Do It Scared
Prior to February of 2025, my experience with two wheels was restricted to bicycles I hadn’t been on in at least 10 years. In fact, growing up, I was raised in the kind of household where I wasn’t even allowed on trampolines as they were deemed “too dangerous”. While confident in many areas of life, my desire to take risks has always been limited to say the least. That was until I was handed a helmet and a pair of gloves, mounted on the seat of a Honda CRF, and pointed down the entry lane of a course carved into a frozen pond. After stalling out three times and laying the bike down on myself, I was hooked.
Hooked, but scared. I hadn’t done many dangerous things in my life, but boy did I really, really want to. In a moment of impulse, I showed up at my tattoo artist’s shop and sat down for a reminder I sorely needed. Thus, the words “Do It Scared” became a permanent part of my body.
The pipeline of “I don’t know anything about bikes” to attending every bit of Mama Tried week to sitting down at my laptop to take the Riding Academy’s eCourse was undeniably swift.
On Tuesday, June 3, I entered House of Harley-Davidson in Greenfield, Wisconsin feeling excited, anxious, and totally out of my depth. Thanks to my fantastic instructor, Greg Schreck (or just “Shrek”), I settled in almost immediately. I felt from even the first few minutes that, when it comes to motorcycle safety, there really are no stupid questions (for someone whose two, low-speed dirt bike experiences both involved ending up underneath the bike, this was important).
I think there’s probably a misconception that because day one of the New Rider Course is in a classroom setting, it must be boring or repetitive (didn’t we just take an online class and learn all of this?). Thankfully, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Shrek struck an ideal balance of keeping things serious enough to convey that the information was important, but also entertaining enough to keep us all awake and engaged. The classroom portion had a terrific ratio of sitting and listening, group work, and actual, physical exercises. Getting to tour the dealership was a real highlight, too. After all, spending all day learning about motorcycles does tend to inspire an itch to go touch one, or maybe even buy one.
Arriving on day two, I was about 20 minutes early, so I sat in my car to watch the rain that I would soon be riding in. I thought this might be an obstacle, but it turns out that focusing 100% of your energy on staying upright on a motorcycle is an excellent distraction from bad weather.
My first “a-ha” moment came early. The very kind and patient folks who had let me try out their bikes so far had mentioned several times about some kind of thing I was supposed to feel when letting out the clutch, something that would pull the bike forward nice and slowly. Thus far, my only successful rides included letting out the clutch as quickly as I could while rearing back on the throttle and praying. How I had never whiskey-throttled a dirt bike remains a mystery. This time, however, I found it. As I counted out the “one, two, three, three, three, four-...oh my gosh! That’s it!” The bike was moving. Slowly. Easily. It felt a bit like the secrets of the universe had been revealed to me. It’s amazing how much confidence can be built from rocking back and forth.
Of course, I still stalled out a lot. I think some part of me was waiting for someone to pull me off my bike and say “Okay, that’s enough, you fail” every time it happened. It never did. In fact, as soon as Shrek and Jim saw that I knew how to restart after a stall, the only mention of the fact that it had even happened was just encouragement to take a deep breath and keep going.
The first day on the bikes, one of the other students hit a curb and crashed. As I watched the instructors dust him off, I thought “Phew. I’m sure that glad wasn’t me” (SUBTLE FORESHADOWING).
I was surprised by how quickly things started to click. Before I knew it, I was leaning, pulling U-turns, and really starting to trust the bike and, more importantly, trust myself. I can only imagine how many years of knowledge have been packed into this (at least 140 according to Wikipedia), but when I decided to let go of fear and just do what the coaches were telling us to do, everything started to work. I was staying between the lines, turning sharply, swerving around hazards, and even correcting mistakes as I was moving.
That’s why day two felt so good. I had slept on everything from the previous day and was fully prepared to take on day two. What had been tedious steps were starting to become habits…
…which is why impaling myself on my throttle was such a surprise. Did you know that braking and throttling at the same time is bad? Well, unless your goal is to lose control of the bike, take a handlebar to the chest, and cultivate a stunning galaxy of new bruises.
But the worst had happened. I fell. It hurt, but I was okay. In fact, I think the fall had actually knocked me out of some overthinking I was slipping into in anticipation of the final test.
When I stood back up, Shrek asked one more time if I was okay. When I assured him that I was sore but fine and wanted to continue, he gestured to my bike, smiled, and replied, “That’s exactly what I knew you’d say.”
I cannot stress enough the importance of the consistent assurance that our rider coaches believed in us, wanted us to succeed, and would always celebrate right along with us. I would not have passed this course if Jim and Shrek had been anything less than wonderful to me.
I think that good, hard fall didn’t even really feel like a failure. It meant that I’d felt bold enough to push myself. I’ve often heard that, when it comes to motorcycle crashes, it’s not “if”, it’s “when”. My “when” came a little sooner than I’d like, but it was far from the end of the world and certainly not the end of my riding days.
Then, the test. The final hurdle. I’d been pretty calm about each exercise up to this point, but this genuinely made my heart race. This was scary. Because of my nervousness, I was surprised to find that everything went really well. When I completed the last test and got a little smile and quiet “Congratulations” from my rider coach, I swear to you I could have cried.
The grin and the handshake would have been enough, but it was the words that followed that floored me: “I don’t get to say this often, but you passed with a perfect score.”
I, who had never even touched a motorcycle before February, who had just fallen on my ass not even two hours prior, had passed with flying colors. To say that I felt proud would be a failure to convey the sense of all-consuming joy I felt in that moment.
Beyond the little “M” that will now adorn my license, taking the NRC reinforced that new and scary things are often worth trying. I didn’t get a perfect score because I’m the best motorcyclist on earth or because I had been on a bike for years and years. I got it because my rider coaches gave me the confidence to do it scared.