At least that’s how I felt when I turned up for my first day at RJH Driver and Rider Training to take a couple of guys through their Compulsory Basic Training and checked their driving licences. One was French, and had lost his photocard licence so had brought his passport as proof of ID together with his counterpart licence. The other was Somalian. Fortunately, both had UK driving licences (the former only provisional but a quick phonecall to the DVLA confirmed provisional entitlement to ride motorcycles) and spoke excellent English. The second “April Fool” was when I was taking them through their emergency braking exercise and as usual I asked how many times during their driving career they’d had to perform one (to highlight that real emergencies are rare and to explore hazard perception). “Never” was the understandable reply from the Frenchman with the provisional licence. “Lots of times” was the rather unnerving reply from the other guy. “Well, you must be a bad driver then!” was my retort, to which he replied, “I do them almost every day as part of my job… I’m a driving instructor!”.
The rest of the day went well up until we did the emergency stop on the road, when the Frenchman ignored my earlier pleas and the skills he’d developed practicing in the safety of the yard and panicked, grabbing the front brake on the scooter hard and flailing his legs about. In a split second he was on the ground, as was the scooter. He was completely unharmed and embarassed. I was shocked, the image of the blind panic in his face immediately following my raising of my hand imprinted on my mind forever. And my target of never having a trainee drop a bike ruined. Damn. As there was no damage done we continued, repeating the exercise several times after more briefing to ensure he wouldn’t panic again if he was unfortunate enough to encounter a real emergency. I think I learnt a lesson too, to emp[hasize even more that an “emergency stop” is nothing more than a “controlled stop done more efficiently”.
The following day I rode to work with the temperature showing -1.5degrees and with the scare-mongering headlines forecasting snow on my mind. But the sky was blue and the sun came out as I finished putting the cones out .
My trainees for the day were a couple of young guys who had never ridden bikes at all before. The smiles on their faces when I ‘d got them riding safely round the yard and stopping (controlled, of course!) set the tone for a really enjoyable day. Whislt we didn’t get to do the 2-hour road ride, they had a great day and went home happy, ready to complete their training on another day. There’s a lot to the CBT, and if you’ve never ridden before it can be too much, so part of the instructor’s job is to ensure his trainees don’t get too tired before they head out on the road. On this occasion, it was their decision to call it a day, as one had been at work until 2am, before turning up at the training centre at 8am!
Having worked for 2 consecutive days, it was time for a holiday, so this morning Tracy, Konnor and I loaded up Polly and headed for the Caravan Club site in Buxton. Truth be told, we had this booked for a couple of weeks, using the first week of the Easter holidays to get away in Polly for the first time this year. When we went to pick her up on Wednesday to give her a good clean she wouldn’t start with a flat battery but after putting it on charge for a couple of days she was good to go, and after a good cleaning was all set. So here we are, enjoying a relaxing few days away. Except I’ve got to go home on Wednesday night as I’m working on Thursday, but I’ll be coming back for the last night before we head home again on Friday. Who knows, I might even get to beat Konnor at Swingball a few times before then!
