Today's weather: High = 23 Low = 14
Partly cloudy
Got a whole day of self-practice in this time, and it went a lot better than the last one. It basically just takes a lot of repetition and pattern recognition to get the hang of how the bike works and how the traffic flows. The 4-way stop procedure is still a bit rusty, but I'm making good improvements on it.
A lot of the road test area has school zones and other potential restrictions where you're not sure if you need to slow down or not. The examiners would love to put people through that. You would fail the test for speeding if there is a 30 km/h restriction in place, but would only get demerits if you slowed down if wasn't necessary. Based on that, I'll err on the side of caution and go slow for all the zones, and take a few demerit points as a hit.
Another general comment is that there is no average speed advantage or time savings for riding a motorcycle in the Vancouver area. That is to say, the motorcycle is treated equally as a car in traffic. If there is a traffic jam or a long set of lights, then the motorcycle also waits and arrives at the same time a car would. The concept of beating lights, running around traffic jams, lane splitting, driving on sidewalks, and the other typical things you'd do in Shanghai to get ahead of the traffic can't apply here.
Also, the motorcycle only has a short advantage in the summer riding season, whereas a car operates year-round. It probably makes more sense to drive a car in Vancouver then.
Tomorrow is the official mock practice test. Will get some feedback from an instructor.
Partly cloudy
Got a whole day of self-practice in this time, and it went a lot better than the last one. It basically just takes a lot of repetition and pattern recognition to get the hang of how the bike works and how the traffic flows. The 4-way stop procedure is still a bit rusty, but I'm making good improvements on it.
A lot of the road test area has school zones and other potential restrictions where you're not sure if you need to slow down or not. The examiners would love to put people through that. You would fail the test for speeding if there is a 30 km/h restriction in place, but would only get demerits if you slowed down if wasn't necessary. Based on that, I'll err on the side of caution and go slow for all the zones, and take a few demerit points as a hit.
Another general comment is that there is no average speed advantage or time savings for riding a motorcycle in the Vancouver area. That is to say, the motorcycle is treated equally as a car in traffic. If there is a traffic jam or a long set of lights, then the motorcycle also waits and arrives at the same time a car would. The concept of beating lights, running around traffic jams, lane splitting, driving on sidewalks, and the other typical things you'd do in Shanghai to get ahead of the traffic can't apply here.
Also, the motorcycle only has a short advantage in the summer riding season, whereas a car operates year-round. It probably makes more sense to drive a car in Vancouver then.
Tomorrow is the official mock practice test. Will get some feedback from an instructor.
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