Virtues of the Crappy Bike
VIRTUES OF THE CRAPPY BIKE
IGNITION
BIKE LIFE
IT’S ALWAYS THE BEST OF TIMES
PETER JONES
Every motorcycle I've ridden is the best motorcycle I've ever ridden. If you love motorcycles, you know this feeling. While visiting my brother Steve in the Carolinas, before I moved there, he invited me to go for a mountain ride with his pals and him. Problem was, I didn’t have a bike. But, like any good motorcyclist, he had a spare one to lend me. It was sort of a cruiser, regular, nondescript Japanese motorcycle. I’ve blocked the specific brand and model from my memory, which is just as well. I don’t want to unfairly insult any manufacturer.
This bike was a piece of crap.
It’s likely that when it was new it was a very fine motorcycle, but it was far from new by the time I rode it. I’m betting that once in its life it fell off the back of a pickup truck. Maybe twice. It was bent. Or, possibly, it’d been set up by a NASCAR driver, as it preferred going left over going straight. The rear tire didn’t quite track behind the front tire; it was just sort of generally behind it. And when I applied the brakes, the bike turned even harder, like a ’66 Chevy Impala with one side of its wheels in the dirt.
The group I was riding with was on an assortment of older metric touring bikes and a couple of Harleys. It wasn’t going to be a race of egos, like it is when any two motojournalists get near each other. So, right off, this was the right bike for me that day.
Experience has shown me that humans tend to intuitively pilot a vehicle only as fast as it should go. When I had a very old 1959 Ford pickup in the 1980s, with a straight-six and a threespeed on the column, I didn’t go looking for Jaguars to roadrace against. Driving
that thing was like sailing a boat; I’d just sort of pointed it in the general direction I wanted to go and let it lumber along. Sometimes I had to tack or jibe. Steering and braking were iffy and imprecise, requiring planning.
When I’m on a sportbike on a racetrack, though, I whip it good. The motorcycle’s sound, the feel of its power, the sharpness of steering, the rider’s tuck of a high seat and low clip-ons, all communicate how the machine wants be ridden, and so I take those hints to heart and hand, as would we all. With a high-performance machine it’s me that’s imprecise and iffy. But I do what I can.
So on this day in the Blue Ridge Mountains, this crappy bike told me how to ride it, and the group I was riding with affirmed that my conservative pace was correct. We trundled on up into the mountains. A few sportbikes went flying by us and my heart raced and I... I... I maintained my passive pace. And I enjoyed myself. For a change, for a refreshing change, maximizing performance was not my goal.
With all that so many modern bikes provide us today, I repeatedly lose track of the simple essential joy of motorcycling. Riding a crappy bike every now and then is, for me, like doing yoga, bringing me back to the calm joy of motoring along in the breeze. It brings me back to the intimate immediacy that can only be found on a motorcycle—the changing smells, the hot and cool spots from sun to shade to hill to gully, the personal connection to the feel and flow of the countryside. And all of this complemented by the puttering mechanicals between my knees.
A crappy bike is, itself, a beautiful day.
BY THE NUMBERS
5 NUMBER OF MOTORCYCLES I OWN TODAY
7 NUMBER OF MOTORCYCLES I NEED TO OWN IMMEDIATELY
10 NUMBER OF MOTORCYCLES I NEED TO OWN BEFORE 201G
