Motorcycle riding for everyone
In one of my previous blog posts, I shared the benefits of learning to ride a motorcycle. However, motorcyclists have a bad reputation for irresponsible driving, wearing strange leather clothes, and taking unnecessary risks. I also dislike these things and agree that riding a motorcycle on a public road is not for everyone. Recently, I discovered a completely different type of motorcycle riding that is suitable for all people who can ride a bicycle. In this blog post, I am going to talk about dirt-bike riding.
It’s a lot of fun! Dirt bike riding is a lot more exciting than riding a motorcycle on a public road or even snowboarding. The excitement of riding on a public road is limited by the road code, and there’s not much one can do about it (at least legally). In addition, bikes are not designed to be dropped, which can make learning mistakes pretty expensive. Dirt bikes have none of these disadvantages! They are designed to be dropped, which makes learning new things a lot less stressful. Dirt bikes are a lot cheaper and simpler, so if they break, fixing them is also cheaper. The best bit is that you don’t need a license to ride them! Snowboarding has its limitations. Excitement on a snowboard is limited to the time you go down the mountain. The rest of the time, you stand in line for the lift and then wait till you get to the top. Quite often, the slope has a few flat sections where a rider loses speed, which is not fun. With dirt bikes, you get a similar feeling while riding but with no waiting time and with fun on all types of surfaces! Having a throttle makes a dirt bike feel like a snowboard with an attached rocket engine. With a turn of the throttle, you can get fun on almost any surface: flat, downhill, or uphill.
The learning curve is not steep, which can be confirmed by the following story. My wife and 10-year-old daughter had no experience with motorcycles. I had always wanted to give them a taste of riding. The other day, I took them to a local farm to learn dirt bike riding. It was a special farm where one can rent a motorcycle with all the protective gear and training. With an experienced instructor, it took them only a few hours to learn basic riding skills. Then they spent the rest of the day riding around a learner track to master basic cornering skills. Even though it was quite demanding for them and they had moments when they doubted the whole idea, they finished the day happy and excited. They also wanted to do it again!
Once one learns all the basic riding skills — turning, going up and down, breaking, and stand riding — which takes from one to two days of practice, then the fun begins. The motorcycle starts to feel like your body extension. You feel like flying around the track or trail. In some way, it reminds me of playing a Mario Cart on a game console. Dirt riding demands 100% attention, and when you go through turns on a mildly wet track, it feels like skiing or snowboarding.
The best way to try and decide for yourself is to find a place (one near Auckland) where you can rent a motorcycle, gear, and get a few hours of tuition. After a couple of days of riding, you will know if dirt bike riding should be one of your hobbies. Even if you don’t make it another hobby, you will still have a great time learning a new skill, which is always good for brain development.
