A Funny Story

I was chatting today with one of my colleagues. Last weekend a young lad turns up for CBT (compulsory basic training) to learn to ride a motorcycle. Now, my colleague asked the inevitable question ‘have you ever ridden before?’

‘Oh, yes, at Donnington.’

Eyebrows raised, but it’s always possible that a 17 year old has ridden mini motos or something similar, so who’s to argue? Besides, he had all the kit – full leathers, helmet and so on and seemed to understand the basics during the initial chat when we cover what we are going to be doing for the day.

Out on the pad, his machine control was non existent. My colleague is now baffled. The reality before him and what he had been told didn’t match – but as I’ve discovered, this is nothing new.

‘I thought you said you had ridden at Donnington?’

‘I did, on my Xbox.’

‘What? Really? That’s not real life.’

‘Yes, I got to choose the colours of my leathers and everything…’

This, ladies and gentlemen of the jury is what we have to deal with.

True story.

21 Comments

  1. Two blokes in the pub the other night – I bought my lad a little one litre car as a runaround and his lad had said – one litre – great.. that won’t be expensive to fill up… next bloke says: that sounds like my lad.. he went upstairs to take a bath.. his dad went up after a bit and found the shower filling up the bath – boy sat in his bedroom.. said he’d heard it was cheaper to use the shower than to run a bath.. Sheesh!

  2. Young guy a rich guy’s son?

    Whispering this, don’t tell anyone

    A few years ago Mrs Pcar filled up with diesel…

    …No not that mistake

    Then, no idea why, decided to add some oil. 1 Litre didn’t fill it, so she added more until bored or something

    Sets of in her diesel 106, hits city bypass and accelerates… then car keeps accelarating with vast smoke clouds behind

    Long story short police & public didn’t know what to do and stood well back until engine finally stopped

    Surprisingly when recovered, I looked at engine. All looked OK, no evidence of blown head gasket, sump over filled and very black. Drained of some oil and tried starting. Nope. Pulled a glow plug to check compression: glow plug destroyed. Pulled other 3 and same

    Decided £20 on new set a good gamble – success. Changed oil and sold car. Three years latter still showed as taxed & tested, didn’t check again

    Lessons: Women are dangerous and 106 egine is strong

  3. Thinking about it, if a computer game simulation was realistic enough, you could learn basic bike control skills on it. I’m presuming that the device in question would involve a hand held controller with buttons on it rather than something that you can sit astride of. Ask Julia M. she knows about video games, my gaming never got further than Space Invaders.

    • It will have been hand held controls. Certainly things like clutch, throttle and balance cannot be learned from a computer game.

      • Actually, I was thinking of the clutch, throttle and gear changing as being the things that could be taught using a simulation. That could be learned while not having to worry about balance or steering. Doing things separately before putting them together is quite a common way of learning difficult things. Having said that, I learned by riding around a field on an ancient BSA Bantam and don’t remember ever having a problem at all.

        • A rolling road can do this, however, my experience of them is that they aren’t helpful as you don’t get the same feedback. Balance is far too important to the mix.

  4. Playing the game is not real life.
    Reading a book is not mastery of skills.
    The map is not the terrain.

    From which it follows that…
    Reading the MSM is not gaining knowledge.
    Signing a petition is not achieving change.
    Voting for a politician is no guarantee of political change.

    But somehow life struggles on.

  5. It’s funny but it’s not really; this is the generation that will be running the world in 30 years time. Fortunately I will be either dead or past caring by then

  6. I’m police and the other day I was posted with a youngster (26 is a youngster in my mind). The police car has an on-board computer which has a sat-nav. When we take a call the sat-nav takes you there. This time the system was down so when I took a job at an address I didn’t know I handed my colleague my A-Z map book to guide us in. He looked confused and he admitted that he didn’t know how to read a map as he always look up destinations on his phone. A basic skill at my age but obviously not the younger generation.

    • I can navigate by dead reckoning if I have to. Did it once in Paris when the periferique was closed. I knew I needed to go east, so just kept going in that direction until I saw signs for Calais.

      • Had a conversation with a young guy who didn’t understand how we knew roughly where to go even without a sat nav.

        I had to explain how the position of the sun helped…

        That said, if you want to go to Calais from Paris, wouldn’t you want to go north…? 🙂

    • @LR Same here, I kind of know what way to go

      I frequently amazed collegues when navigating London underground stations. It’s like a compass in head. I think it’s to do with listening to what body/instinct telling you. The same awareness helps surviving on a bike too

  7. I never had any kind of innate sense of direction. I used to carry a road atlas and had a box full of street maps when I was a mobile site engineer. I thought that it was inevitable that the skill of map reading would be lost due to satnav technology. I haven’t used a map in years now.

    • @Stony

      I prefer maps to blindly following sat-nav

      If you’re not a woman, you need to trans

      😉

  8. “I prefer maps to blindly following sat-nav”

    At first I used to carry a map along just in case but, as time went on I learned to trust the satnav more. They are not infallible obviously, especially as the one in my car is a bit out of date, but by applying a bit of common sense I generally get where I want to go.

  9. I feel so inadequate reading the above comments. My (late) wife used to tell me that my sense of direction was so bad, that if I had been Christopher Columbus’s navigator, in 1492 he would have discovered Scunthorpe.

    • Don’t feel inadequate. We all have different brains and skills which is wonderful. You will have skills I don’t

      Why I have a compass, engineer, logic, observor, scientist and perspicacity in my brain, but zero musical or artistic capability and little emotion (but have empathy) is a profound mystery. However, it is why humans rule the world

      I like to bless God for this

      PS: Excellent point

      Where is the party that stands for freedom?’ | Claire Fox on why there’s a ‘crisis’ in politics
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zJ9NgDmvOE

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