 On one hand were the participants. We met on Sunday, June 5 on Mitel’s huge parking lot and made it clear that we wanted to improve our riding skills, increase our awareness, learn new riding techniques, know our own motorcycles better, and practice, practice, practice. On the other hand was the Ottawa Safety Council. It delegated four of its best, most courageous instructors with the impossible task of enticing us to goodness.
With our positive approach to self improvement, we learned a lot, exercised plenty, and developed new techniques of riding safely, most of it not available anywhere else. As the weather cooperated and exceeded our best expectations, so the exercises increasingly became more and more advanced and challenging. Even the experienced “old dogs” were not spared any sweat in learning new tricks, and embarrassment was not something the instructors were after.
I don’t try here to scare anybody from enrolling in the future — just the opposite. The course program was ideally designed as “one size fits all” for anyone to learn more than he or she knew before starting. The fact remains that we have in our chapter a solid core of excellent and graceful riders who came well prepared to meet all the challenges of the Advanced Riders Course. Also apparent was an exceptional level of camaraderie and the proverbial H.O.G.s taking care of each other. We all had a great time, were truly energized, and completed the course with flying colours and smiles on our faces. A few members of the Freedom HOG Chapter were grateful for the opportunity to join us and we were very pleased to have them.
As we all received certificates of accomplishment, we had a brief chance to express our appreciation to the Ottawa Safety Council and its instructors for sharing their knowledge and expertise with us. I, of course, had to grab opportunity by the sleeve and made an only partially successful attempt to entice three of the instructors to buy Harleys and join our HOG Chapter as we would all benefit from having at least a few “Super Eagles” among us. No luck! In the meantime, we are gifted to settle on just one of them.
I wish I could provide you with better coverage of the event, but on this particular occasion my focus was, naturally, on the substance of the course itself. Besides some pictures that you will soon see on our Web site, I share with you a few comments that I overheard somewhere between the pylons: “This is fun;” (Kathy), “That was great;” (Serge), “If you fail, you get your money back;” (Joe), “More girls!” (Darwin), and “Ride More!” (Andrew).
Click here for a gallery of ARC images.
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