My youngest brother and his family recently moved back to town after 12 years in Hong Kong. He's a preacher(the white sheep of the family-we don't talk about it much 😉 and they had been doing missionary work for the Mennonite Church. Andy and Sue have been simply amazing. They've been back about two months now. Basically starting from scratch, in that time they've bought a house and furniture, bought a car, enrolled thier two boys in school, kept up family and church connections and jumped both feet in and enthusiasticaly set about integrating themselves into the community without stopping to catch their breath. Makes me tired just watching.
Before they came home Andy informed me he wanted to get a sidear rig and learn to ride. Now Andy has ridden with me in the sidecar a few times, but has no motorcycle experience at all. Well, that's not exactly true. Years ago I tried to show him how to ride my little 250 Triumph single and he rode it straight up the trunk of a large Ponderosa!
Within a week of getting back he bought this sidecar(that's his youngest boy, Nic, trying it on for size):
and a couple of weeks ago he got this KLR off of Craig's List:
Monday he went to DMV, got the bike registered and insured and passed his test for the motorcycle learners permit.
He is signed up to take my S/TEP class to learn to drive a sidecar Sept 19 , and takes the Team Oregon motorcycle class to get his endorsement in October.
The other day we went up in the woods and I found an open area to practice in and ran him through the first four S/TEP exercises just to get him familiar with the clutch and the brakes. He did real well! He doesn't look like a beginner with no experience, does he?
The S/TEP class, coming up September 19-21 will be the last class of the season. I plan on doing some classes next summer but probably won't schedule as many. There are still a few openings for this class-call Hood River Community Ed 5413862055 if you want to get signed up.
That's good news Vernon and welcome home Andy! It was an honor to make your aquaintence in Stevenson a few years back. What a great photographer to boot.
This is a partial copy from a former thread:
....A parking lot and the german manual (in links its translated) are good teachers.
but I guess mud and snow are the perfect teachers.
Play off road until you got a feeling in the bud, then make your exercises on a parking lot one hour a day and after two weeks or so you might go on low trafic roads with a sack of cement going SLOWLY.
ALWAYS BREAK BEFORE THE BEND NEVER IN IT.
BETTER PEOPLE LAUGH ABOUT GRANNY THEN HAVE TO CALL THE AMBULANCE.I'd
....
I recommend to your brother to search through this forums archive for a while. And in deed I guess that the gravel back roads and a sand pit are the way to go for to get the first feeling for a rig. The parking lot should come afterwards together with the literature of the german sidcar manual in the download section. I feel it goes faster to the point then the other one.
And hit it into the head of your brother: "the most dangerous moment is when her starts to feel confortable with the rig / that moment he will react oposite of the way he should / and pray for him that then he will have a pasture where to go into!"
- (here that might be hundreds of meters verticaly down into the rainforest / In Germany I went straight into the pasture 3 times just on my first day on 140km / the worst and most dangerous moments came after 4 month when the roads became free of snow and ice again, when I "thought" I would be ready......)
Best regards
Sven Peter
Thanks Peter
-Andy will be taking part in the S/TEP sidecar class which my company, Adventure Sidecar, teaches. He will be getting a structured learning plan with both classroom and riding exercises.
I had him read the material before we went out and practiced and ran him thru the first four beginning exercises, just as we will do in class. They start with engine off exercises, learning where the controls are and how they work, being pushed across the lot with the engine off to practice brake application and learning the recommended start and stop sequence before we even do a thing under power. Then stopping and starting on command under power and then big left hand ovals starting and stopping to get the feel of the clutch, throttle and brakes and experience the effect they have on steering.
We didn't get beyond that, but in class we go rapidly on to right and left turns, progressively more advanced cornering and braking techniques, emergency manuevers and even flying the sidecar.
Andy has no moto experience, so I wanted him to get comfortable with the bike and be able to start without stalling the machine and to begin to get the clutch and braking reflexes he will need to stop safely. He actually did quite well and I am confident he will do well and have fun in class and go on to be a safe and proficient sidecar pilot on his own rig.
Not having any solo motorcycle experience, he probably won't have the confusion with steering vs. countersteering that bites so many novice sidecarists who come from a solo bike to three wheels.
