My motorcycle rider’s education was crude but effective. My dad offered up his chopper and the fenced yard area of our home. The instructions were simple, “Go as slow as you can toward the fence, do a U-turn. Go as slow as you can toward the house, do a U-turn the other way.”

Lesson two involved taking the same chopper up and down quarter-mile long gravel driveway that contained a creek crossing, a cattle guard, and many washed out ruts.

This method taught me a ton about clutch, brake, and throttle control as well as the basic mechanics of keeping a motorcycle balanced. Proficient Motorcycling handily covers all the finer points that Dad’s method didn’t.

After the first doom and gloom anecdotal story, David Hough jumps right into the nuts and bolts of we manage to keep these bobbling two wheelers on two wheels. Even though I know to countersteer, I didn’t understand the underlying mechanics which are explained clearly in this book. Each skill touched on in the book is given the same thorough but easy to understand treatment.

Mr. Hough does a great job of straddling the different sects of motorcyclists. Safety gear is talked about but the ATGATT (all the gear all the time) preachiness is avoided. The same line is straddled when it comes to addressing the riding styles of a squid on a sportbike riding a twisty road and a big tourer that just ambles down the highway.

Proficient Motorcycling should be on the reading list of every new motorcyclist as they will learn more skills in a few hours than they probably will in their first year of riding. Experienced motorcyclists, like myself, will gain some additional insight into the skills and habits that they have picked up in their time in the saddle.