VOL. 49 ISSUE 29 JULY 24, 2012 P59
Although the center comprises of just two acres, students will feel like they're out on the open trail.
ride through the back forty of the Honda center. The foursome give chase to their instructor through the trail system that re-
sary to our end goal of riding ably. It was not only a lot of fun, but it
was more than that. For example, Mercedes told me that some of her favorite days of being an instruc- tor are those when she is teaching teenaged girls, when she can see insecure girls gain confidence as they end up succeeding at some- thing they thought they would fail at before.
While I am not a teenaged girl, I was definitely not expecting to have been as successful at it as I was. By the end of the day the four of us were operating the clutch smoothly, shifting in and out of gears, maneu- vering over obstacles, and riding through whoops. The fact that all of us picked it up so easily and were
ally is a shrunk down version of what they'll find in the Southern California desert when they hit the trails for real. There's uphills, downhills, bridge crossings, wa- ter crossings, banked turns, off- camber turns, sand… and they
so successful shows that it could not have been indi- vidual, natural talent. Instead credit begs to be given to a great instructor and well- designed program. We all left with the satisfy-
ing feeling of conquering something difficult and foreign. It was an incred- ible end of a day that had started with me being so far from anything moto that I thought that the word whoops was short for whoopsy daisies. Josh Kettles
From whoopsy-daisies to whoop-de-doos.
Bowling shoes? No… motocross boots.
end with some runs through the whoops. The day ends with big smiles
from all and a graduation cere- mony to boot.
CN
