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No. 2840
Anonymous
13th February 2014 Thursday 1:21 am
2840
>>2834
> you can add electrically heated grips to keep your hands toasty.
I can not recommend this enough if you plan to do year round riding. Unless it gets proper frosty you can get away with wearing thing leather summer gloves even in the wet without feeling the chill and, worst come to worse, if you add some handle bar muffs then nothing this green and pleasant land can throw at you will stop you… except ice, like >>2834 said, because that's an entirely different issue. There's a reason most EU countries that have proper snow & ice winters offer seasonal insurance.
Anyway, if you do want to hop on again, as others have said getting a few more lessons is helpful. A CBT is really only about "Will you kill others", not "Will you get killed". Besides, even if you don't go DAS getting an actual A license of any form will reduce your insurance quite a bit and save you the hassle of redoing your CBT in two years time.
Being scared (gosh, I am repeating people a lot here) is just fine. You don't want to be petrified, but being concerned enough to be conscientious is really what absolutely every traffic participant should aspire to; it just happens to matter more on certain modes of transport.
Getting more into what you asked about, riding in London is only as scary as you want it to be as long as you understand two concepts: taking the lane, and "safe distance, but not large enough to invite overtakes" (the latter is a matter of experience, sadly). You don't have to filter, you don't have to weave, you don't have to pull any kind of stunt… you can just ride along with commuter traffic and relax. The option to skip past the queues of cars is always there, but until you feel confident enough to navigate those gaps you really don't have to. That is not to say that traffic cannot be bullying, mind. Certain people have the MGIF mentality (Must Get In Front, a close friend of SMIDSY) so you have to position yourself confidently. That shouldn't be a problem, though, since even on a c90 you could comfortably keep up with most of inner city London traffic (the venerable c125 has only fairly recently been replaced by the Innova 125 for delivery riders).
As for picking up your bike, there are plenty of videos out there to teach you how even a skinny lady can lift a Goldwing… it's more about technique and less about being skinny, lanky, pasty, whatever.
The long and short of it is: if you want to ride, just go friggin do it.
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