{"id":11,"date":"2011-08-16T16:44:10","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T16:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/betterrider.skirnir.com\/?p=11"},"modified":"2011-08-31T20:36:39","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T20:36:39","slug":"why-learn-to-ride-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/betterrider.skirnir.com\/?p=11","title":{"rendered":"Why learn to ride better?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>It’s a bit scary when I look at my driving licence and find I’ve been riding for 21 years. I’m not a fair weather rider, I’ve ridden in summer, winter, rain, even snow sometimes. Most of my riding has been functional – commuting, going from A to B. I’ve done longer rides, of course, when my father was in hospital I was riding from Edinburgh to Dundee a couple of evenings a week. I’ve always been told I’m a safe rider, but I feel slow sometimes – as if I can’t keep up the pace that others can and be safe.<\/p>\n

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I’ve come off the bike four times, but never at speed. Twice it was when riding on snowy\/icy roads (perhaps I shouldn’t do that!), once was on diesel at a roundabout, and the last time was the fault of a police car! There’s a whole story in that last one, but there’s a pattern to all of them – slow speed, losing control of the front wheel and going down. No injuries beyond bruises, and scrapes to the bike – but clearly a lesson I haven’t learned.<\/p>\n

So I want to learn to feel safe riding a bit faster on open roads, and be a bit more in control when things are going wrong at low speeds.<\/p>\n

A few years ago I signed up for the Police BikeSafe scheme – and went along for the lecture. I learned a lot: to look for hazards from far to near, taking corners at constant speed on a constant radius… but they couldn’t manage to set me up on a ride, so I never did the practical part. They did suggest I just join the IAM (Institute of Advanced Motorists) as there was a great local group, but I didn’t get around to that till this year, when I was at the bike show, had a little spending money in my pocket, and the local IAM group were there. So, I signed up.<\/p>\n

There was a little messing about with packs not arriving in the post, me being away, bouncing forms back and forth (I think the local group could streamline their process for new Associates a little, but they are very helpful) – so I was a bit slow getting started, but.. I’m now signed up.<\/p>\n

A little nervous, no idea what to expect, but my first ride with an Observer is on Thursday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s a bit scary when I look at my driving licence and find I’ve been riding for 21 years. I’m not a fair weather rider, I’ve ridden in summer, winter, rain, even snow sometimes. Most of my riding has been … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thoughts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/betterrider.skirnir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/betterrider.skirnir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/betterrider.skirnir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betterrider.skirnir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betterrider.skirnir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/betterrider.skirnir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51,"href":"http:\/\/betterrider.skirnir.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/51"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/betterrider.skirnir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betterrider.skirnir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/betterrider.skirnir.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}