Have You Ever Had an Affair with a Motorcycle?

I think motorcycles are great and I’ve owned 4 or 5 of them through the years. The last one was a shaft-drive Kawasaki 750, a very smooth, capable bike that at times I wish I still owned.
You see, apart from keeping you out of the weather, motorcycles do just about everything better than a car. They go faster, they stop quicker, they handle better and the sense of freedom you get on the open road goes way beyond that which you get in a car. You even can get this feeling in urban traffic, for after a dreary day at work, when you push that starter button, the engine AND you both fire up and become ALIVE, electrified with nervous energy. Now hyper-sensitive to everything around you, you can sum up the threats and opportunities in an instant. You know the SUV driver just ahead is wondering whether to fiddle with his radio to find a talk-back program, or change lanes, or both. You know the pedestrian 200 feet ahead on the left is about to push the pedestrian crossing button. But you also know you’ll just make it through the lights in time. And you know the bus pulling out into the traffic will create a gap ahead of it to slip into. And you know that if you just adjust your track a smidgen and snick that rock with your front tire, you can send it shooting off to bang into that iron fence, scaring the man walking his dog. All these things you know. And while you are absorbing a thousand variables and super-computing how the immediate future events will unfold around you, you catch a whiff of hops being cooked in the nearby brewery. Later the delicious aromas of baking bread, the brewing coffee, the wet leaves. Then there are, for who-knows-what reasons, the sudden temperature variations which add another vibrating string to the finely-tuned instrument that is you.
Of course there are the scarier moments: A long sweeping curve on an ocean road, cliff to the right, drop-off and ocean to the left, beautiful clear sparkling day, doing close to 100 mph with a predatorial Porche in hot pursuit, leaning into the gradually tightening curve, everything feeling perfect, when the tank-slapping begins. Bad. There is only one thing to do. Put the bike upright, back off the throttle, touch the brakes lightly – more rear than front, wait a split-second for signs that the wobbles are going to stop – heading now for the Armco railing – then brake with everything the bike has got, after slowing down throw it back down into the corner, leaning over hard, foot peg grinding into the asphalt – and this is the life-changing moment – clear the gravel in the emergency lane and ride on. If not, put the bike down and slide into the unknown.
I’ll never forget the look on the couples’ faces. They had parked to admire the ocean view, turned to look at what was making the noise only to see me screaming towards them, totally out of control, wobbling like crazy.
Oh well, we all lived. The Porche won. Which means that SOMETIMES cars do things better than motorcycles.
Many of these memories came flooding back late one afternoon in a hotel in Miami. I had to spend the next day in Ft. Lauderdale and I had planned to hire a car. When looking through the Yellow Pages, I saw a listing for EagleRiders Harley Davidson motorcycle hire.
Now, there are a lot of great things you can say about Harley’s. They have an interesting history, their motorbikes are well built and engineered and they are super-saturated with, let’s just call it “presence”.
But Harley’s are not really my kind of bikes. If I was going to buy a bike today, I’d walk into a Ducatti showroom, or Moto Guzzi or even a Beema showroom, but not a Harley.
Which seemed a good reason to hire one, after all, it’s only for a couple of days. right?
Another thing is the EagleRider franchise has been in the Every Franchise directory for about nine years and I almost never pass up a chance to visit a franchise and see how it operates.
More later…

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

No related posts.