Don’t get strapped by rules

Recently just few months ago I started riding motorcycle, I knew it was pretty scary riding bike in this grueling Bay Area, but I knew I gonna love it, it was so much fun hitting on the road in a fast speed without a iron wrapper enclosed, I can feel the wind and road. As a beginner, I need to practice a lot to get use to ride on the two wheels, and the best and most difficult motorcycle practicing place is mountain road, luckily, there is a curvy mountain road close to my house. I went there practicing cornering a lot, there was a problem bothered me so much, there were few times I felt I almost lost control of my bike. Because whenever there is a big turn, or complicate road condition, the speed limit would change, specially in the mountain road, the speed limit change a lot. As a newbie rider, it nerves me a lot to adjust my speed base on the guidepost. Some day all of sudden, I realized I should let me self be the judge of my safety and comfort. There are so many factors affect the safety speed, like visibility, humidity, pavement condition, wind power and direction, gradient, and my general body status etc. I could start it slow, but I should get the ability to blend all those factors I could aware and let myself know is my current speed comfort or not.

The most scary moment is to making a big turn in a mountain road, because in order to make a turn for motorcycle, you have to push the handle bar in the same direction you are turning to in order to make yourself lean to direction you want and make the bike go that way, the technical term is counter steering. It’s counter-intuitive and hard.

I was so nervous and uncomfortable about it, besides the leaning during the turn, I had to constant check my current speed and the road limit speed on the guidepost. Then someday all of a sudden I realized I should not check the speed, I should let me main focus on the road, there are so many factors affect my safety speed, like the road visibility, the wind speed, the humidity, my pavement condition and my body condition etc. After I’ve practiced tons of miles, myself on the road should be center judge for what’s the safe and comfort speed for me, I should have a general feeling of what’s safe for myself. Since then, I felt much more fun and comfort on the road, all my focus on the road, I gather all the road condition naturally through my body sensor and tell myself how is it, I might ease off during the turn or speed up, or consistent changing as I felt good, I got instant response of trial base on the my true feeling, I might hit on the same turn everyday in different speed, you know what, I never check and I don’t care. Of course, I’m not a crazy guy, I probably over speed every time but it can’t be too much. Regardless, I only got the 300 cc bike.

This reminds me of the English learning experience, I spent 10s of years leaning English grammar, the past tense, perfect tense and future tense and all the appropriate adjective. I never enjoyed it, and I didn’t learn well to be honest. After lots of trials, I notice just speak out and get some awkward or embarrassment would be the best for me to learn those tedious nuance, like those tense ,grammar or appropriate words. That’s why I come here, I hope to learn English and public speaking ability with you guys together.