Teaching the girlfriend to ride

[k_cotter]

Just wondering everyones opinion on the best way to teach my girlfriend to safely ride a motorcycle. As I'm switching to middleweights next season my plan is to pass my sv on to her in that it's a very mild mannered bike, that being said we all know it's more then enough bike to get Hurt on. I will be teaching her on an xr 70 to get balance basics ect. Beyond this I'm looking for educated opinions. I wish we could afford msf but not sure if that's doable right now. Thanks everyone

[Jim]

Have her take the MSF course that degsy teaches.

[sveesix]

Have her take the MSF course that degsy teaches.

Definitely have her take the MSF course.

[nhbubba]

There isn't enough money on this earth for me to try to teach my girl to ride.

MSF, MSF, MSF.

[DuncanMoto]

Let someone else teach her.
I know.....
Really... I know.

[k_cotter]

Jim that would be the ideal. I'm looking for effective private methods

[butcher bergs]

effective private methods

PM sent

[GNTurbo6]

I'd probably not teach her so you can have something to do by yourself/without her.

[Slyder]

How much does MSF cost?

If you have the land, or at least a place to ride 'em, dirty bikes will teach you a ton of great stuff. Learning to ride the piss out of them has saved me on the street a few times. I tell people to take the MSF, but I mention starting out in the dirt before moving to the street. It's how I learned, and I turned out fine

At least I think I did...

[martyk]

i never knew how to ride back in college, didnt have any friends or family who rode but just wanted to learn. took the MSF course in brockton at massassoit community college and loved it. however i do have friends who have sorta taught themselves, i do say they arent exactly the best quality riders out there. plus depending on insurance the MSF course i think knocks off like 10%, i know not much but better some then none
good luck with whatever route you go!!

[csmutty]

MSF is $200....sell the SV and buy an EX500 or EX250 and use the money that you made off the SV to have her take MSF.

[Degsy]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

Pm me.

[jcrawford]

Just wondering everyones opinion on the best way to teach my girlfriend to safely ride a motorcycle. As I'm switching to middleweights next season my plan is to pass my sv on to her in that it's a very mild mannered bike, that being said we all know it's more then enough bike to get Hurt on. I will be teaching her on an xr 70 to get balance basics ect. Beyond this I'm looking for educated opinions. I wish we could afford msf but not sure if that's doable right now. Thanks everyone

Let someone else teach her, best advice I can give

[imkindafkedup]

in all seriousness if you can't afford the msf class you can't afford to ride safely. Quality gear alone is going to cost you upwards of $500+, whats another $200 of just added insurance.

[nhbubba]

Does she know for 100% that she wants to ride?
Before you go spending real money on a bike (or even a new one for yourself to pass the SV off to her) I would want to be damned sure. $200 for a weekend of riding around on someone else's bikes to make damned sure seems like a deal to me.
I've told my missus I'll pay whenever she is ready.

[csmutty]

MSF also has a pre-rider course now that costs $50 I believe.

[mzdagrl]

As someone who had a then-boyfriend teach her....have someone else do it. Granted we survived (and got married) but it was a challenge that ended in me taking the MSF class. Save yourself the trouble and arguments.

[union]

I'd probably not teach her so you can have something to do by yourself/without her.

More people have ruined their hobby by getting someone else into it. Its always nice to have alone time.

Just wondering everyones opinion on the best way to teach my girlfriend to safely ride a motorcycle. As I'm switching to middleweights next season my plan is to pass my sv on to her in that it's a very mild mannered bike, that being said we all know it's more then enough bike to get Hurt on. I will be teaching her on an xr 70 to get balance basics ect. Beyond this I'm looking for educated opinions. I wish we could afford msf but not sure if that's doable right now. Thanks everyone

If you must teach her dont bother with the 70. Get something with all the controls. This way you dont have to teach her twice.

[TTD]

I taught Renee shifting on a quad first... then got her a small dual sport and spent time in a field and trails.

After that, she did MSF.

This way, she could concentrate more on riding and traffic at the MSF and less on the basics of clutch letout, shifting, etc.

A small dual sport bike would be my suggestion for anyone looking to start riding. Get all the basic stuff down in a field, with no pavement or cars.

[Stromper]

You teach much bad JUJU

Make her spend a couple of hours refresher on a bicycle preferably like on a trail/dirt

MSF course good and even when/if find the Ladies here to let her have a couple of Noob rides.

Unless she is in imminent danger of hurting herself shut up

[Kurlon]

Kurlon's wife here...

Take the MSF course. Lots of learning in a short amount of time, and putting around a parking lot just to get used to the way the bike moves is well worth it. Also, it is much less embarrassing to screw up in front of a bunch of people you don't know, and may not ever see again after the course is done.

[DoubleRGirl]

i did an all women's msf course in the south, i don't know if they offer that up here but it made me feel more at ease about going

[SVRACER01]

if youre set on teaching her. the first thing you should teach her is how to stop. as in pull in the clutch and grab the brakes. that way if she gets the ole whiskey throttle she might have enough common sense to pull in the clutch at least.

[k_cotter]

Thanks everyone for the input! Oxx good call.
And degs I'll be in touch. For some reason I had the notion that msf was more expensive. She will do msf in the spring for our relationships sake! Lol and I get the whole alone time thing. But I'm lucky enough to just ask if I need it. Don't have to keep my passion of motorcycles from her for selfish reasons.

[SRTie4k]

I taught both my wife and my sister how to ride on a Ninja 250. The hardest part for me was finding a BIG wide open parking lot with no obstructions or obstacles here in VT. My sister took to riding like a fish to water, but my wife was a bit trickier, so it really all depends on the coordination, temperament and fear-factor of the potential rider.

My wife was a lot more scared, not as coordinated and has a short fuse compared to my sister, but I started her easy and only instructed her how to use the clutch, front brake and 1st/neutral initially. I set the idle higher so all she would have to do is clutch out and the bike would putt around by itself, and when she wanted to stop all she had to do was clutch in and brake. With a huge parking lot, she was eventually pretty confident riding around in first gear, clutching and using the brake on her own.

Once she had the very basics down, I simply showed her how to shift gears and take off with a normal idle. After a couple more hours, she was riding in circles around the parking lot and shifting gears herself.

That's the extent to which we got before we dropped it all together (I don't think she's as interested as I thought she would be), but she did pretty well. If I had to do it all over again though, I'd put her in the MSF course.