If there is something my parents engraved in my head is to never lie and to never ride a motorcycle. I passed the same message to my younger brothers, it's just unnecessarily dangerous.
It wasn't until about three months ago that I saw videos of people my age riding sport bikes, it looked like freedom and adrenaline. Suddenly I was fine assuming a bit of risk in order to ride a motorcycle.
I believe this sudden change is a consequence of having lived chronically online. The majority of my memories from the last 8 years are on a PC, and even though there are fun memories, there are many others that remind me of a habit I should just quit.
That's why I decided, as a first step of living life, to get my motorcycle driving license. A day later, I spent my savings on a 2018 Yamaha R3 with about 45k kilometers and a full system included.
It wasn't until I bought the bike that I realized that maybe I had a very extreme concept of trying to live life, I was starting to regret buying it. The truth is, even though I have a valid license to ride any kind of motorcycle, I did the test with an ATV. I really don't know how to ride a motorcycle.
For many weeks I stared at the bike, not daring to ride it. Even though I used to drive a manual transmission car daily, adding the need to balance a 160kg machine made everything more difficult. I wouldn’t be able to lift that weight if I ever fell from the bike. Sometime later, a friend decided to help me, he had no idea about motorcycles but he was there in case I fell or something terrible happened. That day, I finally took the bike out of the garage. I put it in first gear, made sure not a single soul was near me and took off. I felt like I was going too fast, so I completely let go of the throttle. That caused the bike to brake with the engine and dip forward slightly, which made me panic and end up in the other lane. For some reason it did not occur to me that the first gear on a bike works exactly the same as in a car.
I took a second, turned on the bike and continued on the same straight line. This time I knew more about how to use the throttle. I rode slower and turned left and right, I could balance myself by instinct. When I got to the end of that road, I made a U turn in neutral and went back the same straight line. Riding a Yamaha R3 felt as amazing as I imagined for a long time.
Everything was ruined when I fell from the bike a few meters ahead while trying to make a U turn. I tried to stop mid turn because I knew I wasn't going to make it. I accidentally pulled the clutch fully without releasing the throttle, the bike was revving very loudly. I panicked and fell off the bike. I was then told that I have to lean for almost every turn, so now I have to pay for classes.
However, I took the step of doing something I never thought I would do. All the excitement, nervousness and stress made while riding made me feel alive. I now have a valuable and long lasting memory.
As a side note, a friend rode my bike before me for the first time, he fell from it and destroyed one of the sliders. They sold us sliders for two different bikes without us noticing, we only managed to install one of them.
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| Completely detached |
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| We realized we removed more parts than what we needed to |
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| New slider installed |
It was an incredible and fun day, for now I will leave it right here. Once I learn how to ride the bike, I will update this blog. I hope to upload a video of me riding the bike.
Thanks for reading.