Took the MSF class this past weekend and........... I passed!! Woohoo!! I'm happy as hell! Hopefully I'll get my F3/gear/insurance/dmv stuff taken care of this week and be riding soon! I rode a Suzuki GZ 250 for class, it was pretty fun! First time riding ever, was nervous starting out, got relaxed and into the flow soon after though! The first day we watched the videos and went over the test questions. Second day I was pissed as hell going into class, I almost missed the damn thing! Traffic on the interstate tunnel on the way to the class was stopped with like 10 mins to get there and if I didn't make it on time I wouldn't have been able to ride and be forced to retake the whole thing! Luckily I made it, relieved as hell when I got there. Rode pretty good for the first day of riding. Today (Sunday) we took the written test first, you had to get an 80 to pass, I was gonna study but ran into lots of stuff fri and sat night that I didn't get to look over the book except for the first day of class, but I passed that with a 90. Went out to do more excercises, we did these figure 8 u turns in this small box area and I kept putting my damn foot down turn so slow cuz I felt like I was gonna tip over if I didn't, everything else was ok and I felt good through the day. Then came time for the test and I started getting nervous as hell. I started off with a 100 points then with each test you get deducted for mess ups. First up was the figure 8 thing, I went out of the line once and put my foot down once, minus 3 points for each, next was the swerve, no problems on that, then the quick stop, I braked too early on it the first go round, you get a second chance, did fine that time. Last was cornering, you had to maintain a steady speed/ keep head up (dont look at cones), use both brakes entering the curve and get through it withing the boundary lines and within 2.9 seconds to get no deductions. The place we were at had the sun glaring down in your eyes, and hot damn 4 of us never saw the actual boundary line as we used cones on both sides of it during the practice runs so I went through it and thought I did good as I stayed closed to the right side of the cones but was supposed to be on the left! So 10 points off for that, but besides that, it was 16 points off total so I got an 84! The instructors were kool as hell, fellow riders were kool too! Some rode before, a couple girls rode before but as a passenger, and then the newbs like me. I'm glad I did it, was a great experience!

Sorry for the essay! Didn't know if this goes in new ppl section or the riding school section but I thought I'd share with the newbs here! I just hope adjusting from the standard bike style to the sport bike goes ok!

 

YAY!! Congrats!! I took the MSF course years ago and I thought it was great...it turned out the cop (who lived right behind me) was the instructor. Get the bike out soon, but ride at your own pace!

 

+1 on pits advice....you definitely need to get in the saddle asap......all of those skills you learned will be losed if you don't start using them. Good luck, let us know what bike you get!!!

 

Gratz on passing man!!!!! I'm taking my MSF class sometime in August I sent in the registration last Wednesday so hopefully I'll know what class I got into soon. I'm just hoping that it will help me greatly improve my slow maneuvering skills because I'm like you I'm afraid of dropping my bike riding slow. Brand new '06 f4i + dropping it = crying. lol

Mike

 

congrats on passing!

 

Thanks all! Yeah there was a guy who rode up to the MSF class on his GSXR, he wanted to improve his skills/ ride safer. I'm not sure how much he improved but he did great on everything including the tight figure 8 turns, but he was riding a dual sport bike which I bet was much easier than the cruisers in class. Yeah I took the DMV written test on Tuesday, got the M on my license, and yesterday I took my first sportbike ride on the 95 F3 I'm buying and......... It was LOVELY!!!!! It was a big difference from the 250 cruisers from the class, throttle was much more sensitive and the power was wayyyy more than the MSF bikes. I literally felt like I was flying the way it was going fast. I didn't even go past 4th gear or 50 mph or not even past 7-8k rpms going around my friends neighborhood but hot damn I felt like I was going fast as hell. I'll hopefully have gotten the insurance on it and the title transferred by next week, but it's pretty much my first bike!

My friend was keeping it in a garage, I live in a townhouse so anyone know of anything special to look for in a bike cover/ any good deals on one for an F3. Also, how do you guys handle your front helmet lens from fogging? My friend said wal-mart has some type of anti-fog thing for glasses I could use, not sure what you all do. Thanks again!