The Rider School at HCC

The rider school at HCC was such a great experience!!! Instructors John. Carey and Les. Schultz love what they do and emit such great vibes and dealing with Loretta. Farb was great!! Thank you guys !!

Decided it was finally time to get my motorcycle license and thought this was a good class to do it through. The price was comparable to other private teachers but they’re all expensive. The class was 3 hours two evenings and then 6 hours both weekend days. The classroom part was the basics and explaining good practices for riding and etiquette and you took the written assessment in the classroom before you get on a bike.
The driving part requires full riding gear however they have spare equipment you can borrow if you don’t have something. The instructors were really good with providing one on one assessment without singling anybody out. The only issue was I wish you could have had more time, like a free time, to practice on something you felt unsure about.
Overall I had a great experience and recommend it to anyone who is interested in riding. They even had extra accommodations for those who didn’t pass to retest.

I went for the 1 day alternate riding course to get my license. iv been riding bikes for about 16 years and i still learned some small stuff i just didnt think about before. Now the class is alittle long but its one day out of your life and they teach you everything you need to know about to pass the test. Id definatly recommend this class to all my rider friends

JUST finished the 4 day class. Monday and Wednesday from 6pm until 9:30pm. Sat from 7:30am until about 4pm and Sunday from 7:30am until about 2pm.
I have some basic experience but I learned A LOT. I agree with Katie (reviewed before me) the box sucks, a couple of guys did it well, but most of us struggled. The rest of the things we learned were hard but with practice most of us mastered them. Everyone who completed the course passed and is eligible for their license.
The instructors take safety very seriously. Of our 12 class members 1 was asked to withdraw because he did not have sufficient skills to continue riding safely. 2 other left because they wanted to leave for the same reason.
To sum up a lot of info, a lot of safety and, a lot of new friends.

Howard Community College’s Motorcycle Safety Course is a 3– or 4-​day course that teaches the basics of motorcycle riding. If you pass, you get a Motorcycle Safety Foundation card and a certificate telling the MVA to put Class M on your drivers license. Sure, it costs $ 330, but for a motorcycle license, that’s not bad. Motorcycle licenses don’t expire, and they can be transferred to other states without retaking the test.
The course at HCC has only been offered for a couple of years, so the waiting list is much shorter than other places. I signed up 2 months in advance, and that was plenty of time. I hear it’s hard to even get into the courses at Harley-​Davidson.
Schedules are available that accommodate 9 to 5 jobs, but I signed up for a class on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.
12 people total in the class. On Monday, we showed up at 8 am – most of us wearing long sleeves, long pants, and boots, which are required to ride, but we didn’t actually get on a motorcycle that day. Monday was classroom work. We split into groups, went through sections in the safety booklet – with plenty of class interaction, which you could see as a good thing or a bad thing, but I do think it helped me remember better – and then, after 7 hours (and a lunch break), finished for the day.
Tuesday at 7:30 am (!) we met on the course. Borrowed helmets (most of us) and wore sunglasses for eye protection. Gloves, boots, etc. The first exercise was all about finding the friction zone of the clutch (for stick shift car drivers, this means that point where the clutch starts to disengage and the engine starts to catch). They started us off very slowly, perfect for me, because I’ve only ever been a passenger on a bike. A few people with more experience were a little bored, but they were challenged by some of the later exercises. By 12:30 we were practicing curves and quick stops. No lunch break. We finished up with a written test based on the classwork from Monday – not very hard, but worth studying for.
Wednesday at 7:30 am. Got our gear, started right off with exercises, increasing in difficulty as we went. No lunch break. Practiced specific skills a bit, and then right into the skills test. First: the box. I HATE THE BOX. I’m sure that, with more practice, I could do just fine, but right now, making two tight U-​turns in sequence is too much for my brain to process. I went outside the boundaries multiple times. Second: the swerve. No problem with this one (and I think the same was true of everyone else in my class). You get up to speed toward a row of cones, and then have to swerve around them. Third: the quick stop. Also no problem. Get up to speed approaching cones, and then stop as quickly and smoothly as possible after you pass them. Fourth: the curve. Had a bit of trouble with this, because in the test proper, I forgot what I had been taught and didn’t look where I was turning. Don’t cross over the white boundary lines! Huge penalty for that. I didn’t. I passed. Woo hoo!
So now I have a motorcycle license. I don’t have a bike, and I am absolutely not ready to go out into real traffic, but with lots of practice in an empty parking lot, I’ll be able to get there.
Of the 12 people, 10 passed. If you don’t pass, you can try the exam again within 30 days.
A few people dropped their bikes doing exercises, but nothing extreme happened. It got a little tedious to wait in line (on a motorcycle) behind everyone else (on their motorcycles) and breathe exhaust fumes, but there was a lot of actual riding and practicing time. Not as much as I would have liked, of course, but now that I have the license, I have the rest of my life to weave around cones if I want to.
The instructors were great. Real people teaching us real information.
Final note: people who take the course get into crashes much, much less (statistically) than people who are taught to ride by family and friends. Take the course.