Whenever I was part of a group of motorcyclists, some basic hand signals were used to communicate elementary ideas.  When Kevin began to ride and he and I began traveling together,  I continued to use these signals with Kevin.  It never occurred to me to sit down with him and explain them - maybe I should have.

In the early days, I always took the lead and Kevin followed behind.  Since most of our travel took place on narrow, winding, secondary highways, we often came across slower moving traffic.  Many times there was enough room for me to safely pass the slower vehicles but not enough time for Kevin to safely make it.  In these situations, when I could see the way was clear, but knew that Kevin couldn't, I would wave him ahead.    This seemed to work fairly well and  I waved him the "all clear" sign several times each ride - I never gave it a thought.

After several months, Kevin wanted to be in the lead.  He was an excellent rider and had a good head on his shoulders, so I had no problem letting him set the pace.  One day, we were cruising down the highway and we came across a slow moving motor home.  Kevin made his pass, but there was not enough site distance for me to go.  Kevin stayed within site, as was his job, and soon he waved me ahead.  I confidently pulled out into the other lane to make my pass.  As I accelerated alongside the motor home, around the next corner came a car - I barely made it.  I was a little irritated with Kevin and at our next stop, I asked him what the hell he was doing giving me the "all clear" signal when there was a car coming.  He said he wasn't giving me an "all clear" signal, he was telling me to hurry up - all those months he'd thought that I was telling him to hurry up.  We had a pretty good chuckle about it and decided we should work out some hand signals we both understood.