Smart plan. Always wear a helmet when you ride. It's pretty scary getting up to highway speeds the first few times. Be safe keep learning and stay with us.
I certainly hope to. I do have a helmet I wear whenever I ride -- left it off for the pics so the world could get a glimpse of my ugly mug (makes the bike look that much prettier, right?).
As far as the speed being scary the first few times, you can say that again. I've cracked the 50 mph mark a couple of times now (there's a bigger, faster stretch of road between my house and the streets I've been practicing on), and I've had to kind of tell myself, "it's all right. You can handle this. The bike will do what you tell it to do, so just keep things smooth, look ahead to where you're going, and go with it." It seems to be working -- each time gets a little more comfortable than the last.
I've had my first case of anticipating a
typical CT bonehead driver, too. I was coming to a stop at yellow light and the guy behind me decided there was plenty of time yet to go through, so he barrelled around me, and had to cut quick back into my lane to run the red while another driver made a right turn towards us. Somehow I
knew he was going to do it, and was mapping out where I would go
if when he did, so when all of a sudden he disappeared from my mirror, I was ready for him, or felt like I was. It probably wasn't as dramatic, and I probably didn't handle it as expertly as it seemed at the time, but I got home feeling like, "by Jove, I'm starting to get this."
