton of Ridesafe. This was the first of a two day programme which is being conducted using the facilities at Whitireia, ie a classroom and a carpark, and fortunately we had another reasonably nice day for it, albeit rather chilly which wasn’t too much of a problem as most of the day was spent in the classroom. The first day focusing more on improving our individual riding and the second day will be more about mentoring techniques. The ride out was rather sedate with Andrew leading (setting a good example) and we were soon in the classroom discussing idiot riding behaviour that we may encounter and have to comment on in the course of being a mentor. I was right at the front of the class and had to shrink into my chair a bit because it seemed that much of what was being said was aimed right at me, so I didn’t have much to say at that point. We then covered things like gear, bike preparation and identifying potential hazards on video clips, counter-steering and good riding practices before going out a bit of slow bike handling (no throttle stuff) and riding through a series of cones focusing on keeping the head up and not using the front brake, before stopping for lunch.
After lunch it was back in the classroom for some excercises on awareness and why one needs to keep their head up, some braking theory and out for some braking demos before trying it ourselves, focusing on ‘throttle-squeeze-clutch-heave’ and using rear, front then both. All good when you have ABS and linked brakes, but I think that has probably made me a bit blazé and lacking in finesse because I can grab handfuls without much in the way of dire consequences. We finished the day with a bit on Serious Crash analysis and trying to identify errors that have led to some crash examples. It was a great day and quite a good reality check to highlight things that we know but don’t think about and I look forward to the next session, but behaving myself……I don’t know, that might be a bit harder, …….and as for advising riders to do things I myself don’t generally adhere to …………..Hmmmm …….I guess it’s Do as I Say, Not as I Do!
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Old Blog?
These blogs were posted on the KiwiBiker forum but I decided it was time for a change. Archives
January 2017
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