Most of this has been covered in this thread already, but here's what I wrote up for the riders at work.
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I'm back from the "Basic" course with a big smile. There were seven of
us -- six guys and a girl -- ranging in age from, by my estimate, 18
to 40. All but one guy had previously taken the MSF course and no one
had more than two seasons of experience on the road.
Everyone (myself included) used the police KZ1000s and I believe that
most of us dropped them at least once. Two people were somewhat short
and had a hard time with the police bikes at first; to say that the
girl was balancing her bike "on her tiptoes" would be an
understatement. Instead of slowing the whole class down, the two short
people were given one-on-one instruction for a little while and were
then brought back into the main group once they got the hang of the
bikes.
We did some slow "follow the leader" to get familiar with the bikes,
practiced a *lot* of tight U-turns, did emergency braking (20mph to
35mph), combined swerving (and stopping) with more emergency braking,
and some of us attempted U-turns on a hill. The instructors also
demonstrated a few things that we didn't get to do: locking up the
rear wheel on purpose, riding up steep dirt hills on a road bike,
doing figure-8 U-turns on a hill, and doing extremely tight turns
around cones. (I believe most of these exercises are covered either in
the more advanced civilian classes or in police motorcycle training.)
Everyone who dumped a bike did so at low speeds and I'm pretty sure no
one got hurt. I dropped my rental while doing a U-turn on a hill, an
opt-in exercise.
The four instructors were fantastic. I believe they each had 15+ years
of experience as motorcycle officers and probably each had over 100K
miles on a bike under their respective belts. Two of the guys
mentioned they they had investigated something like 6000+ vehicle
accidents during their careers and three, if not four, of the
instructors were retired. They were all fun, pleasant, and extremely
knowledgeable without being preachy. The vast majority of the class
involved riding a running motorcycle; there was minimal classroom
instruction and not too much waiting in line or standing around. There
was no test, written or otherwise, and we should all be getting
certificates in the mail.
Having done it, I'm very glad that I took the "Basic" course first and
believe that that the training levels are properly labeled if you're
honest with yourself. I don't consider myself to be an "intermediate
rider" but I wondered if it would just be the MSF class all over
again. It wasn't. That said, if you have good clutch control, practice
threshold breaking and emergency maneuvers, and can do everything I
mentioned above on a large bike, you could probably consider starting
with the "Intermediate" class. I'm already trying to sign up for it.
P.S. Apparently two civilians recently passed the "Advanced" course.
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Eric, Congrats!
