I’m mid to late fifties, which means I’ve been riding motorcycles on and off for 40 years, and certainly the first 20 years a motorcycle was basically my only vehicle.
If you haven’t ridden bikes, a lot of this may not ring any bells, because you haven’t walked in those shoes, so bear with me.
The current ride is an 02 harley softail, if you know anything at all about harleys you’ll know that the price you pay for the hardtail looks and lack of traditional rear swingarm and shox is worse handling, think about that, the softails are some of the worst handling harleys made since world war two.
Combine that with around 660 lbs kerb weight and you’ll soon understand that unless you buy a rear tyre that is made of superglue that wears out every 50 miles the back end is going to skid around a lot, today I had a rear end lock for about 20 feet as I slowed down going downhill behind a car that was stopping for some road works red lights, and I was only doing 40/50 before, and kept plenty of distance, and had plenty of warning, and favoured the rear brake a bit, but even so at around 15 mph and 3 car lengths behind the rear end skidded slightly, because the tyre just doesn’t have the traction for the sheer mass.
it wasn’t a big deal, in the scheme of things, but if all you have ever driven is a car, any car, in those conditions and in that scenario, you’d never get a wheel to lock up.
“Things are different on a motorcycle”.
The other “interesting” thing is the engine, 1,700 cc and 100 ft/lbs at 2,000 rpm, so basically just crack it open at any revs in any gear and get *significant* acceleration, combine this with the decidedly agricultural (as in 1950 massey ferguson T20 tractor) handling and what it basically means is it has an awful lot on common with a 600 bhp 2017 mustang, you can get into trouble an awful lot faster and easier than you can get out of it.
So if you want to live, or at least not crash and get injured and smash the bike up, you have to ride very conservatively, in addition to assuming everyone else on the road is hopped up on meth and hoping to feature in the next youtube crash video…
The flip side of this is the surprise on the faces of many when I fly past them, putting that 100 ft/lbs at 2,000 rpm to work, wow, never knew harleys could move like that, because they don’t usually see it, most HD riders don’t push them at all, even assuming the factory tune could walk the walk.
So overtaking maneuvers, well if you fuck up you have the rest of your life in the wheelchair to regret the decision, contrast that huge period of time with the 0.5 seconds you used to make the decision to pass….. bit one sided there really, so again today couple that one sided cause and effect equation with the fact that it don’t handle worth shit and passing becomes something you do if you have a couple of seconds to think about it and look at everything twice and you can see the entire road that the passing manoeuver will occupy and you can see there are no hazards or junctions within that space.
You then get it boiled down to a few differences between you and the average cars you share the road with;
- you’re around 1/2 to 1/3rd as wide as the cars, so gaps that look tight for cars are ample for you… but you ain’t as visible either.
- you can go from 40 to 75 without changing gear so fast the cars around you are still pushing through 45, 46, 47… but they *will* catch up to you 600 yards later.
- every car on the road can outbrake and outcorner you (ESS and ABS being standard on most cars now, I have neither)
- you can’t “fall off” a car, and you don’t have energy absorbing crumple zones on a bike.
- give yourself plenty of room, pretty much obey the speed limit, and be as smooth as you possibly can, BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM acceleration periods aside, you still have to scrub that speed off and you need twice the clear road as a car to do it safely in all circumstances.
Despite all this, I had a very enjoyable ride today, and took several good passing opportunities to pass cars, and spent a lot of my time contenting myself with being 6 car lengths back plodding along at 50 with the rest of the cars… and of course back in town just cruise past all the stationary traffic
Even the old harley softail in relaxed cruising mode is much much faster than 99% of the cars on the road in real life.
Is is as fast as I *could* drive a car? Nope, no way.
Is is as fast as a Hayabusa? You’re having a fucking laugh.
Is there anything that riding a harley like this can teach a car driver, or a hayabusa rider, you bet your fucking ass there is.
Is there anything the average car driver or hayabusa rider can’t do on a harley like mine, yes, not crash… it’s a racing certainly 99.9% will crash within 3 miles, that bit in red text above, it’s incredibly easy to get into big trouble on a harley.
(BTW this is all total heresy for the HD crew, I should be banned from ever riding anything except a C90 for writing such blasphemous things about god’s own motorsickle…)
You could get in equal shit with a 70’s brit or jap bike, esp if you tuned the living shit out of it and but a “so much boost it blows the motor every 500 miles” turbo on it too.
Any harley will bite you, a tuned one like mine will bite you harder and earlier, because 100% of the rest of the rolling chassis is total shit from a handling and performance perspective…. there are actual roads around here where I took the corner (posted limit 40) on the full raceco / termignoni carbed guzzi 1100 sport, thought I might be going a touch fast, look down and see 95 on the speedo, and realise both I and the bike wanted to go a lot faster, same corner same conditions on the hoggly dogglyson at 55 and you’re a fucking man my son, hey dude, saw you hustling that harley along earlier, you were moving some…. yeah, as fast as I fucking dare and I can feel the whole thing squirming and wobbling as it does it…lol
More heresy…
So, biker bravado and bullshit aside, what does all this shit have to do with anything, especially those who have no interest in riding a motorcycle and being an organ donor?
The (my) harley is the deep sea fisherman and the hard rock miner of motorcycling, it will kill or injure you in a heartbeat, there is probably nothing less forgiving on two wheels on the road, so you will tend to spend an awful lot of your time riding very, very, very conservatively, because you know that getting into a world of shit is *trivially* easy, and you know that for you personally there is no kudos to be had by straying closer to those areas, just for bragging rights.
It is completely and utterly unlike any other vehicle on the road (except perhaps a steam traction engine or an arctic with 30,000 litres of gasoline in back on the trailer) in this respect, and this is the point I must emphasise, ON THE ROAD… there are a zillion guys with drag tuned harleys on drag strips who can utterly blow me away, and there are no shortage of guys who can and will push a harley far far far closer to the limits as they try to emulate the performance envelope of a hayabusa out for a casual cruise on those same roads.
Motorcycles in general are seen as all sorts of things, extreme performance machines, extreme freedom machines, extreme purist travel machines, and on and on and on and on.
I think this is all utterly missing the point.
Motorcycles are no safety net machines, you fuck up you get fucked up, *real* immediate like, you tube crash videos of cars they are having extended cursing sessions, before during and after the “accident”.
Motorcycle crash videos are “OHSHIT” very fast and then “ooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, pant pant, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrggggggggg”
Motorcycles are what capitalism is claimed to be.
Cars are a nanny state socialist feminist snowflake utopia.
Irrespective of whatever I did and whatever reasons I had to ride when I was younger, nowadays I find it ground me, puts my feet firmly in the soil, makes me look around and see what is actually there, and wipe away all the pretence and bullshit.
So I see shit clearer.
So I’m some 15 miles away from home and I stop for a walk around and a smoke and to make a phone call, and I decide to walk across the road to buy some smokes.
I go into the shop and there are three schoolboys in front of me, all around 12/13 so first year at senior school, one is paying for the drinks and crisps with a plastic debit card…
One of the other’s asks the guy behind the counter about someone else who works there, guy behind the counter says there is someone younger than me, I don’t know how old he is, but I’m 27.
School kid says yeah, apparently this guy winks at all the girls and chats them up, and if they show bits of their body (too timid to say tits and ass) they don’t have to pay.
27 year old guy shakes his head, no, doesn’t happen, can’t happen.
Kids walk out, I’m tempted to say to them if you believed that why didn’t you get your cock out instead of your plastic to pay… I didn’t, just look at them with contempt.
I order my smokes and say to the guy, “and that is how lives get ruined and reputations get destroyed”… he looks at me and nods.. hopefully the in store CCTV works and they keep all of the old stuff archived to HDD… apparently it’s all over the school that this is going on… because, you know, teen girls regularly strip off in the middle of a fucking shop in the fucking high street so they can get a free packet of crisps and tin of soda…
He (the 27 year old guy behind the counter) wasn’t a biker, he’s cruising along in climate controlled comfort listening to his choonz through the 14 speaker ICE system with ESS and ABS and everything else watching over him like the angel gabriel…
… or so he thinks.