I was fortunate today. A friend from Vespa St. Louis came by and helped me work out the kinks of stopping and starting on hills today. Little back story: I live in a hilly subdivision, fun to ride through but as a new scooterist it can be scary to stop mid-hill and feel yourself sliding backwards. I found myself grasping the brakes too tightly and then being terrified of releasing the brake so I could move forward. Rather counterintuitive and obviously I was going nowhere fast.
So I put out a bat signal for help and my cry was answered. J came out on a hot/muggy St. Louis day to spend an hour with me. All we did was go up hills, stop...start rinse repeat. I learned that we have a friction zone. Really I swear we do. I did NOT know this. My MSF instructors told me emphatically that scooters don't have one and I'd just have to muddle through the box. But OMG we do have one. Who knew? Obviously not them.
J taught me if I squeeze the rear brake as tight as possible and then twist the throttle while slowly releasing the brake just a bit the scoot is propelled forward. Guess what! That's our friction zone. Once he explained that the starting/stopping on hills seemed like a no brainer. And once that was accomplished he taught me to use the same technique for the box. That will take a bit more practice but now that I know how to do use our version of the zone I will be able to succeed. Take that biased MSF instructors. We scooterists do have a friction zone. Hah. LOL
OK so I'm a little bitter about the lack of information and bias against scooters in the MSF class I took. However nothing but good things to say about the course in general because I did learn a lot just not what I needed to be effective in tight turns, on hills, and with regards to U-turns.
Huge thank you to my friend from Vespa St. Louis. J you're the best.
Onward with the rubber side down!
No comments:
Post a Comment