A row of Motorcycle Safety Foundation course motorcycles warmed up on a drizzly Seattle Saturday morning while the instructors warmed up with coffee and talked about the class outline. The MSF course provided the bikes and the helmets. I stuck a camera in my jacket and provided fifty bucks, a pair of boots, gloves, and a desire to spend a weekend learning something about motorcycles. It was a weekend very well spent.


Washington State's MSF class is given in two and a half intense days. The first half-day is spent in the classroom talking about the class itself, about motorcycles and how they work, riding gear, what to wear, and how the riding instruction works. The following day of instruction is split into about 5 hours of riding and 4 hours of classroom time. The final day is about the same, but includes an evaluation of student's riding skills and a written test. After passing the MSF course, the state licensing test is a piece of cake, although in Washington State, the riding skills test is waived for those who have passed the MSF course.

Along with information about riding preparation and motorcycle operation, material presented in the classroom includes strategies for riding on the street. This covered such things as how to be visible to other drivers, how to position yourself to provide escape routes and give yourself time to react to hazards, mental processes to aid with identifying and dealing with a variety of situations, and riding techniques for turning, braking, and evasive maneuvers. Other things such as how to load your bike, carry passengers, and where to park were also covered. The classroom information was invaluable for beginning and experienced riders alike, but of course the real fun began early in the morning on the cone-covered parking lots.

The riding part of the class starts out by teaching such basics as how to get on a motorcycle safely and how to put the stand up. Before one's confidence gets a chance to falter, they have you do things like rocking the bike back and forth, feeling its weight and squeezing the front brake. They have you walk the thing around a bit, turning and stopping, using your legs for the motor. Then they have people push each other around on them a little. This is one of the aspects of the class that impressed me most; how it was able to ease a complete newcomer to motorcycles into the basics in such a non-intimidating way, and 28 hours later have them doing such things as locking up the rear tire in controlled skids, minimum-distance stops using both brakes while simultaneously disengaging the clutch and downshifting, collision-avoidance swerving, and other things that newbies might otherwise figure are totally beyond their capabilities in such a short time.

In just two days, people are taken from how to mount and start a motorcycle to things like accelerating through curves with their heads up looking where they want to go, using the clutch's friction zone to maneuver through a series of low-speed turns without falling over, stopping in a curve, and taking off from a standstill with the front wheel turned to one side and the bike leaning.

It doesn't matter if you've been riding for 20 years or have never ridden or never intend to ride a motorcycle. You should find the nearest MSF class and sign up just because it's that good. Even if you're an advanced rider, you'll probably learn some new techniques in this class and you'll know about something cool to recommend to others that you think could use it. If you've never been on a motorcycle before, there are more reasons to take this course than you can shake a kevlar glove at. For automobile drivers, it'll make you a better driver by increasing your awareness of motorcycles more than almost anything else could. For people who think they might be interested in motorcycling but aren't sure, it's pretty hard to beat an MSF course for both the quantity and quality of information and first-hand exposure to the subject.

Many states offer MSF courses. You can find a list of phone numbers to call for a course in your area at the Motorcycle Safety Foundation home page. In the Seattle area, there's a hefty waiting list to get in. After showing up a few times as a standby, however, I was able to take a no-show's place.

There's quite a bit of excellent information around the web about motorcycles. I'm still going through the many excellent articles at James Davis' Tips & Techniques page and drooling over the many pictures of custom choppers that can be found all over the web.

Many thanks to Monica Rahn (in the cool brown fedora below) and Melody Young (in the sunglasses), our instructors, and to the Evergreen Safety Council for helping to make this class so great. Thanks also to Joe Ferong and Puget Sound Motorcycle Education, from whom I took the course a few years back. I finally decided I wanted to start riding, and couldn't resist taking it again. See ya on the road!