Getting started.

(From Aberdeen Press & Journal)

Byline: colene.mckessick

I CAN remember the exact moment that I decided I wanted to ride a motorbike. Sat in the back of my dad's chocolate brown 1978 Morris Marina 1700 L (for lacklustre) estate, peering over the top of the caramel vinyl door panel, I witnessed a bike pass us at an eye-bogglingly acute angle over a roundabout and disappear beyond the horizon. It was the kind of reckless audacity that appealed to a boy whose knobbly knees were perma-scabbed from repeatedly falling off a BMX.

That would have been sometime in the mid to late-1980s and, somehow, two decades passed without me acting on the promise I made myself. So it was with untold joy that I found myself cautiously wobbling towards an instructor sitting astride a throbbing 125cc Honda on my way to motorbiking glory.

The invitation to take my Compulsory Basic Training, or CBT, with Honda was not one to be passed up. The first step to two-wheeled freedom of the roads, the CBT was introduced in 1990 in an attempt to reduce the number of inexperienced motorcyclists coming a cropper on the UK's roads.

As is often the way with anything involving Government legislation, who can ride what requires a pamphlet of its own. However, this is training -- not a test -- and the upshot is that, unless I prove to be irredeemably unco-ordinated or cause a multi-car pile-up on the roads, I will be able to ride a 125cc motorbike limited to 14.6bhp with learner plates.

That's the goal, but the anticipated eagerness of students has to be regulated by experienced training staff.