Post #436,173
9/10/20 5:30:52 PM
9/10/20 5:30:52 PM
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The trouble with Super-bikes + Ordinary-people buying them is,
The 'ordinary' means, here in 'Murica: damn little comprehension of math, physics (or even Ohm's Law). To wit:
1) Failure to comprehend that there's another characteristic of such (marvelous) machines besides Power==HP. 2) The endorphin creation comes from acceleration [and brakes equally proper]; That effect is what you feel foremost, whereas vast-speeds ==> vast wind trying to blow you off. 3) TORQUE* is what you Need: that Force: not some super-'HP' number. 4) Which is why I was immediately drawn to the only Acceptable Vee-twin [all the 'Murican Harleys n'such were simply, unwieldly awful-'handling' Hogs] via gratuitous weight, lousy ground clearance in cornering etc.--as so befits the 'Murican love for Insolent Chariots (with 4- or 2 (3 w/sidecar) wheels). * Electrics should creaam All the numbers (or steam /never mind] with Max torque at Start
That is all Ye need to Know IMhO: to be not-Ordinary any more. (thus not endangering everybody Not-you)
Fun was: the 150 mph speedo seemed geared-to the throttle; nothing like the screamer 4 cyls. at absurd revs (had a few, later). Shadows did 0-60 mph in 6 1/2 secs [still a respectable number on any vehicle] the 'Rapide had a lower gearing, less HP, torque etc. BUT: gearing got 0-60 in 6 sec flat. Rarely did I feel a need to top-out at a few mph shy 130 ..it's boring, mainly (but the number IS: your built-in dynamometer!) If you don't see the proper Max [same roads, weather etc.] ... you might check a few things, eh?
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Post #436,177
9/10/20 9:14:31 PM
9/10/20 9:14:31 PM
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A former client was a motorcycle shop . . .
. . they sold Ducati and Aprilla.
I overhead the conversation between their chief sales guy and a young man who wanted to buy a motorcycle. He asked the price of one of the top units on the floor.
The salesman asked his experience, which he admitted was close to none. The sales guy told him, "I will not sell you that bike. If you bought that bike you'd be so terrified you'd never learn to ride".
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Post #436,181
9/11/20 4:10:15 AM
9/11/20 4:10:15 AM
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Yeah give me a Yamaha 125
That thing was fun when I learned to ride when I was 12. I maxed out at a Honda 250 about 10 years later. I never understood the desire for power beyond that, the weight and lack of flexibility wasn't worth it.
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Post #436,189
9/11/20 11:43:19 AM
9/11/20 11:43:19 AM
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Mine was a Yamaha RD-350 2-stroke
Then a Suzuki GS55ES, pseudo cafe racer with the half fairing. Reviews when it came out said it had a pretty flat power curve,* and everything was tucked up enough that you were unlikely to scrape anything no matter how hard you threw it into the turns. In other words, great fun in the twisties, but capable enough for 4 hours at freeway speed without being painful.
* Which at that time meant not enough at the bottom end to make the front come over too easy, and not enough on the top to be worth wringing it out.
If I had it to do over, I'd rather have had a dirt bike so I could get comfortable with sliding around. I'm sure I rarely pushed the capabilities of anything I rode.
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Post #436,198
9/11/20 12:43:43 PM
9/11/20 12:58:54 PM
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Oh no, you misunderstand, I never owned a bike
Except my moped when I was a kid.
I had a buddy who was my brother's older buddy who was stupid enough to hand me his Yamaha 125 when I was 12. I dumped that thing hard in the mud after smashing my knee on a tree while screaming for them to pull it off me because I was sure it was going to burn me.
Over the years various people would allow me to drive their bikes. So I got to cut school and go have fun zipping around. The key of any bike was the ability to throw it over a fence when you were running from the cops. I could lift a Yamaha 125. Not much past that.
When I was all grown up, Robbie, you remember Robbie from the wedding, offered to pay for a weekend of fun which included jumping out of airplanes, rock climbing indoors inside a cathedral, and riding motorcycles that we rented. Robbie knows how to throw a weekend. Note: Robbie ain't speaking to me anymore, I caused too much damage to his psyche.
So while I was capable of riding that Honda 250 over the various jumps and woodsy twisty turns I am certainly not competent to ever take one on the real road. Everyone out there is trying to kill you. Screw that.
Edited by crazy
Sept. 11, 2020, 12:58:54 PM EDT
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Post #436,200
9/11/20 1:08:44 PM
9/11/20 1:08:44 PM
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Robbie sounds like fun
Was he one of the guys setting off the fireworks at Beepbash?
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Post #436,202
9/11/20 1:13:28 PM
9/11/20 1:13:28 PM
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No Rob was never beep bash.
Give me a bit I'll email you photo of us. Which you might have taken.
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Post #436,204
9/11/20 1:41:39 PM
9/11/20 1:41:39 PM
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The tall guy helping serve the cake?
That's the only one I took with someone I don't recognize.
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Post #436,213
9/11/20 6:16:49 PM
9/11/20 6:16:49 PM
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Sent
Was the hell of a picture. I was crying emotionally throughout the evening. Margaret actually asked me if I had done any LSD for the evening. Nope, it was all just my emotions.
Rob is the bald one in the picture I sent you.
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Post #436,219
9/11/20 7:46:17 PM
9/11/20 7:46:17 PM
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Can't say I remember him
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Post #436,229
9/12/20 3:30:52 AM
9/12/20 3:30:52 AM
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S'ok
It was an intense couple of days. On my side I remember almost nothing. I wandered the pictures to refresh my memory occasionally. I'm very happy that my nephew filmed the actual ceremony so I get to review that. I really wish he had filmed the rabbi and the priest doing their act for the half hour before I came in. I'm told it was hilarious but I can't see it.
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Post #436,183
9/11/20 6:07:04 AM
9/11/20 6:07:04 AM
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He's dead right /no pun.
Any parent who'd let his charge begin with a screamer ..ain't got no cuth. I'd hope this salesman is among many, by now; they Know: start small thus light. (All I ever wished-for was a ~250# Shadow--the real one was too-heavy by my 'lights.
Similarly: when my meat-gyroscope failed my POST-rule I peddled the 550cc Kawasaki-4 to a local guy who had owned a vanilla Triumph. (The K was tricked out with a floating-iron front brake==2-fingers: run into a rubber wall. Had R-rated tires. This 550 weighed only slightly less than the Vincent, produced just a few HP less than its 1000 cc (!) Techno! (!). But a screamer, blah torque. (This was not a young'un getting first bike). A few days later we talked; "This thing is S C A R Y !!" (but in a Nice way).
With Crazy on this too: when my modest Matchless 500 cc was in shop I had a cheezy Harley 125 loaner for a couple days; this you could man-handle effortlessly; learned (in sandy loam) all sorts of fun things-about-momentum. The small bikes now, via same Techno advances--are all a sane person needs ... but many will always want M O A R just because.
VROO--->OOM, but choose a Carillon ..not Carrion.
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Post #436,288
9/17/20 4:35:51 PM
9/17/20 4:35:51 PM
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My then-inamorata had her younger brother visit thirty years ago
…and he rode from Buffalo NY to Oakland CA on a motorcycle he’d owned only a few months. He reached his destination emotionally and physically shaken, parked the beast behind her apartment and flew back after a fortnight, leaving her instructions to sell the thing.
Contrariwise, the late V bought a motorcycle in 1980, spent three weeks learning to ride the thing, and shipped it to Europe, where she spent a couple of months tooling around on it. She described her terror tooling along a narrow coastal highway in Yugoslavia, in the rain, with lots of big heavy trucks on the road. She prayed, she told me, for the first time since childhood. Me: “In English, or in Russian?” V (almost indignantly): “In Russian, of course.” But although she eventually unoaded the motorcycle, she had no regrets.
cordially,
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Post #436,318
9/20/20 6:15:28 PM
9/20/20 7:11:08 PM
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Love. It. [plus an Ernst Leitz Gotcha! tale]
re The former: indeed that was a daunting first real Trip; I congratulate him for his insight in dumping the plot. (That too, is why I never pondered such marathons) as: freeway 'touring' is just-a-day-spent resisting the Main-force of wind; boring is too kind a word.
re The latter: I too had pondered just-that: prior to my Grand Euro Tour w/passsenger, As I totted-up the er, cubic-closest-packing of a myriad of essentials plus detritus, it dawned: You Will (want to) acquire various kinds of stuff; rain and such Will-not Amuse your 'pillion'-passeneger or self ..in time.
tl'dr: My first New-car, the red Austin Healey Sprite (its 'trunk' Lid as non-existent as that maroon behemoth you depicted elsewhere): a large behind-seats, space. On the ship carrying us all back to (before dis-) US: I had sinister-ly crunched n-newspapers as a 'wall'--thence taped over that un-lockable space (the mess alone would have stopped the perp via onlooking eyes), I wotted. It worked too--no pilfering.
Fun Stuff ...travelling on this warped planet (pre-Transistors).
[Optional tale, but related sorta] Ed:PS: Happpiness for gearheads is: discovery of a flaw within the product of a World-Std Mfg, [!!] To wit a [Ernst] Leitz Pradovit color slide projector. Had acquired this cheaper-in-Euro device--one item needing the mentioned 'safeguarding'. Found later that: their means of adjusting focus consisted of two thin round discs, a single one operating slightly within periphery of a thinner double-disk. aka enmeshed. Trouble was: it was unreliable. Geometry made the Case: in such an array, the friction-forces ~~ cancelled-out--nearly as much drag as forward motion! Man! but that's just simple Physis! ..to boot.
Some years later [schlepping the Perp] I stopped at the Palace of these 'Leica' Masters of the world. Showed a minion The Problem. Then a [Herr Knissel] appeared: he had DESIGNED-in this er, 'slip'. Simple Cuth demanded actively re-phrasing my words about the matter. After this conciliatory exchange I left with the Demo-on-a-wall-shelf of a later, more expensive variant. Alas though, even E. Leitz ..lacked the PR-chops, such that: it cost moi ~$60 for the 'upgrade'. as in, Heh.. (The inner-Nazi toyed with ~ "That's fine Sir, and herewith my bill for collateral damage--bringing this back: I charge $60 for any hand delivery"). But modesty forbade being, just then a Smartass. Gotta remember Karma.
Edited by Ashton
Sept. 20, 2020, 07:11:08 PM EDT
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