Motorcycle Porn

1. Indeed it is Mother’s Day and while this has nothing to do with motorcycles, here is my favorite from Kipling on motherhood.

   If I were hanged on the highest hill,
   Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
   I know whose love would follow me still,
   Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

   If I were drowned in the deepest sea,
   Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!
   I know whose tears would come down to me,
   Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

   If I were damned of body and soul,
   I know whose prayers would make me whole,
   Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

   • Thank you Jim. And yes, Happy Mother’s Day to Mothers everywhere. Your Mother’s Day Sunday Sermonette will go live on the blog later this morning.

2. I have been toying with the idea of getting a second bike. The Goldwing is great, but sometimes I feel like I want to go rip up the twisties, and 900 pounds doesn’t flip very well. I was thinking a nice used Honda CBRR 600 or Suzuki GSXR 750.

   • I considered stripping down a Goldwing (a really great bike) when I bought the Ducati. I know that you might not want to do that to your cruiser, but as SECOND Goldwing, this one with all the stuff torn off, might work? Ok, it’s not a GSXR and it’s not a Diavel, but it’s still not bad, and you can drag the tucked-in stand around corners and make sparks with it. The other bike under very close consideration when I bought the Diavel was a Yamaha VMAX. I am a big fan of the VMAX, but it’s quite a bit heavier than the Diavel – not slower though.

     • Saw one of the first gen Goldwings set up as a sportbike, in Ft Lauderdale FL about ’73. It was in the bike shop my roommate and I were getting our oil changed in our Nortons, prior to heading home to NJ.
       On a group ride on the penninsula above Palo Alto around ’97, one of the riders was a girl on a dressed Goldwing. Tight roads, and she was tossing that bike around while standing on the floorboards. I was following on my 900sssp Duc, and she was impressive.

       • That has been my experience. The Goldwing will deliver as a sport bike. It has a heavy engine but you can build it out so that it keeps up with anything else on the road – and it has Goldwing reliability. As you point out, you’re going to drag the dresser, but if you don’t care, it will keep the road and deliver a light show.

3. Well, OK then. Sorta missed there with further details, such as how many broken bones Emilie suffered and why she kept getting on a motorcycle she was prone to dropping off the back of and whether or not this was at the easy cruise speed of 160 KPH. 😁

   • She never actually FELL off the back, and managed to cling like a limpet, but when going up hills, she had some close calls. So the modification and accommodation. I drive very differently when I have a passenger on the back, but even so. I used to have a Honda CBX (six cylinder in line with 6 into 6 exhausts that I think was even hotter off the line, and because of the torque, if you didn’t know what you were doing, it would dump you in a hard right turn. My wife would cling for dear life on that one.

     • I had a CB360 in 1975 that I’d ride down Wiltshire Blvd to my job as an orderly in the operating room at UCLA when I was 19. I drove it from LA to Dallas in January. Misery on a stick.

       • I drove from LA to Central Utah in ’78 on a CB450. I expect that the HARD SEAT was the same on your 360. Once there, visiting relatives, I found an old furniture maker in town and bought a piece of 6″ foam and bungeed it to the seat. It helped but the return trip was misery too. We all live and learn.

         • The learning part can be hard for me sometimes.

         • Late to the party, but Oooh Oooh Speaking of touring on 400s… June 1977 trevelled from Palestine TX to Pacoima CA (1600 miles) in four days on my ’75 Kawasaki KZ400. Sun burnt but not too bad, actually (have had worse). Don’t recall the seat being anything other than adequate. Bungeed all my worldly possessions to the padded sissy bar. Good to go.
           Oh yeah did not possess a license (just a TX learner permit), but, hey it’s not like I’m some Hells Angel cops will pull over and even if they did, what’s the worse that can happen (I *was* looking for adventure was I not LOL)? Its not like I cared about such details. Ah youth…
           After some consideration, I prefer that I traveled that route in June, not January. That’s crazy!

4. As an engineer-type I love the melding of design and performance where form does follow function in a stunning way.

   • That is precisely why I am driving the Ducati. It’s a beautiful machine but it is wonderfully balanced, wicked fast, and you feel one with the machine. I’ve had it five years now. But art doesn’t age.

5. I like my bikes slow and heavy. Harleys before 1952, the classic Indian full dress units, Triumphs before 1972, old Moto Guzzis, all Nortons, BSAs and the like: the slower, the better. The heavier, the better. BMWs are the exception; I never could get over those cylinders sticking way out of each side of the bike. You can have those.

   I have no need for a bike that does 5 seconds in the quarter mile. You can kill yourself just as dead doing maybe 45 on a slow, chunky bike. I think I got all of that out of my system as a stupid kid with a 750cc Kawasaki triple (‘Widow Maker’). This screamer back in the day would not hold a candle to the stuff they make now. It was around 400 pounds, maybe 92 HP. It would be considered a pig today. Hmmm, maybe I should get another one…

   • Fredd, I could see you and MRSFREDD driving down the road in a big Harley D with a sidecar. As we’ve discussed before, there is nothing to be shy about owning a Kawasaki 750cc two stroke street monster. They were incredibly fast off the mark and up past the century mark. I think that the Ducati Diavel is a more balanced bike but in its day, that bike was incredible. I’m happy that you survived.

6. The best way to ‘combat’ cabin fever! Get out and get into the wind! Beautiful bike!
   ‘

   • Old NFO, I’ve been ‘good’ during the whole pandemic craziness, and getting out simply has to happen.

7. I remember getting pulled over on my “cafe racer” in ’76 doing 135 on I-94.
   The cop said something about 80 mph and I never did ask if he meant 80, or 80 over.
   He was kind enough to let me go since he rode for the county and admired the bike (one of the first around the area).

   • How did he catch you?

     • I pulled over. He was riding a Motorola.
       Said the CB alerted him and he just had to see what they were talking about.

       • You can’t outrun the radio.

         • Not always true. I once witnessed the beginning of a chase.
           A club racer sitting on a GPZ-1000/1100?, early 80’s, in the store parking lot across from Alice’s Restaurant on Skyline above Palo Alto. CHP on a Kawi Cop bike idling through the lot looking for that bike, I think (hundreds of bikes sitting there). Racer guy slapped his shield down, punched the starter, and launched North in the lot. Had to weave to get out the exit lane, and the front end came up and stayed up as he ran through the gears. Cop did a u-turn and dragged the floorboards getting to the street. (That cop only rode bikes, and lived on Skyline). Story was by the time he got to hiway 92, the GPZ was already down to H-280 and heading North, and a passing cruiser said he had clocked him at 140mph and it was still accelerating, and Larry (CHP) should just call it a day.
           That racer had a reputation of winning or crashing at Sears Point.
           IIRC, their cruisers had a top speed of 96mph, and it could take 6 miles to reach it.

8. I went through my “bike phase” back in the middle/late 1970’s. Started with a Kawasaki 500 triple basket case I put back together, traded it on a brand-new 500 triple, and then got into Yamaha bikes. Had an RD350, then an RD400. Really nice bikes, both got the cafe racer treatment, and they handled like a dream. Just kind of think them through the turns.

   The Kawi’s were evil handling bikes, at least to me. You’d try and lean them into the turn, they didn’t want to lean, so you’d push them a little further, and then they wanted to just fall over.

   Bad news…..

   • The Kawasakis were blindingly fast and were great in a straight line. The torque in a tight turn would drag you to the pavement. I drove them too, up to the 900, which I thought was an excellent bike, in the era of the Honda CBX when the muscle touring machines were in their halcyon moment.

     I owned an Electraglide, which I restored, and then sold. The Harley was nice but it just wasn’t me. I rode an ’88 Softail undercover when I was a patched Hessian and it was a nice enough ride. But they weren’t Ducatis.

   • Doc: yes, bad handling, OK in a straight line. There was no leaning into curves, they were simply not designed for that. My H2 was the same as an H1, a basic death machine. Fun, though….

     • First back I ever drove that shoved you all the way back to the taillights!

       • That was their charm.

9. Yeah, that’ll pull the hot chicks.

   • I don’t think so. Not up in the remote mountains, anyway. As I left the front of the property a deer (maybe a doe) crossed in front of me and didn’t give the bike a second glance.

10. Will – a Hughes 500D will only do about 120 MPH, so you CAN outrun a helicopter, but it can also go high and vector in help because it has the high ground.

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