…my strategy when I started riding in the real world (i.e. not the parking lot in the BRC).
I started on the back streets of a nearby residential neighborhood, getting a feel for everything, both major things like turns and braking, but also the smaller things like using the turn signals and the mirrors properly, and smooth starts and stops (even though I was, I didn’t want to *look* like a beginning rider while on the road).
While in said residential neighborhood, I’d usually make a stop at a local (empty) church parking to practice my emergency braking and my low speed turns. As the hardest part for me in the BRC was “the box,” I would spend tons of time at this church riding in really tight circles. Paid off though…when I took the ERC course recently, the box was nothing.
After a few weeks of doing that, I started to venture onto busier and busier roads with more and more traffic.
Agree on saving highways and expressways until last. Not that they’re hard (they’re not compared with low-speed around-town riding), but because of the confidence factor. As SafetyFirst points out, it’s somewhat disconcerting the first time you reach highway speeds (55+)…it’s both exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.
Congrats on a great bike!