Ah, spring, when a lad’s fancy turns to thoughts of…well, what do you suppose? Taut curves. Deep breathing. Throbbing…
Yes, we’re talking motorcycles, of course. I’m not sure what’s happening to me, but recently my brain has been brimming with bikes.
Quite against my will. I was long a keen motorcyclist, and have many fond memories of marvelous rides all over North America and Europe, but I gave up riding in a conscious, determined effort to mature. Bikes just don’t fit my life now. I don’t have time for one, let alone a place—the family snowblower takes up the only possible spot.
Even if I got another motorcycle, perhaps justifying it by fuel savings as many people are today, in reviewing trips I regularly make, I can’t identify one that actually would make sense on two wheels.
What about casual sport riding? Truly, I don’t have time. Nor do I find modern highway conditions much fun.
The last bike I had, I had for four years and rode precisely twice. I liberated it to someone more worthy of it. Obviously, I don’t deserve a motorcycle.
Yada yada. Spring is coming and I can’t stop thinking about motorcycles.
My interest in them goes back to 1953, when my dad took me to the big annual road race at Laconia, New Hampshire. A few years later, just as I was learning to drive cars, Ozzie came home one day with a classic British V-twin called a Vincent and proceeded to teach me about bikes as well. My education on it included a complete cross-country ride, New York to California. I went on to buy eight motorcycles of my own. So far.
Last month, going on about British vehicles, I mentioned a Triton I briefly owned, and I’d like to show you what mine ought to have been. Pictured here is a Triumph-Norton special that riveted me in my boots one summer’s day in 1969, at the Bridgehampton Can-Am.
Isn’t it sweet? The Triumph Bonneville engine nestles so neatly in the Norton Featherbed frame, combining the one’s (relatively) reliable, smooth power with the other’s renowned roadholding and precise steering. See that lovely aluminum tank, sculpted for tucking-in? Those graceful pipes, swept back for cornering clearance? That muscular, two-leading-shoe front brake, and the light, strong alloy rims? I love how this single-seater is so spare, so efficient, so pure-of-purpose—it’s leaning against the truck because, to save weight, there’s no onboard stand.
That perfect motorcycle haunted my dreams for approximately half a year. Then I saw my first 4-cylinder Honda. At Daytona in 1970, I watched Dick Mann win the 200 aboard a stripped-down, hopped-up CR750 with the most magnificent quartet of gracefully sweeping exhaust pipes. Those pipes haunted my dreams ’til that fall, when I succumbed to a sparkling red-and-gold production model CB750 of my very own.
I rode straight from the dealership to a burger stand, taking care to park where I could gaze at those glorious pipes as I munched. I remember that as one of the most fulfilling moments of my life.
To me, motorcycles have more personality than cars. I realized this on the black morning I found my Triumph 650 stolen. The affront was so personal, I wanted to KILL. I’ve not yet owned a car that would have brought up the same rage.
That bike was recovered (no, nobody died), but later was taken again, this time permanently. Must have been a great bike.
Motorcycles have more personality, I think, because they’re smaller, lighter, meant primarily for solo use, and they’re naked. Even when wrapped up in fairings, you feel very exposed on a bike, very much dependent on your own skills and wits. Your single-track steed is more your partner than any four-wheeler. Certainly there is risk, and that’s part of why riding a bike on the road gives me a sense of adventure that it takes a racetrack to make me feel in cars.
And it takes a very high-end car to match the technical appeal of everyday motorcycles. I was always proud that my Honda 4—a world-changing breakthrough in its time—had an overhead cam and hemi heads, “just like” classic Ferraris. Today’s road bikes bristle with technology developed in racing, all those exotic things we all love about the most exciting automobiles, yet it’s all affordable to an everyday motorcycle enthusiast.
You can see it all, too. Open the hoods of many cars today—can you actually spot an engine?
So far I haven’t even mentioned performance, but…sheesh! Feel smug about your really fast street car? If you haven’t clamped your knees around a hyperbike and yanked it open, you have NO IDEA what acceleration is.
The prime appeal to me about bikes, though, is their elegance. They’re simply neat and tidy in an engineering sense. Like a formula racecar, but more so. There’s no more to motorcycles than there needs to be. Watching them single-track along their economical way is deeply satisfying to me.
In racing, bikes seem more honest than today’s cars. Four-wheel competitors are constantly complaining about the difficulty of overtaking, but to riders the same tracks are generously wide and aerodynamic turbulence is much less troublesome.
Where could this line of thinking take me? One place is www.ahrma.org, the Web site of The American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association. There’s some fun going on there.
I don’t suppose Dick Mann’s Daytona winner is available, but there must be a vintage class for a nice Triton.
