ProRiders!!! [Delayed Post]

In September 2020, Jaron was invited on a camping trip that involved a lot of gravel, which I did not feel like doing yet so soon after breaking my shoulder (long story) and being out of practice on gravel. So I was bummed out and asked Amy, my lady rider friend, if she wanted to go camping that weekend. She said sure! And then found us a ProRider course instead, that weekend at ProRider Hagerstown, MD. So! We set off to become ProRiders. (The ProRider course is a one-day civilian offering of the 2 wk police skills course.)

After the euphoria wore off, I realized that the class started at 7:00. AM. In the morning. In...Hagerstown, 1.5 hours away. Ugh. Whyyyy??? So I booked a motel that was literally across the street from the mall parking lot where the class was being held. (Amy said, we're going to the mall! 🤣) So Saturday night after doing a *ton* of adulting, I rode to Hagerstown and checked in to my motel. It was fine. In the age of corona, I wanted an outdoor entrance and self-contained AC, and I brought disinfectant wipes (a hot commodity worth more than their weight in gold, apparently) to wipe down surfaces, door handles, and light switches. 👍🏻 No coffee, but that's fine cause I brought everything. I was pleasantly surprised to have a fridge so was able to put my hydration pack in there. It was going to be in the 80's and humid AF. We'd been watching the weather daily on the run-up to the class and were relieved that a big storm had passed. 

I met up with Amy at the parking lot in the morning. We got checked in to the class and, as expected, were the only two lady riders. (When I told Jaron what I was doing, he goes, you know that's going to be a huge sausage-fest. I go, I have Amy!) She with her blue hair and me with my purple hair. 

Spent a little bit of time meeting the other classmates and checking each other's bikes out while hose-clamping was happening. All the other bikes were cruisers with several full dressers. One guy's bike had a belt drive which I thought would work better in this class with smoother operation than my drive shaft. Throwing in some technical terms to establish credibility early, ya know. Honestly, I didn't get any bad vibes from either instructor or the other 7 classmates the entire day. That was really nice. I mean, we were the only chicks and we were on the only non-large-cruisers. We were also the only ones wearing armored pants and jackets. There were two other guys with full-faced helmets, and literally everyone was just wearing jeans. Two of these things were clearly not like the others! You can also hear the difference in how much quieter our engines are in the videos. 

I removed my 50+L top case for the class and, you know what? It was really heavy! No one offered to help me remove it or put it back on, which I liked bc it felt like the other students saw me as an equal and not as someone who needed help. The course instructor had automotive hoses and hose clamps for protecting engine bars. Protection...for the bike protection. 🤔 This was announced in the welcome email to ensure that people arrived with enough time to get situated with this. The effect was a little intimidating, not gonna lie. The instructor was careful to mount the hose clamps such that they wouldn't spin and scratch my precious painted valve covers in the event of a spill. And they didn't. Because of course I did drop my bike.

The class was outside so we didn't need to wear face masks as riding is naturally a socially distant activity. We got reminders to make sure to wear them when going in to the mall for pit stops. 

Neither Amy nor I can flat foot on our bikes. So it was kind of funny adapting the instructions for that. We also both have ABS. So for the braking exercise, we had to pretend we didn't have ABS.

After the first couple of exercises, we took a break. I overheard one of the guys say that women ride so gracefully, that neither of us had touched a cone yet. I said hahaha I have knocked over so many cones, but thanks for saying that, it's nice to hear in the midst of all of these manly men. (Maybe he was talking about Amy?) 

Here is how close the cones were. I'm at 10 sec and you can see Amy enter the exercise at the very end. 

One exercise was on getting around or avoiding a hazard. 

More exercises. I was really glad I wore my mesh gear because it was hot. So much clutch control. On the offset cone exercise, Amy pointed out that we were doing backward figure 8's. Those were hard! Here is Amy killing the backward figure 8's. 

Lunch break. When asked, Amy & I shared our riding origin stories and when asked about our partners, also of how our husbands started riding after we did. 😉

After lunch we started in on the circles. So...last year I fell in a circle during an ADV exercise in the grass and banged the inside of my knee on the top of my bike. Long story short, that turned in to an infected hematoma and it was not a good time. (0/10; don't recommend). Circles are hard. I kind of hate them to be honest. I was doing the recommended 1500-2000 rpms and after a couple of tries, I was staying in the cones for the entire circle!! Yay! 

Then something magical happened when I ended up at a higher rpm. I know what this bike sounds like and I knew it was revving higher. The circles became way easier at 2500-3000 rpms. I was literally high. Euphoric. It was amazing. 

I thought well, that was a fluke. And then I could do them consistently. Sum'bitch! The exercise was to do 2 circles. After a couple of rounds of 3 and being asked to slow down, I went to do try the figure 8 and I was all over the place. I quit and got out of the way of the people who actually knew what they were doing. I thought, ok, those were all to the right, so let's see about circles to the left. Dude. My left circles were awful! I was working on them and felt like I was getting too close to the instructor who was talking to someone else, so I stopped and dropped my bike. I almost saved it and it went down to a great fanfare of cusswords. The gents waited respectfully and I did not ask for help picking my bike up. That was actually the first time I've managed the trick of picking a bike up walking it up backward. So, I took a break after that. I think I was a little dizzy from doing so many circles to the right TBH. 

Another exercise we did was starting a turn at full lock, with the bars all the way to the side. This is a specific one that I wanted to learn. It definitely got easier after walking thru the exercise. Julie is at 6 sec and Amy is at 38 sec in this video. 

In this one, Amy is at 33 sec. 

It started drizzling. Now, I'd made a conscious decision to wear my mesh gear after working up a sweat in the garage in my vented gore tex gear while getting ready to leave the night before. I said to myself, it's so humid at 60-70 degrees indoors at night, and I'm going to do low speed drills in this in daylight and 80 degrees? I checked the weather again and the big storm had passed. Screw it. And I put on my mesh gear. (Of course, on my way there at 8pm at 80 mph, I was a bit chilly in my mesh gear. Shh...)

Anyway. Several people put on their leather jackets for the rain. We finished the exercise and as a group, decided to skip the last exercise. We all put our luggage back on our bikes, and the instructor went around removing hose clamps and hoses from engine guards. While he was removing mine, I went ahead and shared with him that I was wrapping up physical therapy from having broken my shoulder in May. He goes "oh man" and shook his head. I said, but I signed your waiver! (I graduated from PT the following week.)

Amy & I are first at graduation. 

We went to get ice cream nearby after class broke up. Then, we got central American food at the place next door before heading out. It was a pretty awesome day. 

I'd had Sheila for 2.5 years at this point and had taken her on the Women Riders' World Relay, my longest day in the saddle ever. But a 1200 is an intimidating bike. By the end of the day I really felt like I'd made her my bitch. I sent in a review to that effect.