On Nov 5, 10:25*am, Art Harris wrote:

snip

The more you ride, the more
confident you'll feel on the bike even at higher speeds and in
traffic. The main thing is to stay relaxed, and not have a death grip
on the bars. This is supposed to be fun! The more you enjoy riding,
the more miles you'll do.

While I agree, I'd add that confidence doesn't mean you won't wreck.
My last (and one of my very few) on road crashes was the result of
confidence. I was riding my first real full-blown road bike, with
dual compound tires that had very grippy sidewalls. I'd leaned it
quite far playing around in parking lots and such, and on a
particularly frisky ride decided to push my limits through some hilly
backroads. The front tire ended up washing out on me in full lean, at
high speed. No big deal, as far as crashes go it was quite minor, and
I have been through the same turn at similar speeds since. Just
saying confidence doesn't always mean you'll be crash-free. I forget
if it was leaves or sand, but there was something in the road that day
and by the time I saw it I was going too fast and turning too hard to
do anything about it. Oops