Introduction: Pulled The Trigger

Since mid-Summer of last year, I started two-wheeling on an Aprilia Scarabeo 50 scooter that belonged to my girlfriend, which she didn't ride at all. I took it locally around town, mainly to work and back which was 10 minutes. Quickly I decided I needed something with a bit more power since I switched to a new job that was across town.

I bought a 2004 Aprilia Scarabeo 150. In Wisconsin you do need a motorcycle endorsement on anything over 49cc. However, I didn't have the time to go take an MSF course at that time so I continued riding it sans endorsement.

Late in the Summer I decided I did need to access the highways around here and the 150 wasn't cutting it anymore. I upgraded to an Aprilia Scarabeo 500 that I purchased via the internet from a dealer in Illinois. It was a huge, huge ordeal to get it to Madison and in working order. Though it didn't take a lot of money to get her running well, it did take a lot of my time. One day I will sit down and write the details of it. I also sold the Aprilia Scarabeo 150 for the same price I bought it for, so that was definitely a score.

As Summer was closing and fall quickly approached, I did end up taking the MSF course and passed, so after a simple written test at the DMV, I had my motorcycle endorsement. Excellent!

[Fast Forward through a pretty brutal Wisconsin winter...]

Two days ago (3/18/09) I bit the bullet and purchased a 2006 Honda Shadow Aero with 4070 miles on the odometer.

Delivery came the next day, 3/19, which was yesterday. I spent an hour practicing u-turns, circles and figure 8's in the local school parking lot. The temperature dropped pretty fast so I took her home. I was having some serious issues switching gears, especially downshifting. Aside from the MSF course half a year back, I have not ever shifter a gear in my life. Well, not completely true, I am also an avid bycicler, but the gears are completely different on that. I stalled out a few times but did manage to make it home in one piece and without dropping the bike. A lot of the MSF course came back to me and I'm hoping I don't pick up bad habits while learning to really ride.

Today, 3/20/09, I took the bike out to an industrial park when I got home from work so I could practice shifting through the gears up and down without much traffic. Of course, I did go out at 5PM, so that was probably not a good idea. Everyone was pulling out on driveways so I didn't actually get to shift up through the gears until a good 30 minutes into it. I found that I didn't have much of an issue shifting up through to 5th from 1st. By the end I did get it pretty smooth. I didn't have too much of a problem feathering out the clutch in 1st to get rolling. Sure, i did stall out once or twice doing it, but it just takes a lot of practice and by the end (one and a half hours), I didn't think much about it. What I did have a lot of issues with is downshifting. It was really hard to judge engine speed with actual motorcycle speed and a lot of the time I would downshift and my engine would get really loud and didn't sound very happy. Other times I would downshift successfully into a turn (usually into 1st or second) but when I would accelerate, or try to, the engine sounded clunky and the bike felt like it was going to stall out. I actually did stall out once while going uphill (not sure how I managed that) and every time I'd try to start rolling out, I'd stall out again. Cars had to go around me on the right. Very embarassing. Tomorrow I will practice starting out going uphill. I need to find an incline long enough that I can do that on. I also need to practice a lot of downshifting. I think I should also work on using both breaks because I am too used to the my bicycle and scooter and just using my hands for breaking. I must get out of that habit (but stay in the habit for when I ride my scooter). By the end of practice, I did seem to get a lot better at judging downshifting speeds. I can't tell whether it's easier to judge it by speed of bike or speed of engine. I don't have a tachometer on the Honda so I have to judge by other means. From all the videos I've been watching on YouTube, it should becomre second nature soon and I hope it does since I find riding really, really fun. I feel a lot of control from using gears as well as throttle and brakes. While I still love my scooter, I think the Honda has now quickly become part of the family.