Riding exercises meetup #3

can't keep everybody happy

Posted by Anton Katunin on 14 August 2016
Tags: motorcycle, meetup

Today was the third meetup. It keeps getting better, but can't keep everybody happy. Here are some highlights:

Some people were very scared even to try. It might looked like the exercise was too difficult, but I was keep adjusting the difficulty based on the feedback, but there could not be feedback unless you try. Strange.

I've set up "Snowman" exercise. In that exercise you have to ride inside the circle of cones. Interestingly that was giving too much mental stress to all riders and they couldn't perform well. Once I've changed to ride on outside of circle and decreased the radius accordingly, everybody was feeling much more comfortable. Interesting psychological effect.

Thanks to Max, we had a good location. It was undercover and 16x32m in size. It's good enough for almost any single exercise setup. I think it's not big enough for gymkhana, plus could be slippery. Other than that it is a great location for slow riding exercises.

This time I couldn't participate as my motorbike was in repairs, so I've tried to help others improve their skills. Obviously who was more open-minded and took my advice, I could see their continuous improvement. That's a great feeling when you see somebody got better because of you. While others obviously didn't trust my advice as I'm young, couldn't prove my knowledge there and not experienced enough. And that's all true but they were keep repeating the same mistakes and failing every time, to a point when they've lost interest to practice.

One more thing which I thought was great is slow ride racing. It's when two people ride next to each other and the slowest person wins. That spiked the interest in the group, even in those who weren't very enthusiastic before.

The turnout was good, 9 out of 10 and seems like everybody found the location without any trouble.

Finally, after meetup we went to have lunch together. That was great to have a chat in a more comfortable environment. I always wanted to do that but couldn't find good location nearby which is open on sunday. Luckily this time the location was suggested to me.

I was playing democracy at all three meetups, and always somebody is not happy. I think the next few meetups will be done in dictatorship style. I'll put my comfort and interest first and others could simply follow.


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