Who Should Attend GCMI?

One of the ques­tions I hear the most has to be, “Who should attend the school?”  That’s easy. Every­one! Though I must admit, we would pre­fer you have some basic rid­ing skill. Our tar­get group truly is the per­son with some expe­ri­ence. When I say “every­one” should take this course, I actu­ally mean every­one should even­tu­ally take this course. It hon­estly isn’t designed for the per­son who hasn’t rid­den at all. Cov­er­ing things such as nomen­cla­ture would slow the school down. The point I’m try­ing to make is there is a great divide between the “basic” school for civil­ians and the “basic” school for police. In police motor­cy­cle train­ing the “basic” school is eighty hours long. Two weeks! That’s two weeks of very intense train­ing, part of which teaches you to take a motor­cy­cle that was designed to turn in twenty-one feet and have you turn it in four­teen. In other words, what we call “basic” likely will be con­sid­ered advanced to most people.

You may think that the more rid­ing expe­ri­ence you have, the eas­ier the school may be. That isn’t the case at all. Many of the expe­ri­enced rid­ers I’ve trained in the past had bad habits which caused them to strug­gle with the tech­nique we teach. They were able to over­come the bad habit and learn; they just had to focus more. Regard­less of your expe­ri­ence, you should look to attend as many schools as you can over time. It’s not always about learn­ing a new tech­nique. You have to prac­tice. Let’s say you heard about a new brak­ing tech­nique. It’s much bet­ter than the way you are doing things now.  You say, “This is the way I’m going to do things from now on”. The next time you are rid­ing a car pulls out in front of you. What will you do? Will you uti­lize the new tech­nique? You know how; but will you? No, you will not. I know this because you didn’t prac­tice it over and over until it became your con­di­tioned reflex. A con­di­tioned reflex is some­thing we do with­out con­scious thought. That is what we intend to give you.

I used brak­ing to make a point. How­ever, that is only one aspect of the train­ing you will receive at GCMI. We intend to bring you the tech­niques used in our police schools. Many peo­ple say, “I want to learn how to turn the way you guys do.” We will show you the secret to the turn­ing. Will you ride the way police do after a one-day school. No. Remem­ber, that school is two weeks long. That’s only the begin­ning. Police motor­cy­cle offi­cers never stop train­ing. It’s up to you to take the infor­ma­tion you get from us and prac­tice. We will show you how to prac­tice on your own. Addi­tion­ally, we will cover top­ics like curve nego­ti­a­tion, brak­ing in a curve, slow speed maneu­vers, pos­ture, sur­face appraisal, road rid­ing and more. I know that you will leave our school more con­fi­dent than when you arrived. You may be a really good rider now. We want to help you become even better.

The biggest mis­take we can make is to allow our pride to get in the way. Recently, David and I attended a biker event. We set up a booth with infor­ma­tion about our school. Peo­ple would stop by and chat, but a few would say “… well I’ve been rid­ing for a while, so I’m good.” After a few hours I told David to notice how dif­fer­ently peo­ple would act when accom­pa­nied by oth­ers. On one occa­sion David noticed a man pass by our booth sev­eral times with­out stop­ping. He looked at us each time he passed. We were some­what pre­oc­cu­pied with other peo­ple look­ing through our infor­ma­tion and ask­ing ques­tions. As soon as every­one walked away, he appeared again; only this time he approached us. He was very inter­ested in the train­ing. He seemed eager to learn. When he left, David said, “That is a per­fect exam­ple of what you were just talk­ing about.” He felt uncom­fort­able ask­ing ques­tions with oth­ers around him. Too many times we allow pride and ego to get in our way. We don’t want our bud­dies to make fun of us for tak­ing a class. This is why women learn faster than we do guys. They don’t worry with ego at all.

Folks, I can’t begin to tell you how many hours of train­ing I have on a motor­cy­cle. Together, David and I have thirty years of rid­ing “on duty”. I try to learn some­thing new every sin­gle day. Why? Because I want to make it home every sin­gle day! Do you think that because I’m an instruc­tor with count­less hours on a motor­cy­cle that I don’t watch David ride? Of course I do. He’s a great rider. Do you think David watches me? You bet­ter believe he does. He’s afraid he might miss some­thing. How do you think we achieved the level of rid­ing we have now? Of course, it’s not like our lives depend on it. Oh wait, they do!

Through the years David and I have had many con­ver­sa­tions about rid­ing. Our poor wives have sat patiently while a movie was paused, or din­ner was get­ting cold, sim­ply because one of us sud­denly had an epiphany about train­ing. We don’t allow ego to sab­o­tage our desire to become bet­ter rid­ers, or instruc­tors. Don’t let it keep you from enhanc­ing your own abil­ity. Do it for your­self, your pas­sen­ger, your kids, or any­one that cares about you. Don’t let self­ish pride keep you from being better.

We are very con­fi­dent we can help you, regard­less of your cur­rent skill level. The ques­tion is; will you allow us to help you?