Who here that took the MSF course...

[Apex]

How many of you still practice some of the items in the course?

I find myself getting bored and doing figure 8's at the end of the street. I like doing slow moving drills too. So I'll go as long as I can at a light trying to not touch the ground and just creep along.

There is this neighborhood being build that I will go and practice very quick turns. I mean, 1st gear, 5 mph, knee almost to the ground turns. If I can flick a bike around that quick, all the other turns are nothing.


Do you practice some stuff from the course, and what do you practice?

[bob706]

Once a month the club I'm in has a Skills Sunday. We have at least a dozen members that are motorcycle instructors so we do everything from msf, brc, arc and whatever crazy things they can come up with on the spot. A local library lets us use their parking lot.

[Alex]

Great thread idea!

/moved to Riding Skills area, I think it fits better there...

[tjkamper]

I practice just about everything from MSF when I take a leisurely ride or arrive to a destination ahead of schedule.

Try doing about 30 Box U-turns in a row without stopping and you will feel it the next day. Trust me.

[Apex]

Originally Posted by Alex

Great thread idea!

/moved to Riding Skills area, I think it fits better there...

Good point!

[Apex]

Originally Posted by tjkamper

I practice just about everything from MSF when I take a leisurely ride or arrive to a destination ahead of schedule.

Try doing about 30 Box U-turns in a row without stopping and you will feel it the next day. Trust me.

A lot of those turns were easier on the cruiser I had on the MSF course. The ninjette is a bit harder for me.

[JeffM]

Quick stops and low speed turns. Sometimes swerving. It's fun to see how tightly I can circle a manhole cover.

One of these days I'm going to find a really big parking lot and practice stuff for a couple of hours.

[CZroe]

I took the course but I sucked at doing tight figure-eights. I still feel like I'm risking dropping the bike when I try to do it in anywhere near the small area they were using, so I don't practice that often.

I need to lose some weight.

[ally99]

I try to practice an average of once every couple of months in a local high school parking lot. I usually practice off-set weaving/swerving, hard braking, U-turns, figure-8s, and whatever skill I've noticed has been getting rusty in everyday riding. Sometimes gas station scenarios can be tricky to navigate...lots of traffic, tight turns, spills and oil on pavement, etc, so I try to play around with similar situations. Last time I was out there, I did a few exercises mentioned above and then worked on my focus skill of the day which was rolling stops (ie: right turn yields). I was working to make them smoother.
It's kind of like exercise to me. I dread getting out there and doing it because I'd rather go on a fun ride than practice , but every single time I make myself get out there and do some low speed stuff, I feel GREAT afterward!

[sharky nrk]

I took it, its a good course, and I think everyone should do it.

[Sailariel]

Took the course on a Rebel. The Ninja is a whole different bike. Been riding off and on since 1958 and found the course very helpful. After 14 years of not riding, I found that bikes have changed an awful lot.

[n4mwd]

I took the MSF course and I generally don't practice any of the stuff we did there. Its mostly low speed stuff. As far as U-turns, I just stop, look both ways, then turn. Its safer that way. I have found that I have learned a lot by riding a lot of roads that turn a lot.

[ally99]

Originally Posted by n4mwd

I took the MSF course and I generally don't practice any of the stuff we did there. Its mostly low speed stuff. As far as U-turns, I just stop, look both ways, then turn. Its safer that way. I have found that I have learned a lot by riding a lot of roads that turn a lot.

I don't necessarily agree with this approach. The more comfortable you are in low-speed maneuvers, the better acquainted you are with your bike. Avoiding U-turns for a while is understandable, but at some point, long-term riders really need to be comfortable enough on their bikes to pull of any type of maneuver, including all the low-speed MSF stuff. Just my . To each his own!

[wvninja]

I've never had to U turn anywhere. Its also illegal to do hereon main roads. I don't go out specifically to practice, but I do try it out when I'm going slow or just putting around the parkinglot with friends.

[FrugalNinja250]

One of the local mall parking lots has all the markings for the MSF course, which a local shop holds there on weekends. I go by the lot periodically during weekdays to practice. Eventually I hope to get good in the box.

So far I'm at 20,300 miles of riding since taking the MSF two years ago.

[CZroe]

Originally Posted by FrugalNinja250

One of the local mall parking lots has all the markings for the MSF course, which a local shop holds there on weekends. I go by the lot periodically during weekdays to practice. Eventually I hope to get good in the box.

So far I'm at 20,300 miles of riding since taking the MSF two years ago.

I'd be right there with you (took it Summer '08; over 17,100 miles now) if I didn't have to sit out for 5+ months when I couldn't afford the first valve service!

[Blackwidow]

I use what i've learned in class all the time and add my basket with more knowledge as I learn more and more.

[FrugalNinja250]

Originally Posted by CZroe

I'd be right there with you (took it Summer '08; over 17,100 miles now) if I didn't have to sit out for 5+ months when I couldn't afford the first valve service!

Hehe...I actually didn't start riding until the end of March last year, and would have had a few thousand more miles except that I rarely rode the first four and a half months of this year while looking for parts to finish the bike after getting hit by the Toyota truck in January.

I tried to make up for some of the lost miles by riding to Georgia and back last month, that was 1,800 miles.

[CZroe]

Originally Posted by FrugalNinja250

Hehe...I actually didn't start riding until the end of March last year, and would have had a few thousand more miles except that I rarely rode the first four and a half months of this year while looking for parts to finish the bike after getting hit by the Toyota truck in January.

I tried to make up for some of the lost miles by riding to Georgia and back last month, that was 1,800 miles.

I did a bit of that. WV to GA (the trip home) was 600miles and then GA to CA (the big move) was 2,400 miles because I didn't take the straightest route, but everything else has been commuting. I bought it in August '08 from the very last shipment of '08 bikes. I didn't ride from March to July '09.

[JMcDonald]

I am always seeing what low-speed manuevers I can do without putting my feet down. I like riding between the cars in my parking lot to get to my parking spot . And at some point every day I find an excuse to do a u-turn at full-lock.

[Powerlogix]

I practice alot of stuff I learned from MSF. Still working on the U-turn and 8 figures though.

[n4mwd]

I took it in September 2010. I'm still not that great with the low speed tight cornering and I have just completed about 2000 miles since I got my bike. The problem at the course was that they used Kawi Eliminators which only have about 125cc engines and I was having problems with them stalling if I tried going too slow. When they aren't stalling, they are doing a herky-jerky dance with the chain slack. I didn't know it at the time, but the jerkiness can be eliminated with the simultaneous application of the rear brake.

[gfloyd2002]

Originally Posted by Apex

Do you practice some stuff from the course, and what do you practice?

Quick stop drills. Under the theory that you do the habitual in a panic situation, EVERY time I return to my house I do a 40-0 or 30-0 in as short a distance as possible. I want that quick stop to be very well practiced. My neighbors probably think I'm a maniac.

[gfloyd2002]

Originally Posted by n4mwd

I took the MSF course and I generally don't practice any of the stuff we did there. Its mostly low speed stuff. As far as U-turns, I just stop, look both ways, then turn. Its safer that way. I have found that I have learned a lot by riding a lot of roads that turn a lot.

From an instructor at a race school: "I can tell who is going to do well at the track by how they do in the parking lot. Slow speed bike control translates to on-track bike control."

[n4mwd]

Originally Posted by gfloyd2002

From an instructor at a race school: "I can tell who is going to do well at the track by how they do in the parking lot. Slow speed bike control translates to on-track bike control."

I have a hard time agreeing with that. On the track you steer exclusively by countersteering - the exact opposite of slow speed parking lot stuff. I'm not saying that the low speed stuff is useless, because you really do need that stuff in actual parking lots.

Parking lots are allegedly the most dangerous place for a motorcycle. Just a few weeks ago in a parking lot a dumb broad in a huge bummer pulled right in to me and forced me off the road. No actual accident thankfully, but the world is full of clueless car drivers that act like bikers are simply bugs to be squashed. The girl in my case never even slowed down.

[JeffM]

Originally Posted by gfloyd2002

Quick stop drills. Under the theory that you do the habitual in a panic situation, EVERY time I return to my house I do a 40-0 or 30-0 in as short a distance as possible. I want that quick stop to be very well practiced. My neighbors probably think I'm a maniac.

This made me smile. My neighbors must think the same thing (except for the guy two houses down that rides). I run it up to about 35 and do a quick stops. I repeat this about 5-10 times then do slow speed figure 8's in the cul-de-sac in front of my house.

The slow speed stuff, to me, is a challenge. I love to see if I can keep from putting a foot down in really slow traffic while keeping the bike at a crawl. I also feel that practicing going really slow promotes smoothness on the controls which translates to being smooth all the time.

[Live2ride]

A few days after my msf course I was practicing on a friends 250r, I was practicing smooth shifting / u turns. Well, my visor was up on my helmet cause I enjoy a nice breeze and at about 30 mph it just flew off my helmet, so I turn around and I look like an idiot riding around looking for the damn thing, couldn't find it anywhere. About 5 minutes later I looked at my shadow on the ground.....my visor had flipped all the way around my helmet, one side unclipped and it was pointing down behind me .

[JMcDonald]

Haha, that's funny!

Though, I wouldn't recommend riding with it up. One time last summer I got all geared up and was in a hurry to leave, and ended up having to run all the way back upstairs to my apartment to grab something important. Needless to say, I was pretty hot by the time I was actually on the road. I rode for a couple miles with the visor up (and yes, it does feel really great) before deciding to close it for safety. Not another mile later and I get hit in the visor at about 40mph by what I think was a dry chunk of dirt about the size of a quarter. It sounded like a rock hitting my shield. At 40mph, BEST case scenario is I get a bloody nose and am temporarily really distracted. Just as likely, however, would have been that the dirt got into my eye(s) and caused me to crash, or even shattered or gone through my sunglasses and permanently damaged my eye.

Riding with it cracked open a half inch isn't a terrible idea, but after that I rarely even did that, and NEVER rode faster than parking-lot speeds with it up.

And Jeff, +1 .

n4mwd , I've never met someone who was good going fast that wasn't good going slow .

[Live2ride]

yea, I don't ride around with my visor up normally. I only had it up because I was riding on the road in front of my house, which has almost no traffic, and it was around 105 degrees that day. I'm sure not gonna do that again though after hearing your story.

[JMcDonald]

Yeah, I posted that story on another forum, and got many responses about people getting hit in the visors with sorts of crap, even a bird :P . Needless to say, I was definitely sold on yet another of the many advantages of a full-face helmet .

[setasai]

Yea, a friend of mine was being an idiot and went around 60mph on a local street when a bird whacked him on his chest. He had lots of space and and didnt have any trouble keeping the bike stabile but damn did that thing knock the wind out of him.

Back on topic, I've recently been going back to a nearby park's parking lot for balance and flickability practice because I generally have no problem with everyday riding but once traffic hits, bam! i'm every control/button gets used and I feel like i'm physically dyslexic. Apparently I cant balance, switch gears, brake, clutch control, and throttle control at the same time as looking for morons merging into me thinking there's space.

[gfloyd2002]

Originally Posted by JMcDonald

Yeah, I posted that story on another forum, and got many responses about people getting hit in the visors with sorts of crap, even a bird :P . Needless to say, I was definitely sold on yet another of the many advantages of a full-face helmet .

This is applicable to OP topic. I got yelled at in my MSF course for having the visor up and always keep it down now. Roads here being as bad as they are, I've been hit in the helmet with gravel, a random nut kicked up off the highway by a truck in front of me, a lit cigarette butt and bees. Lots of Bees. I've got a nice little star crack in my visor that could have been a star crack on my checkbone, and heaven knows what a bee on the retina would do to one's concentration.

[n4mwd]

Originally Posted by gfloyd2002

This is applicable to OP topic. I got yelled at in my MSF course for having the visor up and always keep it down now. ...

When I took the MSF course, I had a 3/4 helmet with a flip down visor. It was really hot and I kept it up and nobody said anything. It had an annoying whistle when the bike moved. Since the top speed there was about 10 mph, we didn't have much of a problem with bug impacts and such.

I'm too much of a wimp to go without a helmet. A LOT of bikers around here leave the helmet at home. Its totally legal here in FL. I have a nice modular helmet now. I've been smacked in the visor by so many bugs and rocks and mud (from passing trucks) that I wouldn't dare go without it. In fact, its my standard practice to clean the visor every time I come back because its always covered in bug splat even if I didn't notice it on the ride.

Oh, and speaking of bug impacts... I saw a mythbusters promo regarding a motorcyclists that hit a bug at high speed and got killed. I never got to see the actual show. Anybody see it and what was the conclusion?

[Live2ride]

When I was in my msf course our teachers told us to keep our visors up because it was like 100 degrees or so. And I saw that episode of mythbusters, they said that to be even remotely dangerous to a moto rider, the bug would have to be about the size of a baseball or bigger if I remember correctly. So, unless you ride around toxic waste dumps all the time, and have baseball sized flies buzzin around, then i dought your gonna get seriously injured (if your wearing the correct gear that is). I'd imagine just about anyone would freak out if a bee flew into their helmet though, hence why I wear sunglasses under my helmet almost all the time.

[JMcDonald]

What degree of injury were they looking for? Broken ribs, probably not, but blind for 15 seconds is perfectly plausible. Hell, a rock to the eye at 40mph would surely not be pretty. I'm sure more than one kid lost an eye on the playground before adults said "stop throwing rocks or you'll put an eye out!"

*edit*

As far as the topic goes, I still practice low-speed manuevering every day. When I park in front of my apartment, I usually ride on the sidewalk between my building and the row of cars, and very carefully since sometimes there might only be a couple feet between a bush and a bumper, and then ride into a free space so I am sticking out. I do this without putting my feet down, and needless to say it requires some concentration. At stoplights I often try to balance until the light turns green, only stopping before I either run out of room or I start looking goofy wobbling all over the place. I'd say Im about 60 or 70% successful when I actually try, but I don't always try if the light is going to be like 45 seconds long, hahaha.

[Alex]

I've had to have small pieces of metal taken out of my eyes twice so far, caused by riding with my shield up when I shouldn't have been. My opthamalogist loves me. I always wear sunglasses on the bike, so my eyes are always covered to some extent, but with the way wind swirls around, there is still an opportunity to get crap stuck in your eye.

I rarely ride with the visor up, but even if it is popped open for just a moment or two to get some extra ventilation, there is a clear elevated risk of getting hurt. I have had an occasion or two where I put the visor down, and a moment later I get hit with something significant on the visor.

OH - just thought of a somewhat related incident that happened to me this morning in the car. I'm driving to work, minding my own business, when I hear this huge "WHACK" and see that my side-view mirror on the right side has been completely folded back to the car. There are no vehicles within 50 yards of me, it was truly out of the blue. I still don't know what I hit, but I assume it must have been some type of bird, or maybe a rock that was bouncing around for quite awhile from a truck way up in the distance. But I really have no idea.

When I got to the parking lot, I went out and folded the mirror back, and it had completely obliterated the plastic covering on the front, and all that is left is that black plastic frame. I can't imaging what it would have felt like on my helmet, but I have to believe having the visor down would have been a better option if given the choice.

[n4mwd]

I've only been riding since September 2010. Friends talked me into getting a bike and I've always liked Ninjas so I bought one. Right after I got it, I was practicing slow speed U-turns and because of a defective boot, I couldn't put my foot down and so me and the bike went over. I was wearing full gear and didn't get hurt, but it really gave me a low speed complex. I ride in heavy traffic and around 70-80 on I-95 with no problem, but riding slow in a parking lot really makes me nervous still to this day.

So as a result, I didn't do all that great with the slow speed MSF stuff. But I did do pretty good with the higher speed stuff like swerving, turning and stopping. I was a bit disappointed that they seemed to go at the pace of the more experienced riders rather than the newbies like me.

Since Sept, I have logged about 2000 miles, mostly local and not in a parking lot.

[JMcDonald]

I'd say just keep working at it, and even practice quickly getting your feet off the pegs and on the ground. It is rewarding being able to control the bike at all speeds, and the precision required to do so will translate to faster or more aggressive riding.

[scotty]

I did not take it. Mostly due to my old job. I'm not sure how it is in other states, but here in Ohio the course is only done on weekends. I couldn't have weekends off at the old job. I plan on going this spring just to learn and also I get a lower rate on insurance if I complete it. It's a win, win for me!

[n4mwd]

Originally Posted by scotty

I did not take it. Mostly due to my old job. I'm not sure how it is in other states, but here in Ohio the course is only done on weekends. I couldn't have weekends off at the old job. I plan on going this spring just to learn and also I get a lower rate on insurance if I complete it. It's a win, win for me!

Here in Florida, the MSF course is required to get your motorcycle endorsement. There are several competing schools, but the one I used was Thursday evening introduction and then all weekend.

I tried to get some insurance quotes a few months ago and one of the questions was "Have you passed the MSF course?" Even still, the premiums were so ridiculously high that I just go without which is legal here in FL.