Everything you need to know . . .

I'm usually very cautious of a book of video which claims to cover 'everthing you need to know', or to be 'the ultimate', or even 'complete' (and a recently-published UK riding book falls into one of those categories.

So it was with some interest that I noticed a new programme buried in the back catalogue available on my BT Vision box (obviously not in the box, but via the internet connection ;) ).

Featuring Todd Colbert, it's the ambitiously-titled:

"Everything you need to know about learning to ride a motorcycle from safety and maintenance to riding the street"



Or similar. I got bored half way through writing it all down.

It manages to achieve (?) all this in half an hour.

"Featuring Todd Colbert" OK . . . he presents the information, but in case you don't know his name (I didn't) there's 4 (yes, four) minutes introducing him by showing various magazine covers and articles. This isn't even rostrum camera (is Ken Morse still the king of rostrum - it always used to be his name in the TV credits?), but a roving camera over framed pages and photos.

The programme rattles on with an introduction to clothing, bike controls, maintenance, moving the bike around, and eventually - 20 minutes in - the key's turned and the bike started up.

Basic machine control exercises follow, including cluth (sic) control :)

Then the final section: "What Not To Do".

This doesn't feature Todd riding, but is a short list of things not to do, each illustrated by a clip - some I'd seen many times before - of riders (usually failing stunt riders) getting it wrong.

The video links to "learntoride.com" so out of interest I had a look at that site. It auto-redirects to "crashclipsforsale.com". Well, if you have a clip, don't send it to You've been framed - at least, not if the clip prices on that site are anything to go by!


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