Sunday, August 7, 2011

The journey...

It was just last Saturday (30 July 2011) when my wonderful wife agreed to let me ride, and Sunday (31 July 2011) was the bike theory course. After about 6 hours of watching the videos and learning some basic bike stuff, I got my L-license on Thursday (4 August 2011) and collected the bike on Saturday (6 August). All this within a span of 1 week. A great timeline!

Here's the scary part, I've never rode a manual bike in my entire life. Good thing for Youtube Motorcycle Riding instructional videos. This guy has got 2.5 million viewers for a reason: There are alot of ppl around like me.



After watching 3 parts of his videos, checked out another guy called BlinkyCab:



I believe I was ready to take the bike home!

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I woke up the Saturday morning earlier than usual. Put on my riding gear (T-shirt, Jeans and Loafers) and drove out. The plan was to go for my first riding lesson at the driving school and then get my wife to drop me at the bike shop. Plan failed as the driving school was packed with others waiting for their bike lessons. So I drove straight to the bike shop (PJ Wong Motor) in Section 14, PJ. They are an authorised Yamaha dealer.

After checking out the bike, I took it for a quick spin around Section 14, and was pretty confident that I could ride it back home. So I left my car there, and rode to Sea Park's petrol station to fill up the petrol tank. As it was my first time, I didn't know how much to pump, so I just pumped RM4. After the fuel pump, I couldn't figure out how to close the petrol lid on the tank. HAha...

Then was the ride home, which had to pass the dreaded Rothman's round about. That turned out relatively easy, compared to the initial learning of the manual gear system. When I reached home, I was drenched in sweat from the helmet and took some pics:












Wanting to ride more, so I called Dez for breakfast and we met at Kayu SS2, where he took this pic:




In the afternoon, I picked up a windbreaker and rode to Permata Complex in the heart of town. It was my first time on the highway's motorbike lane, and first time travelling at 80km/h. Negotiating traffic in a jam is the trickiest part of riding in KL/PJ. My bike died a couple of times. Thank God for the electric starter... *phew*

Upon reaching Pertama, I didn't know where to park, as the bike parking was super packed and the drive way was extremely narrow. Somehow I managed to squeeze into a slot and went shopping for:
- A protective jacket
- Gloves
- Full faced helmet

I only got the jacket, coz had to rush of to music practise at 4:30pm. As there is no compartments in the bike to carry stuff, I had to wear the HOT jacket on top of the windbreaker and t-shirt. By the time I got to my destination, I was dripping with my own sweat :(

Day 1 of my riding adventures. Thank Jesus for no untoward accidents!

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