Why are car drivers either aggressive and angry, or lazy and delinquent? Because they’re locked in a metal cage instead of riding free like motorcyclists. And why don’t cage-drivers like motorcyclists? Because they’re jealous that we motorcyclists escaped the cage!
That’s what I learned from Jami, the instructor for a two-day motorcycle operator course that I recently took in Plainfield, Conn. Each morning, Jami roared her Kawasaki 903-cc Custom Vulcan up to the trailer where we held our classes. She strutted inside wearing leather boots and a leather cap. She was so coooool. And she wanted us to feel cool, too.
Because why do you ride a motorcycle? Jami’s answer: To look cool and haul ass! In her mind, this was not a safety course; it was a coolness course. And initially, when class started at 8am on Saturday, Jeff and I were on the verge failing.
We’d both overlooked the instructions to wear pants, boots, and gloves. Jami warned that she’d kick us out (and we’d lose our $260 fee) if we didn’t find proper attire by 11am. I called my parents: still asleep, they didn’t pick up the phone.
I called my uncle: already awake and drinking coffee, he promised to scrounge up something. Within 30 minutes, Uncle Steve rolled into the parking lot with two pairs of dirty work boots and gloves. We changed our shoes and Jami let us back inside the trailer.
“I hate having to kick anybody out of class,” Jami said as we walked inside for the remaining hour of instruction.
Instruction done, we all walked out to the adjacent parking lot where she and her sidekick had set up a cone-filled course for us dozen students to practice turning, weaving, rolling, breaking, shifting… and looking coooool.
Later that day, my dad passed by on his own motorcycle wearing sandals and shorts–two things that a motorcyclist should never wear, as Jami had told us.
Jeff and I had established ourselves as class delinquents at the onset of the course. But by the end of the second day, we’d won Jami’s heart. Jeff was the sole student to ace the written exam and I was the sole student to ace the driving exam. She seemed thrilled for us both.
Two days later, with the endorsement from my Motorcycle Safety Class, I visited the DMV and passed the 16-question motorcycle exam, earning the official “M” on my license that allows me to look coooool operating any size motorcycle on any road in the USA.
