New-Bike Fever

New-bike fever

LEANINGS

Peter Egan

NEVER HAVE SO MANY MAGAZINES, buyer’s guides and sales brochures surrounded the old reading chair, nor the lamp oil burned so late on so many nights. It must be spring.

Every year about this time, one of several revolving instincts rises out of the psychic mud like an alien space creature that never dies but keeps reinventing itself.

One is the need to fly.

I quit flying a few years ago, after 12 years of practically living at the hangar, but the beast is not dead. Every spring, I find myself wandering around small airports, running my hand over varnished propellers and staring into the cockpits of Citabrias and Stearmans. I know I’ll fly again. It’s only a matter of time.

The other recurring spring illness, of course, is new-bike fever.

It’s worse this year than ever, because I came home last month from taking part in a Cycle World comparison in which I got to track-test and road-tour a Laverda 750S, Ducati 748, Honda CBR600F4, Yamaha YZF-R6, Suzuki GSX-R600 and Kawasaki ZX-6R. And, if that were not bad enough, I also had a chance to ride the new Ducati 996. Over the Angeles Crest Highway, no less.

I came home to the Midwest in the dead of winter, flipped on the lights in my workshop and looked around at my four cherished but very old motorcycles and decided I needed at least one new, modern-handling, hard-stopping, eyeball-flattening sportbike in my life.

I used to have a couple of newer bikes, but of course I sold them to buy my Vincent. A worthy cause, certainly, but now my garage looks like The Land That Time Forgot. (“Gads, Jim, Professor Whitby’s been carried off by a pterodactyl!”)

After a few evenings of hand-wringing and soul-searching, I decided I could somehow survive with just one highmaintenance, black-and-gold V-Twin in the bam and sold my 1981 Ducati 900SS to a friend from Fort Collins, Colorado.

So, with several large bills burning a hole in my pocket, I am spring-loaded to buy something new.

And I have to say, flipping through my various buyer’s guides, that there has never been a happier time, in my short life, to be looking for a new motorcycle. The choices are amazing.

My immediate instinct is just to buy one of the new 600cc sportbikes and get it over with. They are delightfully light in weight, wonderful handling, relatively cheap and nearly as quick as Open-class superbikes, but without the top-heavy tonnage that goes with so many of those road-blasters. Hence they are fun.

My personal class favorites are the F4 Honda and the R6 Yamaha. The Yamaha has a finer racetrack edge to it, and with its stellar top-end rush, maybe a little more personality, but the Honda is a more comfortable all-purpose road bike. And then there’s the slightly overshadowed and even cheaper Yamaha YZF600R, which is probably a better street-only mount than either, but at the expense of a little performance and tautness in its track manners. Great bikes all. Hmmm...

I had tentatively decided to order the Honda F4, when I stopped by our local Ducati dealership, Bob Barr Kawasaki/Ducati, this weekend and found a barely used 1997 900SS-SP for sale, for just a few bucks more than the new F4.

Last summer, I reluctantly sold my own 1996 SP to buy the Vincent, and still have a soft spot in my heart for these bikes. The world press has declared them old-fashioned and dated in styling, but (excuse me) I think they simply look timeless. The chassis is a little stiff-legged by modern standards, but they are still light, quick and fun.

So now I’ve got that 900SS to stick in my ruminative pipe and smoke. I have a bad feeling these babies ain’t

done with me yet...

But wait. Farther down the row in Barr’s Ducati shop sits a brand-new red Ducati 996. Here is a bike I would have dismissed only a few months ago as too uncomfortable and radical for my general-purposes use. But then I made the mistake of riding that 996 testbike over the Crest.

If this is not the finest, most sublime sportbike that God (working through his agents, the twin Massimos, Bordi 3and Tamburini) ever put on two wheels, I’ll eat my solid-black Arai.

Sure it gives you a crick in the neck and loads your wrists at low speed and has a seat that feels like a chunk of granite tombstone, but when you dial on that big desmo Twin coming out of a corner and feel the telepathically connected suspension interacting with the road, you just don’t care. This thing has more soul than Otis Redding. Same with the 748, which is sometimes even more fun to ride because you can work it harder.

Maybe with a set of raised Heli bars and a Corbin seat you could live with one of these things...

No? Somebody write and tell me yes.

Lots of money, though. You can buy an F4 and a slightly used RI 100RS for the same cost. Suddenly, my entire bike fund is nothing but a down payment. Still, mes amis, this is a motorcycle.

Ah yes, the RI 100RS. That reminds me, I am without a modern, comfortable sport-tourer at the moment. I love riding my old 1979 Guzzi 1000SP, but it’s no rocketship with two people and luggage, and my lovely wife Barbara values JATO-bottle acceleration above all else and goes into a funk without it.

Besides the new RI 100RS, I like the old R100RS, too. And then there are the new Triumphs. The Sprint ST is said (by this very magazine) to be a fine sport-tourer. And it’s British! There’s also the superb 800 Interceptor, which probably handles better than any of them, even if it needs hard luggage.

And then I’m thinking this summer would be a great time to resume dirt riding, which, like flying, hits me as a fine idea when spring breezes dry the melting snow.

Maybe get up into northern Wisconsin and ride some fire roads. My old riding buddy Pat Donnelly is thinking the same thing. Could be fun...

You see the problem.