Those of you who follow my blog regularly already know that I have just passed a test on motorcycle riding so to be able to ride legally in the US. I have been riding for a long time in Italy and had already a driver license there that allowed me to do it, but I had never gotten any formal training and despite my extensive experience I found out in the three days of the course that there were some very basic concepts that I didn’t know.
When you fixate on an obstacle in riding on a curve you will end right there! - courtesy of www.motorcyclebasics.com
Motorcycle riding is very similar to running a small business or any new business for that matter. It can be very fun and you’ll be able to enjoy every minute of it, but it is also challenging because you have much bigger and stronger guys out there that can simply crush you without even noticing it.
This is not the right way to ride your business! Mind what you are doing, stay focused!
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It becomes therefore a game of anticipating other people’s moves, of allowing yourself enough cushion to have the time and the space to get out from dangerous situations. Above everything else you must be nimble, you must react fast and be able to coordinate several actions simultaneously in a split of a second without even thinking about them. The coaches at the riding range called it “muscle memory” and it is basically repeating the same action over and over through exercise so that you can then execute it with speed.
I have just completed the motorcycle rider course that was required for me to become a legal bike rider in Florida. I have been riding for quite a long time in Italy but I had never gone through a formal training program on the subject and I was amazed at the number and quality of concepts I managed to learn during this three days experience.
There had been things I had been doing instinctively without me knowing the reason why I was doing them and there had been concepts that were just missing and that are instead very relevant to perform a safe and pleasant ride. But what surprised me the most was the level of challenge involved with the course.
The training and testing range where I got my motorcycle license.
I had gotten the idea and maybe somebody even told me that it was just something you had to do in order to get your paperwork straight but there wasn’t much to it. Quite on the contrary the type of actions we were supposed to learn and perform with our bikes were challenging even for an experienced rider as me.
Also the precision of those actions and the time involved in the training itself, over 12 hours of actual exercised and tests, was quite surprising. Note that some of the students who attended the class and that eventually passed it had never rode on a bike before. The training was actually organized in a long series of consecutive steps, each one building on top of the previous one and leading from the very basics up to the most complex actions.
The bike that got me though the training and the tests. I had never used it before.
It was amazing seeing that under the challenge of the program, people would actually move from nowhere to being able to ride and control their vehicle to an high standard and that this was accomplished by the vast majority of the people attending the course.
The coaches were really good and the program has been tested nationally on many thousands of people, yet the most important things was that never during the training the coaches indulged with the thought that some of the students would not make it. They simply knew it could be done and that we could do it. On our side, we felt challenged to measure up to other students and to simply show we could also make it and it simply happened.
Yesterday I have started my course to become a legal motorcycle driver in Florida. I have been riding bikes in Italy for almost three decades but this is the first time I have to go through some formal education on the subject. Unfortunately or fortunately I could say my Italian bike driving license is not valid in the US therefore I have to take classes like any other newcomer.
Motorcycle riding is a passion, which is shared by women and men alike, whatever the age and the profession. Attending to the first class has been a very eye opening experience. For the first time somebody explained me some basic concepts on how you drive and steer a bike. This is the type of knowledge that can save your life when you have it and know how to apply it.
Yet I have been riding for all this time on any type of road and with many different types of bike without knowing it. I was one of the very many riders who learned by himself, by trial and error and some common sense.
Now I need to learn how to drive all over again, but in the right way and our instructor told us that people with no experience usually do better at the exam as compared to experienced people simply because the latter need to first cancel their previous “self training” before really developing the right skills.
So how about the wrong habits one develops in business and in cultivating relationships both in the real and the virtual worlds? The whole message I am giving here is that constant education is essential if you want to become a real pro and avoid the dangers down the road: it doesn’t matter if it is work or bike riding.
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