Riding a bike is NOT as easy as it looks.

The government (or something to that effect) has started this new scheme called GetOn (which you can find at www.geton.co.uk for anyone who's interested) which allows people to go out to a training centre for an hours worth of free motorbike training, whether you want to get back into riding or you've never even touched a bike before. Today it was my turn to have a go.

It was with a huge amount of terror that I turned up at Metropolis Motorcycles in Vauxhall this afternoon for my session. I'm not joking, I was absolutely terrified - I smoked about 6 cigarettes in half an hour before I went in there. Not gonna lie, as I walked in there surrounded by all these amazing machines I felt so out of place. It was really quite scary. Biking is such a mans world (no sexism intended, it's a man thing in the same way fast cars and scantily clad women are), and here's me this 21-year-old girl who, though I probably wasn't showing it, was cacking herself.

I waited patiently in the waiting room till my instructor, a lovely man named Andy, handed me a helmet and told me to follow him to the garage. Once we got there he showed me the basic controls on the bike, which turned out to be a Honda CG125. I had to have a little giggle at the point when he showed me the speedo and said "This is the speedo, goes up to 90. You wont be going that fast. In fact, this bike wont even go that fast so I dunno why it goes that high." Then I was on the back and on my way to the training ground.

Once I got there, the first challenge was getting the bike off the stand. Honestly, why do they make those things so heavy? Either they weigh too much or I need to start eating my Weetabix in the morning! Anyway I finally got on it and did some clutch control exercises and got used to the accellerator. Then I had to actually get the bike moving. That didn't start off so well, I wasn't used the weight on the handlebars and such, so I veered a little off course. After a few tries I managed to work all the bits at the right time and go in a straight line. I was pretty pleased right up until the point where I lost my balance and dropped the bike on my leg.

Putting that behind me, we did a few more tries and getting the bike moving, going in a straight line and stopping again before moving on to doing some corners. I like to think I did quite well on that aspect, I managed not to stall too much anyway, and I didn't fall off! Followed this up by doing some figures of eight and trying to control the speed with the clutch a bit.
The last thing we did was have a go at changing gears, cos up to this point I'd only been going around in first gear. Changing gears is seriously difficult when you're trying to remember how to do everything else as well. And especially when you have no idea whether you've changed gear properly or not or what gear you're in. I dunno if they have something on the dashboard (is it called that on bikes? I dunno) of other bikes that tells you what gear you're in, but that'd be bloody helpful!

So, my point is, hats off to people who ride bikes no matter how big or small, fast or slow, because it is some seriously difficult stuff to learn. Hats off even moreso to people who actually race these things. I literally have NO idea how Casey Stoner thrashes that GP9 round tracks the way he does, but these people must be superhuman or something. Amazing.

Massive thanks to all the guys at Metropolis Motorcycles for being so lovely and helpful and putting up with my shoddy riding for a whole hour this afternoon, it was very much appreciated.