It's official, I'm now a biker chick!

It's official! I have my motorcycle endorsement now and managed to learn how to ride without dropping the bike. I spent the weekend over at the Renton Boeing parking lots puttering around on a 250cc motorcycle in a training class. Man was it a f**** blast! Before this class I had never ridden a motorcycle so I wasn't sure what to expect. I can't say enough about how awesome the experience was. I progressed from being able to walk the bike across the parking lot (no power!) to being able to do fast cornering, stopping, swerving, and slow-speed maneuvers. I can't imagine why anyone would get out on the road without the skills they teach you in the class.

This morning our class learned some advanced drills and then practiced for the skills evaluation we'd have to do later. For some reason I'm still plagued by being unable to make slow, tight, right-hand turns. I have this problem on the bicycle and the motorcycle. There's a part of the skills test called "The Box". You basically enter a box and make a figure-8, which tests you on your ability to make tight U-turns. Despite my being completely unable to keep the bike inside the lines for the right-hand turn I went on to ace the rest of the test and passed! I had some serious nervousness going on for the test and was glad when it was over. One poor guy dropped his bike during the evaluation, which is an instant fail.

Now I just have to go to the DMV and get my new license tomorrow! Last week I put a deposit on a new Ducati Monster but it turns out the Dark model is going to take some time to get in stock. I can't wait to start riding so I'm looking at a used one tomorrow and if all works out I may forget about the new bike and get riding this week!