Rob Beattie Basingstoke Hampshire

Dear Ride Drive,

My day was fantastic. Alasdair is a superb coach and (as with the car course I did with you) I sort of picked things up almost by osmosis. I drive pretty much according to Roadcraft by instinct on four wheels and have done for quite a long time, but it didn’t seem to work on two wheels, probably because I was overloaded by the basic mechanics of controlling the bike. Alasdair helped to smooth that out, so the judgement and instinct started to kick in during the day and it’s carried on improving since.

I was much more confident and quite a lot faster after the course – in fact I’ve racked up over 2500–miles on the Versys since then without a single "brown pants moment!" The only constructive criticism I can provide on the day is that It would’ve been useful to have bike to bike radios. We managed fine without them and I’m certainly very happy with the results I got from the course, but I think some kind of rolling commentary would’ve helped on occasion.

I’ve since done a Better Biker day and joined TVAM (the Thames Valley IAM guys). However, I still want to improve my progress through serious rush–hour London traffic, which I doubt TVAM will be up for, so if it’s OK, I’ll come to you⁄Alasdair for that. I spoke to him on the day and he said he’d be very happy to do it, though I think I’d get more from it after another few thousand miles.

Thanks again,

Rob Beattie
Kawasaki Versys 650