(DISCLAIMER: This is not an article about Che Guevara or the movie (really good) that was made about him. This is a narrative about my personal harrowing experience attempting to ride a motorcycle. So if you're a Che-ophile, and are uninterested in anything obtaining to other topics, I'd advise you to stop reading now. However, if you are the sort of person who finds it funny when other people fall down, you should probably continue with this article. Someone definitely falls down in this story.)

Back in April, Nick and I decided it would be fun to take motorcycle lessons, and because the classes were booked so far in advance we had to select a date in mid-July. The lessons were in the form of a three-day crash course (so to speak), with one evening dedicated to classroom instruction and then two full days for practice driving. At the end of the course, we would be given a driving test and a written test. If our scores were high enough to pass, we would take our certificate to the DMV and get a motorcycle license that same day. Doesn't sound so bad, right? I'm a perfectionist, and it never occurred to me that I would do anything other than pass the course with flying colors. I figured I would rock that class like Steve McQueen. Maybe I would even get a medal for being the most exemplary student ever.

We arrived Friday evening for the classroom session. First thing, we were asked to slap on a Hello-My-Name-Is sticker (I had to talk Nick out of writing something obscene on his) and take a seat around a small table that seated four people. Next, we had to interview another person at our table, and then report to the class about them. (You guys may remember this exercise from corporate teambuilding exercises and/or high school speech class.) We also had to come up with a group name in order to distinguish ourselves from the other groups. After about ten seconds of discussion, we settled on the Knight Riders, for no other reason than that one of the guys at our table had just had a dream about David Hasselhoff and we thought it would be really really funny. At last, we started to talk about motorcycles.

The class was run by a retired sheriff and his wife, both of whom were friendly and nice. We covered a lot of information in a short amount of time, watched some videos about motorcycle safety, and took a short quiz over the location of the controls. Before we went home, we were given some guidelines with which to prepare for our Monday and Tuesday riding sessions. See, it turns out that this was the hottest week of the year in Kansas. Lucky us! The temperature would be about 107 with a heat index of 115, and because of this the classes were to begin at 7 o'clock, rather than 8. This wouldn't have been so bad except that we had to drive an hour to get to the class. But whatever. So in addition to the base requirements for attire (long sleeves, long pants, gloves, over-the-ankle boots, helmets, and sunglasses), we had to bring sunscreen, chapstick, and as much Gatorade as we could pack in the car. It was like preparing for a week-long camping trip. But instead of Lake Tahoe, we would be camping on the surface of the sun.

The heat was a serious concern for me. I tend to get heat exhaustion rather easily, and you all know about my experiences trying to stay hydrated without going overboard and flushing too much salt from my system. (Stupid Lollapalooza.) Then there was the earliness factor. We went to bed at about 10 the night before our first outdoor lesson, but I wasn't able to get to sleep until 2 in the morning, which left a total of three hours of rest before getting up for class. So there were a few strikes against me. But I was determined to do it, and I was looking forward to the story I would tell about how I'd survived the hardships of motorcycle boot camp. It would be like Navy Seal training or something. (Yeah, I've seen G.I. Jane a few too many times). Unfortunately, to carry this analogy a bit further, I ended up having to ring the bell to signal that I was going home. God knows I didn't want to, but given my state of mind at the time I recognized that it was the best choice.

Here's what happened.

We started off doing basic familiarization exercises. Mounting and dismounting, turning the engine on and off, that sort of thing. We were given an acronym (FINE-C) to remember the start-up procedure. Switch on the Fuel knob. Turn the key in the Ignition. Shift into Neutral. Switch on the Engine. Use the Choke if necessary. But most of the people in our class had ridden a motorcycle before, so we moved through these preliminary steps more quickly than I would have liked.

Next, we duck-walked the bike down a lane marked with cones, and at the end of the lane, we had to turn the bike around in a small space and duck-walk back. The first problem occurred on my third attempt, when I turned the wheel too far and the bike started to tip over. I tried to hold it up, but even a tiny little Honda Rebel weighs about a million zillion pounds, so that didn't work out so well. I put the bike down, as they say. The instructor just laughed and set it up for me again, reattaching the tail light, which had snapped off when it hit the ground. Embarrassing, yes. But I was still determined to conquer the course.

After awhile, we started to ride short distances. We had to start, accelerate, and then stop before we reached the end of the lane. Simple, right? Well, mastering the controls turned out to be harder than I expected, and my experience driving my '61 Ford Falcon didn't exactly prepare me for the experience of using a hand clutch. Not to mention the crazy two-part brake thing, where you have to use the hand brake and the foot brake at the same time. I was also hyper-aware of being attached to an extremely heavy and dangerous piece of equipment, and the movie screen in my head kept playing a particular Evel Knievel crash over and over again. Anyway, the upshot of all this is that given the heat (Dante's Inferno was invoked several times), the pressure of performing, and the amount of information I had to process, I found myself in a state of mind where I couldn't quite remember what to do or what order I needed to do it in. I was mid-run, rehearsing the stopping procedure in my head, when the instructor signaled for me to accelerate. So I did it. I accelerated. And in the process, the stopping procedure just sort of drifted away from the accessible part of my brain. As I was approaching the end cone, I did remember to squeeze the hand brake, but I ended up cranking the throttle at the same time. (Easy to do, really, since both are activated with the right hand.) The motor growled as I slowed down, and then I made my fatal error. I released the brake. For some stupid reason, I released the brake, and I went barreling toward the instructor like some kind of kamikaze pilot. Tora! Tora! Tora!

I'm sure by this point you're pretty worried about my intrepid instructor. Fear not . . . he's totally fine. I didn't exactly run into him, you see, because he was agile enough to jump out of the way at the last minute. Then he dived across the bike from the side, flipping the engine cut-off switch, and instructor, woman, and bike went down in a scrambling mass against the curb. It was bad. Worse, even, than that nightmare I sometimes have about being trapped overnight in the evil marionette factory.

Humiliating. Slapstick. Many words could be used to describe the accident, and yet they can in no way convey the pure mortification I felt at almost running over my instructor. All my classmates were looking on, and I swear I heard someone shouting "Oh, the humanity!" I was the Hindenberg. I was the disaster of the century.

But unlike the Hindenberg, the Lusitania, or even that infamous Who concert back in the day, there were no serious injuries associated with my disaster. The only damage was to my pride (bruised) and my legs (also bruised . . . the one on my left thigh was shaped like Antarctica). And when it was all over, I had a reassuring chat with the instructors, who were both wonderfully cool about it all. They suggested that it might be better for me to log some time on the back of a bike . . . just so I could get familiar with the feel of riding . . . before I tried to drive one again. After I was comfortable on the back, they said, Nick could ease me into driving his bike, one-on-one, without the pressure of keeping up with a bunch of more-experienced classmates. I thought this was an excellent plan. And besides, the thought of getting back on the motorcycle that day was about as appealing as the idea of repeatedly slamming my hand in a car door. Which is to say, not at all. (I'm stubborn, but I am not a masochist, thank you very much.)

So I went to see Superman again, and Nick finished the course. Afterward, he got his license, and the very next day he picked up a Honda Shadow, which is shiny and pretty and makes me think of Brando in The Wild One. I've been riding on the back, and I love it. But that's another story for another day.

Next time on Karen's Theatre of the Bizarre: Why Spangles is evidence that an alien invasion is imminent.