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I got to ride on the back of trail bikes with my dad on on a ranch that he
worked on. I was probably four or five and I just thought that was really cool.
My name is Dan Bats. I live here in Portland, Oregon and I've been teaching
with Team Oregon since 1999.
I'm an instructor, a mentor instructor,
and I'm also on the leadership council.
I took the experienced riders course in
'93 or '94, something like that, and instructors and had asked me at the
time if I was interested in becoming an instructor.
Team Oregon is the state sanctioned motorcycle safety program, so we're underneath ODOT,
or the department of transportation and we have sites all throughout the state and we
train motorcyclists.
The bulk are beginning riders that want to get their endorsements. Regardless of where they're
at, wether they haven't ridden a bike before at all or sometimes they're just self-taught or maybe a
friend or husband and they don't really have the skills they
need to ride safely on the street.
So we can take people that have never been on a bike
and build the proper habits for a new rider and also hopefullu
fine tune some of those bad habits that people have been using or not using on the street.
We get the BRT, which comprises of the bulk of the students that go to the program.
that's the beginning riders or basic rider training and is designed for riders who have never
been on the track or on a bike before.
Beyond that is the IRT, Intermediate Rider Training. It's a one day class
for people that have had some bike experience that want to get sharpened back up; maybe
it's been some years since they've been on a bike
and also beyond that is the rider skills practice,
another one day course that they do on their own bike
and they get a chance to work on their cornering and what not, it's a half day course
and then beyond that is the advanced rider training course on
go kart track that gives them a chance to work on their cornering.
Each exercise starts out very basic. We just start out with them
mounting the bike and indentifying the controls to make sure that they know
where they are, we cover that in the previous night's class
so we reinforce that where the controls are, how to start and stop the bike with
a shift is and how those things work
and then they will come
progress onto just straddle walking so you get a feel for the friction zone.
A lot of riders have never driven a manual transmission, they have no idea
how a clutch works so they get some practice doing that.
Then we move on to starting and stopping and they can just walk along with the bike
if they want.
Then we move onto the step where they can put the feet on the pegs if they want
and then each exercise progresses on to where within the first
half-hour so they've got their feet on the pegs and they're riding around.
Initially all they're riding around in is in first gear so then once that's
settled in we're gonna move in to shifting so that
just in itself takes up a whole other concentration so we go through all the steps
that we've gone through in class.
A lot of the exercises will have
a little practice we call a static practice while they're still sitting on the bikes
in lines before they start riding
around so they know that
this is what we're going to do when we start riding around the rings.
Our curriculum is based on evidence
that we've gathered or what the program has gather of what leads to motorcycle
accidents that specifically addresses what
kind of issues people are having here and what gets them
in crashes or killed here in Oregon.
We have one of the lower accident rates per rider
per miles traveled for our state compared to other states so the program's doing well
nationwide. We're right at the top.
We provide bikes, what we call a fixed range like we have here at PCC Sylvania.
We've got two sheds that have the bikes in them; we've got spare
parts there if we need which happen sometimes and that's also where the
helmets are stored. Shortly,
and I'm not sure how shortly, but we're going to start having a couple
scooters at various sites for those people that are interested in
riding scooters.
I've had students tell me that this is the most fun thing that they've ever done in life.
By the end you can take people
on that have never ridden before and
they're doing really really well and just the progress they make in a
relatively short period of time is very satisfying.
♪♪