I just thought I'd do a little writeup for the benefit of members here who may be looking for thoughts on M1 Exit course options - this is my review/thoughts on the course offered by Centennial College at their Scarborough campus. This probably won't be of much use for anyone now until next spring (as they've wrapped up for the year now) but I wanted to do it while everything was fresh in my mind with the hope that people will come across it in searches when the time comes..and perhaps I'll bump the thread in the spring.
As a whole, it was a very positive experience. A footnote, first - I used to ride...20 years ago. I had a sportbike in the early 90's when I was much younger and stupider, and one of my stupid moves was riding under my M2 for several years and then never actually taking my M2-M exit road test before selling my bike - the motorcycle graduated licencing had just been introduced, and long story short, since the M2 filled my needs at that point in time I just never got around to exiting it. So the inevitable happened after I sold my bike and stopped riding - my M2 expired, meaning I had to start all over again this year when I got back into riding. The MSC seemed like a good investment.
So, I went into the MSC with plenty of experience, some expectations, some bad habits (more on that later), but also with an open mind, willing and excited to learn.
There was about 20-25 people in my class - small I was told, with peak summer classes being in the 35+ numbers.
Evening 1 (Friday night) is all classroom. A good booklet, lots of discussion, and a lot of theory as well.
Morning 1 (Saturday) - meet in classroom, split into groups with assigned instructors, and begin. Gear check, first order of business - minimum DOT helmet, jeans or better, leather (real leather, not pleather) jacket or a purpose made motorcycle jacket (AKA, my Joe Rocket Ballistic was just fine), and proper leather/motorcycle footwear that provided ankle protection.
I had my first WTF moment at this point when my instructor asked "Does everyone know how to put on their helmets?"...and one guy in my group said no..and needed help to do up his buckle. Until that moment I honestly thought that this course, although geared at beginnings, wasn't geared to "I've never even had a helmet on my head nor ever touched a motorcycle" level riders. I had figured most people opting to take this course would have had some very basic experience, or that they would have taken the "introduction to motorcycles" course already that would have given them at least the absolute basics...but, nope!
Onwards!
We started with basic familiarization. Where controls are...what they do, how to mount and dismount, expected behaviour and policies. Good stuff, but very basic - but appropriate for many (most?) of the students. I had to keep reminding myself that many of these people had literally never ridden a motorcycle before, or possibly never even touched one.
Now on the range with all the bikes lined up the hilarity (at least internally, for me) began. There was a large age range of students - some very young and quiet, some older and more mature, and a handful of piss and vinegar young kids who were already drooling at the 125CBR's as if they were Hayabusas. Myself, I was eyeballing one of the cruiser style bikes and ended up with a VStar 250, chuckling quietly under my breath (as I strolled at a walking pace towards it while all the young kids dashed and flailed towards the "crotch rockets") that I actually had nearly twice the horsepower with my choice, and my bike didn't sound like a sewing machine...nor was it going to leave me with a sore back after 2 10 hour days. ;)
The bike selection was good, I was impressed - cruisers, the aforementioned CBR125's, and quite a number of Groms. All the bikes were in decent to good shape - many showed signs of crashes which was not unexpected, and most accessories such as mirrors and exposed lighting (signals, for example) were removed...but overall the bikes were all in nice shape all things considered. The Groms were very clearly quite new, actually. The most worn and weathered were the cruisers IMHO, but my bike was still perfectly good and I was happy with it.
The first hour or two was tedious, for me at least - it was a lot of very basic groundwork including pushing the motorcycles (with a partner "riding") to get people comfortable with the feel of rolling, balancing, and braking. However, given the aforementioned level of some people in the course I TOTALLY and COMPLETELY understand and appreciated why this stage was included.
Next up, actually getting on the bikes, starting them up, and learning about the friction point. A few inches ahead, a few inches back.
Then, drive one parking space ahead at a time to the end of the course, turn around, come back. Small steps, but still very slow paced for me.
As the day went on things did progress quickly however, and some students who were clearly not picking up on things did start to struggle. It is VERY fast paced in the grand scheme of things and there was definitely some who were not learning at the required pace - most common issue at this point was launching - lots of stalls and restarts. Although I was actually enjoying riding at this point there was times where those of us who were progressing well were stuck waiting in lines (for A-to-B driving exercises) behind those who were not doing so well. At one point I was sitting for a good solid 10 minutes in line (along with 5 or 6 others) waiting behind one person who could just NOT launch without stalling...some just were NOT getting it, and others I believe might have unintentionally shifted into second or third gear and weren't aware of it, or didn't know how to get back down to first.
Regardless, the instructors were helpful and eventually did get everyone going, but I felt their pain - sometimes no amount of coaching can help quite enough in these sorts of situations, particularly when things are fast paced and MUST progress to stay inside the course guidelines and time limits.
On and off, if I could nitpick a few things, I felt that some requirements or expectations weren't adequately communicated to everyone. For example, early in the day it was stressed that students were to ONLY use their rear brakes as low speed maneuvering and such was being taught and I was told on a few occasions to "take my hand off the front brake lever" when out of habit I was using it in some scenarios...however as we progressed to higher speed riding I continued to follow this guideline only to be asked "why are you not using your front brake?" at one point. I politely mentioned "we were told not to use it yet earlier" to which the instructor replied "straight line stopping, use BOTH brakes!", suggesting I should have known that the front brake was no longer verboten. Makes sense of course, but that "next step" wasn't communicated as an expectation before the exercise began and I was still operating under the assumption we were still not supposed to touch it. Minor thing but worth mentioning.
Also, the "turn your head and check both ways" thing was constantly drilled into your head throughout the course at EVERY stop. I makes sense, but after a while it became clear that people were just "swinging their heads" to fulfil the requirements and NOT actually processing what they were looking at...as I saw people pull out in front of other people (during a few simulated road courses) several times.
Day 1 ended positively with most riders being able to competently ride around the range, shift, and stop - some smoother than others. ;)
Day 2 started with no nonsense - check your bike, remember what you learned yesterday, and get going - no more "how to ride basics", now it was practicing and honing skills required for the road test later in the day.
This is where I felt I really started to learn...and where some of my bad habits from years of previous riding started to show. My biggest one - covering the controls with my hands when there was no need - the instructors were constantly having tell me to get my hands wrapped around the handlebars when cruising vs having my fingers resting on the clutch and front brake. Also, using 2 fingers for controls vs all 4, something particularly badly ingrained for the front brake I soon learned...something that many experienced riders do I'm sure we will all admit. I also tended to focus too much on the road directly ahead of my front wheel vs looking where I was headed while in turns - this comes back to a bad "sand and stones on a corner" experience I had when I rode 20 years ago, something that always caused me to pay attention to the road condition directly in front of my bike vs looking through the corner where I was actually going - a good habit to break I agree, but I can't say I wasn't a little paranoid leaning the bike through some of the higher speed turns (particularly during the collisions avoidance swerve training) without looking down at the road to see if there was sand, leaves, stones, etc etc - although I knew that sort of thing wasn't going to be on the range, old habits die hard, no matter how bad they are. My comfort level increased as the day went on however and I was surprised at how much better I cornered while looking into the turn vs straight ahead.
I did watch a few of the other "piss and vinegar" kids get overly excited at some points...to the point where I was concerned for the safety of one of them in particular when he was getting overconfident, however not long afterwards his ego was deflated (without going into details) and he came back down to earth. Most students were observant of the rules and such, but there were a few who felt they were "superbikers" already and were stretching them when the instructors weren't looking. Thankfully they were driving 125's, otherwise there would have been incidents...lets just put it that way. This is not a poor reflection on the instructors, it's a poor reflection on some of the overconfident and cocky students, end of story...but overconfidence can come back to bite you sometimes as it did for a few of them in question here.
In general, I was surprised at how few incidents there were, actually. Yes, there was at least 1 or 2 low speed spills with no injuries AFAIK, lots of stalled engines, and a few bruised egos, but all in all the training was working well for most people I could tell - it's a good course with a rapid, but well thought out methodology that had most people progressing. I just did my thing and went with the flow despite it being very easy for the most part. I did find some new challenges in the tight course maneuvering portion of the course, but even that didn't present much of challenge for me personally, although plenty of other people struggled immensely with it. I did find that I was super conscious of my bad habits however and began to break them as the day went on, something that has continued since then.
Yes, even the guy with 3 or 4 years of previous riding experience learned something, as I hoped and anticipated I would, and I enjoyed and appreciated that...and I think I ditched a few bad habits along the way, which was a cherry on top.
Shortly after lunch the training wrapped up and testing began. No more coaching, it's time to perform. The required exercises were well laid out and the expectations and required procedure were VERY well communicated to each and every rider just before they performed each test segment. To toot my own horn I came within 2 or 3 points of scoring perfect on my exam..but I was about 0.3 seconds too slow on the "accelerate through a corner" portion of the road test...something I kicked myself for because I knew I could have went a lot faster, but that "sand in a corner!" fear was still in the back of my head and perhaps subconsciously I must have backed out of the throttle a little in the timed section.
Unfortunately a small number of students did start to incur too many points and passed the "fail" limit by the second or third exercise, sadly ending their day. I felt bad for them, almost all of them were trying really hard (none of the piss and vinegar crowd if I wasn't mistaken) but just didn't have the finesse yet to make the time requirements on many of the segments. Each segment is "scored" based on a points system and once you incur a critical number of points, you're excused....somewhat embarrassingly as the coaches a required (by law) to take the motorcycle away from the students at that very point they've officially failed, leading to a few riders doing a "walk of shame" to the curb. Again, I felt bad for them, but it is what it is - as with any test, you pass or fail based on the merits of your skills. They get to try again at a later date and I hope they were successful.
Regardless, testing went on...and the greater majority were successful.
I feel bad but I forget the instructors names, but they were all great. A good mix of curt professionalism with a few good senses of humour thrown in that made all the students chuckle and smile frequently - having fun was encouraged so long as you all followed the rules. Was it worth it? Absolutely, even for someone like myself that was returning to riding after a 2 decade long absence. Heck, I'm convinced almost any self-taught rider could learn a surprising amount by taking the course.
A quick classroom wrap up afterwards to discuss everyone's exam results, and we were on our way.
I'd recommend the course - good equipment, good instructors, and in general an overall very positive experience. I genuinely left feeling like I was a better rider than I arrived - my ego is not so inflated that I can't admit that.
Questions...post em up, happy to answer.
REVIEW: Centennial College M1 Exit (M2) training course
