We’re all motorcyclists, right?

I’ve been riding the Cycle World long-term-test 2010 Can-Am Spyder RT-S for almost 18 months, and a couple of things about it have become clear. First, it’s still thought to be very cool by many people. And second, a lot of motorcyclists apparently think it’s some kind of affront to motorcycling—a slap in the face of “real” motorcyclists. One of those guys had his young daughter yell out the window of his Honda on a local Northern California road, “My daddy wants to know if those are your training wheels!” Ha-ha, yuk-yuk.

Easy to see how this slam comes about. The Spyder three-wheeler is being pitched not so subtly at all those folks who always wanted to be motorcyclists but couldn’t for one reason or another—and the most commonly assumed reason on the part of many motorcyclists seems to be that the Spyder Ryders are afraid to lean to turn. Wussies, in short. Not fit for calling themselves motorcyclists, unlike the real Manly Men who ride…well, whatever. Or the real Womanly Women who likewise ride two-wheeled devices.

As one of my favorite political-economic columnists might put it, let’s take this apart and see if it holds up. Apart from that issue of having three wheels instead of two, what makes the Spyder not a real motorcycle?

Not leaning to turn. Okay. So here’s a thought-experiment: What if the Spyder did lean to turn? Would it then still not be a real motorcycle? If not, why not?

Opinions will, of course, vary, but my view is that behind all this smoke is the issue of Fear, as in capital-F Fear. The guys making the claim to being Real Motorcyclists (in caps, of course) are claiming the wussies riding three-wheelers of any kind are scared witless by Real Motorcycles because of the possibility of falling down in a turn.

For the sake of argument, let’s allow this to stand; people who fear falling down on bikes might indeed be selecting Spyders because they will have a very tough time falling over. But does that mean that when they launch into the nasty old world of the public highway, they’re somehow exempt from the other threats to life and limb that are part of the powered-two-wheeler package?

Not hardly. You’ll note that there are no airbags or crash cages on a Spyder, trike or sidecar outfit. Ride anything with two or three wheels into the world populated mainly by armored and air-bagged cages and you ride naked, more or less. T-boned at an intersection by a texting kid in a Mustang and it doesn’t matter if you’re on a Harley or a Spyder. Be caught by a left-turning SUV and your chances aren’t much better for emerging without real damage on a three- or two-wheeler. And so on.

Likewise, weather. Hot, cold, rainy, snowy, humid, skin-cracking dry, the Can-Am rider is just as exposed as his/her counterpart on a Suzuki.

In short, the Can-Am Spyder rider is betting just as much on his/her ability to survive the carnage on the highway as the stupid kid stunting on his buddy’s Gixxer, though it is true that the stability of the three-wheeled platform helps in some ways, just as it hinders in others (such as darting through sheet metal as one does in splitting lanes—the Spyder can’t do that).

I often hear guys snort that they’d rather pay what that Spyder costs (and it’s a lot) for a ragtop car. Sure, buy that used Corvette or new Miata and what do you get? Comfort in any weather, assuming you keep the top up to snuff and have an A/C to cool down the hot days with it up. And much better crash protection. The claim is that you also get “out there” in a car even more than on a Spyder or motorcyclist because you don’t need a helmet and can wear lighter clothing, not worrying about abrasion resistance and crash padding. All The Gear All the Time in a ragtop means a T-shirt (optional for males), shorts and sandals, at least if you don’t worry about skin cancer. But are you, in fact, “out there” as much as a Can-Am rider?

Nope. Your lower body is protected by gummint-mandated crash-resistant hardware and software, for starters. And even when you drive in cold weather with the top down, your core and lower body can be toasty warm, thanks to your HVAC system. Moreover, the container of your car’s bodywork still insulates you from the Out There as it does when the top is up. No dog chasing you will nip your ankle in a Miata. And so it goes, one difference after another; if you really think the experience of driving a ragtop is the same as that of riding a three-wheeler, you’re kidding yourself.

So, with all that is the same for the Spyder rider and the Sportster rider, why the continual jabbering about wannabes and wusses? My guess is that it’s just that old cognitive dissonance reduction in action, coupled with the need to protect tribal boundaries against the newcomers.

For as long as I’ve been writing about motorcycles for publication (42 years), the claim has been that we riders are not understood because not enough other people ride out there with us. Well, now there are indeed other people joining us out there, some on three wheels, and it seems long past the time when we just extend a hand and say “Welcome to the ride!” rather than tossing stupid jibes at them.

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Now and then, I wonder about the high-tech future that is said to be upon us. Any minute, I’ll be able to have a routine outpatient injection of nanobots that will enthusiastically nibble away any arteriosclerotic plaque I may have, leaving me with an athlete’s blood pressure. They won’t make any mistakes at all, such as accidentally eating away my adrenal glands or my recollections of Intermediate Algebra. Super capacitors or hyper batteries will shortly be invented by brilliant marketing guys working in one of those modest double-overhead-door units in an industrial park, so gasoline will become as quaint as buggy whips. Autonomous vehicles will seamlessly take over from the accident-prone, traffic-jamming, human-guided kind. To commute to work, we’ll just go sit in the car (which has no steering wheel or other controls), sipping coffee and reading the paper, as a vast computer network integrates our transportation requests into routes, speeds and lanes. We won’t need driving licenses, and speeding will be impossible. I can even doze and my car will let me know that I have arrived by “dinging” like the clothes washer or microwave do. Because I may in the interim have forgotten where I was going, the destination will appear on a screen along with a happy face, urging me to “have a great day.” As I take the elevator to my tasteful corner office on the 40th floor, my car will route itself to a high-density underground auto-storage facility.

It might not be quite like that because the scheduled breakthroughs that the futurists predict actually come at their own speed or not at all. And some of the fabulous new technologies might be very expensive—not for everyone; maybe only for presidents, big-time CEOs and the Sultan of Brunei. So, I sometimes imagine a world in which some but not all of the science-fiction occurs.

What if there is no hyper battery? It has already failed to happen on schedule once, when the state of California announced there would be millions of “zero-emitting” electric vehicles on its roads by a certain date. Didn’t happen. So, despite the present tremendous hype and the conviction that a nation that once sent men to the moon must be able to create any desired technology, what if it just remains an unsolved problem? What if electric vehicles remain expensive, short-range green curiosities? How do we go forward?

Trolley cars and electrified rail lines have existed for a lifetime. They work very well, indeed. They are powered not by unsatisfactory batteries, taking hours to recharge, but by the national power grid. Instant power—all you want. Let’s begin by electrifying the Interstate Highway System, an action that would accomplish something that even the most avid electric-vehicle advocates never talk about: operating long-haul heavy trucking on electricity. There are nearly 50,000 miles of Interstate highways, and we are told that one-third of the nation’s driving takes place on them.

Each vehicle will have a trolley, which picks up power from overhead conductors. We drive our limited-range battery-electric car conventionally until we get to the on-ramp, at which point up goes our trolley and we switch to mains power and automated operation (there will have to be two overhead conductors: one for power; the other for ground). At the same time, the battery in our vehicle—still necessary for travel on secondary roads—can be recharged. Billing and tolls will be automated. On the Interstate, every vehicle will move at the same speed, regulated by Federal authority. There will obviously be no passing, any more than there is on the railroads. To enable high-density highway use, vehicles will be spaced two feet apart, guided by the above-mentioned computer system. It’ll be like mass NASCAR drafting! There will be no failures because computers never fail.

The Interstate highways are said to have cost approximately $425 billion, and 50,000 miles of electrification plus any additional 1000-megawatt power stations would surely cost a similar amount. To give meaning to that, consider that there are maybe 250,000,000 registered cars in the U.S. Replacing all of them with Chevy’s “Volt” hybrids at $40K per would cost 10 trillion dollars. We’re talking big savings here.

Anyway, no worries. Whatever it costs, “quantitative easing” can take care of it. Remember: The printing presses in the national mint are driven by clean, variable-speed electric motors. Just dial up the rpm and anything is possible. Many thousands of new jobs will surely be created. Any extra electric power required can be generated on a traditional American free-market basis, which means our cheapest, most plentiful fuel—coal—will be used. Any other choice would clearly be government interference with free enterprise.

Motorcycles? Sorry, vehicles too small to support a trolley would be excluded from the system.

Am I dreaming? Or is this a nightmare?

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In 1963, when I was learning to ride my new 80cc Yamaha YG-1, I discovered the value of metal bits that bent instead of broke whenever I managed to screw up and drop the bike again, usually in a rock-strewn streambed or sandy wash. I grew fond of that little rotary-valve two-stroke engine, which always restarted easily after I untangled the bike and myself from whatever mess I’d gotten us into. And I grew even more fond of the simple and rugged construction of the cycle parts as I bent back the brake pedal or the clutch lever after a low-side someplace.

You’d think, reasonably enough, that the take-away message would have been the most basic from Motorcycle 101—“Don’t crash.” But, in fact, the one I took most to heart was its corollary: “When—not if—you do crash, make sure you’ve got the tools to repair the bike and get going again.” Said tools being not just the onboard toolkit but the knowledge and skill to use it.

A few years shy of four decades later, I found myself with a bent saddlebag latch on a BMW R1100RT testbike in the bowels of the LAX parking lot, and I thought about the corollary again, because it turned out that BMW had seen fit to equip the bike with a toolkit that didn’t include pliers, which I needed to straighten the latch I’d inadvertently bent. Until I straightened the latch, I couldn’t open the saddlebag and therefore couldn’t load my gear and ride off to the appointments I’d made.

Decades of riding, testing and owning BMWs left me unable to fully grasp the idea of a BMW motorcycle without a fabulously well-furnished toolkit. I’d repaired, tuned and almost rebuilt BMWs with their onboard tools all over the world. So, to encounter a BMW without one of the most fundamental tools in the kit—the pliers—astounded me. I assumed somebody had just forgotten to put the pliers back in the kit. Until I looked at the owner’s manual photo of the tools supplied: no pliers.

Luckily, in those pre-9/11 days, I flew with my big Swiss Army knife, which includes mini-pliers, so eventually I was able to straighten the latch and get on with the ride. But when I told BMW’s press boss that his company had seen fit not to include pliers with the toolkit, he didn’t believe it at first. Then he checked it out and later admitted that there were, in fact, no pliers supplied with the then-new “Oilhead” bikes. Naturally, I asked for an explanation and eventually got a two-page fax from a senior BMW corporate guy in Munich. The explanation boiled down to the claim that BMW was supplying all the tools an owner/rider should need for authorized owner maintenance purposes.

Was this a result of cost-cutting or something else? Nobody at BMW would say anything more, but decades of experience in car, airplane and motorcycle magazines since 1973 suggested to me that the real purpose was to defend BMW against ignorant jerks who might use the pliers to screw up something on the bike, then crash and subsequently sue BMW for providing the very tool the fool used to mess up the machine. During my time on deck in motorhead magazines, I’d watched as lawyers successfully sued manufacturers for even less-plausible reasons, and been horrified to see how juries all over the country would agree that the manufacturer, not the user, was at fault. Defending themselves against these kinds of lawsuits had become immensely important to vehicle manufacturers, so in that light, I could see why BMW would say to me that an owner who wanted pliers in his toolkit could just buy one for himself.

Even so, at this same time, BMW was selling cars equipped with trunk-mounted toolkits that included Heyco channel-lock pliers. Evidently the car buyers using the pliers did not constitute the same lawsuit threat that we motorcyclists did. Or, at least, the motorcyclists who were buying the then-very-expensive new Oilhead Twins. To check this, I called BMW dealers all over the country and asked if any of their Oilhead customers had noticed that their bikes didn’t come with pliers in the toolkit. The universal response was that the buyers didn’t notice, because, many of the dealership folks said, tactfully, they weren’t the old do-it-yourself BMW types. The new BMW buyers, I was told, took their bikes to their dealers for all their maintenance.

Today, it’s clear that many BMW riders are still fiddling with their bikes, no matter how many might indeed be taking them to their dealers for maintenance or accessories installation. And toolkits? I asked my buddy Doug, when he bought a 2007 K12000R, what kind of tools his bike included. He told me he was appalled to discover that all the bike came with was a reversible screwdriver, and to make sure, he’d checked with a BMW dealer, which confirmed that the high-tech rocket was not outfitted with an old-school BMW do-everything toolkit. Doug also said that he was shocked to find out that his local BMW shop wouldn’t tell him what the torque settings were for the three bolts he needed to tighten when he installed a carbon-fiber “hugger” rear fender. The dealer’s service guy told Doug that the dealer was just protecting itself by that policy.

Back in the ’70s, at Cycle Guide magazine, Paul Dean and I discerned the onset of the hyper-litigious era when we noticed that Honda had been forced to stamp a warning into its bikes’ exhaust pipes advising people that the pipes were hot. This came a few years after a distraught mother sued Kawasaki for damages to her son because the 500cc H1 he’d been riding didn’t have a disc front brake, and her lawyer proved that Kawasaki was planning to introduce it on the next version of the two-stroke Triple. We were told by those in the know at the time that this decision, among many others in the early ’70s, resulted in the establishment of what lawyers call “strict liability” for the manufacturers in tort cases, whereas previously plaintiffs had to prove negligence or deliberate malfeasance on the part of the manufacturer. Suing for damages thus got a lot easier, we were told.

Given this environment, it’s easy to see the benefits of not providing a presumed jerk, who just happens to be a buyer, a set of tools with which he can really mess up the bike, crash, then sue. But it’s also hard not to think that something has gone seriously wrong with our culture since the days in 1963 when I was crashing my YG-1 and straightening bits of it with the basic but barely adequate tools that Yamaha put under the little two-stroke’s sidecover. Without pliers, it would have been impossible to get home in many cases. Good thing I wasn’t on an R1100RT.

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Photo by Mark Wernham

The 2012 MotoGP season began on Tuesday with the first post-Valencia test sessions. Honda, Yamaha and Ducati were there with 1000cc prototypes, and Randy de Puniet and Stefan Bradl rode Suzuki and Honda 800s. Several of the new “CRT” bikes—prototype chassis powered by production-based 1000cc engines—also took part (CRT stands for “Claiming Rule Team,” a clumsy name we hope will soon be changed).

Next year won’t really be racing as we know it, because these 25-percent-bigger, 1000cc prototypes will be limited to the same 21 liters of fuel that compelled 800s to run lean in order to finish races. As has been the case the past two years, six prototype engines will be all that a rider gets for the 18-race series (this requires roughly a 1200-mile engine-life guarantee). CRTs are, by contrast, allowed 24 liters of fuel and 12 engines per rider.

Because fuel is so limited, don’t expect a return to sideways cowboy riding with smoky wheelspin. It will be business as usual with high corner speeds, extreme angles of lean and single-line racing with limited passing.

Even the prototype engines will no longer be the wide-open designs of the past. Instead, they are for 2012 limited to a maximum bore of 81mm. That requires a stroke of 48.5mm to give a four-cylinder engine 1000cc. A stroke that long will pretty much limit engines to a rev ceiling of 16,000. With the 24-liter fuel allowance of 2002-2004, 16,000 rpm could make as much as 245 horsepower; but on 21 liters, there will be little point to revving that high. One way to use those otherwise pointless revs would be to provide the rider with a “boost button” that allows extra performance limited to a few seconds—power to pass. Then back to droning on lower fuel flow and hoping there’s still something sloshing around in the tank.

One rider described the new engines as “Lots of revs but no power.” For the prototypes, at least, 2012 will be the Mobil Economy Run. Older readers will remember the super-lean carburetion of early U.S. emissions-controlled cars—the “sputter-and-die” engines of the late 1970s. The new 1000cc prototypes will share some of those qualities.

Photo by Mark Wernham

Dani Pedrosa was fastest on a Honda RC213V, with Casey Stoner second (also on Honda) and Ben Spies third on a Yamaha YZR-M1. Jorge Lorenzo is still out with an injury.

Special interest attended Valentino Rossi’s laps on a new twin-spar aluminum-chassis (made by FTR) Ducati, but it is clearly early days for that project. The team hopes that the reduced side-to-side stiffness of such a chassis may eventually cure the front-end vagueness of the ultra-stiff carbon-fiber front frame used by Ducati since 2009.

And the CRTs? Will grass-roots engine builders embarrass the big boys? Sadly, the CRTs present were many seconds a lap slower than the GP bikes—all but one were slower than the top 250s in 2009. Dorna CEO Carmelo Ezpeleta is undiscouraged by this prospect, having said essentially that “there can be two races in one.” It is Ezpeleta’s responsibility to somehow keep MotoGP financially successful. I wish him well.

Why does the 21-liter rule even exist? It was recommended by the MSMA—the Motor Sports Manufacturers’ Association—which many think is effectively the voice of Honda. Your guess is as good as mine here. Mr. Ezpeleta is happy to keep that rule in place because it gives him leverage in his efforts to make something of the CRTs.

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Photo by Mark Wernham

Josh Hayes finished a spectacular seventh in his MotoGP debut at the season-ending Spanish Grand Prix. The 36-year-old American completed the 30-lap race just half a minute behind winner Casey Stoner and second-place Ben Spies. Stoner’s Repsol Honda teammate, Andrea Dovizioso, rounded out the podium.

A replacement for Tech 3 Yamaha regular Colin Edwards, injured two weeks ago at the Malaysian GP, Hayes showed steady progress throughout the weekend. He even topped the timing sheets in Sunday morning warm-up.

“The session started off wet,” explained Hayes, “but it was drying quickly. I had roasted a set of rain tires—blown ’em up so bad that I couldn’t ride on them anymore. When I came rolling down pit lane, the guys had a ‘dry’ bike ready for me with my slick tires from qualifying. I needed all of the experience I could get, so I rolled back out with 5 minutes to go. I got two flying laps.”

Spies was the last Tech 3 rider, at Indianapolis in 2010, to lead a practice session. “I had good timing,” admitted Hayes. “All of the guys were quite excited.”

Prior to the race, 1993 500cc World Champion Kevin Schwantz fired up the San Carlo Honda Gresini RC212V of Marco Simoncelli and led all of the 125, Moto2 and MotoGP riders on a tribute lap to the fallen Italian. The entire paddock then congregated at the start/finish line to watch a fireworks display.

“I never met Marco,” said Hayes. “But I felt like I lost a brother. I’ve lost more friends than I would have cared to have lost in the last 17 years as a motorcycle racer. I understood. You could see it on the faces of all the competitors.”

The race was full of drama, too. At the start, Rizla Suzuki’s Alvaro Bautista crashed entering Turn 1, knocking down the Ducatis of Valentino Rossi, Nicky Hayden and Randy de Puniet. Hayes’ biggest problem? He couldn’t hear his motorcycle. “Being last on the grid, I had a lot of exhaust pipes pointed straight at me. I got the clutch out way too fast and bogged the engine. So, I got a terrible start and was dead-last into Turn 1.”

Stoner sped away, leaving Dovizioso and Dani Pedrosa to battle with Spies. Hayes picked up two spots on the first lap then spent the majority of the race trading blows with Yamaha test rider Katsuyuki Nakasuga, who was subbing for injured Jorge Lorenzo.

“Nakasugo was a lot more consistent than I was,” admitted Hayes. “I was still learning the track during the race. He was aggressive, and our lines intersected pretty badly in a lot of areas. Not knowing the limits of the machine, I put myself in a couple of silly spots. I was thinking, ‘Uh, oh, can I get out of this?’

“Mind you, it was drizzling the entire race. It got better then worse at times on different parts of the track.”

Josh Hayes: “At the end of the day, it’s a motorcycle. It has bitchin’ brakes and tires. You just have to go through a process to get the most out of it.” Photo by Mark Wernham

With a handful of laps remaining, conditions really went downhill. “When that happened,” said Hayes, “[Toni] Elias just stopped riding. [Loris] Capirossi did the same thing. They either had major problems or just gave up. We caught them really fast, within two laps.”

Then, Czech rookie Karel Abraham crashed, gifting Hayes with another position.

Watching from the television-commentary booth, Lorenzo said about Hayes, “These bikes are very, very sensitive. You must be very prepared to be competitive. He’s doing well.”

Ironically, Hayes was not in peak mental or physical condition. “I wasn’t prepared to ride,” he said. “I took quite a break—seven weeks—after the AMA season ended. I did three days of testing on our SuperBike and played a little bit of tennis. Otherwise, I relaxed, something I haven’t done in six years.

“I knew that I was going to test the Yamaha, but I didn’t think I was going to do a 30-lap race! Physically, I was still squeezing the brake well. I could still muscle the bike from side-to-side. But with all of the changing conditions and figuring out the race, my focus just wasn’t quite there when I needed it to be with six or seven laps to go.”

Still, Hayes is happy with the progress he made this weekend. His fastest race lap was just seven tenths of a second slower than that of his teammate, Cal Crutchlow. “I didn’t take many chances,” he said. “I used common sense. I knew how much it would hurt me to fall down and lose track time. I can’t learn anything from the gravel trap.

“I am overwhelmed by the support that I’ve gotten this weekend. The team was incredibly gracious. They took me seriously. They were head-down, moving forward and made big changes to the motorcycle trying to make me happy.

“Doing well here helps legitimize the AMA series. It’s a good series, and I wanted to show that Colin Edwards, Nicky Hayden and Ben Spies are not the only American riders worth anything that came out of the U.S. I’m just thankful that I got the opportunity.”

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Photo by Mark Wernham

Newly crowned 2011 MotoGP World Champion Casey Stoner stormed to his 12th pole position of the 18-race season today at the Comunitat Valenciana Ricardo Tormo Circuit near Valencia, Spain, equaling the premier-class record set by five-time 500cc World Champion Mick Doohan in 1997. At the other end of the grid, 4.181 seconds back in 16th position, two-time AMA Pro American SuperBike Champion Josh Hayes got his first taste of an 800cc Grand Prix prototype fitted with Brembo carbon-carbon front brakes and Bridgestone slicks.

“I’m not happy about P16,” admitted Hayes. “The team has reassured me that I’m doing better than they expected. They expected me to be 3 seconds slower than Katsuyuki Nakasuga [Yamaha test rider and stand-in for injured Jorge Lorenzo this weekend], not within a tenth of a second of him. That’s great, but I don’t like being last.”

Hayes was just 1.6 seconds behind his Tech 3 Yamaha teammate, Cal Crutchlow, who qualified 11th for Sunday’s race and is battling with Cardion AB Motoracing’s Karel Abraham for MotoGP rookie-of-the-year honors.

“[Team Director] Hervé [Poncheral] told me that Carlos Checa raced a Pramac Ducati at Valencia last year, and he got lapped. He’s the World Superbike champion this year. So, that’s what I’m up against.”

Morning practice was dry, but afternoon qualifying took place in mixed conditions. “Three times during that session,” said Hayes, “we got pretty good rain—big drops. In AMA Pro Road Racing, we don’t touch paint lines when it’s wet; this paint’s okay. I wasn’t sure how much rain was on the track or how well the Bridgestone slicks handle moisture.

“I’d been told that if you don’t put a lot of force into the tires, you can’t keep enough heat in them to work. So, I was trying to push really hard to keep the heat in the tires, but I wasn’t sure how much was too much with the moisture hitting the track.”

Counterintuitive thinking? Josh Hayes says that taking advantage of the Yamaha’s electronics by opening the throttle while the bike is leaned over and his knee is on the ground seems to be the fastest, smoothest way around the racetrack. “But it’s hard,” he says, “for me to rewrite what I know about riding a motorcycle.” Photo by Mark Wernham

Hayes now has four practice sessions and nearly 100 laps of the track under his belt, but he’s still facing a near-vertical learning curve. This morning, he struggled with the right-left chicane that leads to the long, left-hand second-to-last corner.

“The bike doesn’t turn the way I expected it would turn,” he said. “On my SuperBike, with the way that bike transfers weight, I can fix problems by just moving around on the motorcycle. I don’t know how to do that on this bike.

“I talked to the guys about it, and they put in a completely different setting for qualifying. If we changed my R1 that much, I could tell you what those changes did to the machine. This still felt like an M1. I don’t have enough experience with the motorcycle to understand how to get the most out of those changes.”

Conversely, Hayes says, the electronics have been relatively easy to sort out. “Traction control, wheelie control,” he said, “I can feel that immediately.”

Hayes completed most of his laps today on the soft Bridgestones. His last laps, which were also his best laps, were done on the hard front and soft rear. “Before they put on that front tire, I missed a lot of apexes. [With the harder tire] I was more confident to trail-brake and hit those apexes.”

Speaking of brakes, Hayes doesn’t know what to expect from the carbon-carbon Brembos. “I want to look at some data from last year to see how these guys approach the first lap of the race. Twice, I stopped to do practice starts. Both times, in the first and second turns, I didn’t have any brakes; the performance changed that quickly. Then, all of a sudden, it was like somebody flipped a switch. I almost flew over the handlebars! So, I’m trying to understand how this stuff works. The last thing I want is to be a bowling ball in MotoGP.

“Also, I’ve gone out three times on a new Bridgestone rear tire. Everybody has driven home how scary they can be on the first three laps, so between the brakes and the tires, I’m quite nervous about the race tomorrow.

“I don’t want to waste the first two or three laps, or even the first two or three corners, and let these guys get so far away from me that I never have an opportunity to learn from any of them.”

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Photo by Mark Wernham

Two-time AMA Pro American SuperBike Champion Josh Hayes made his MotoGP debut in practice today at the Comunitat Valenciana Ricardo Tormo Circuit near Valencia, Spain. The 36-year-old Mississippi native posted the 15th- and 10th-quickest lap times—2.5 seconds slower than the top riders—in the two timed sessions, both of which were run in wet conditions, the second more so than the first. Newly crowned MotoGP World Champion Casey Stoner recorded the quickest time of the day, a 1:45.513. His Repsol Honda teammate, Dani Pedrosa, was second. Ducati’s Valentino Rossi rounded out the top three.

When I spoke with Hayes, he was watching a tennis tournament on television in the Tech 3 Yamaha hospitality. Hayes is an avid tennis player and a fan of the sport. “I wish I could play,” he said. “That might take my mind off things. I’ve been a wreck all day. I’ve never been more nervous in my entire life.”

Riding the bike helped. When pit lane opened for afternoon practice, Hayes was first out of the gate. Moreover, much to the team’s surprise, he never pitted, spending every second of the 45-minute session becoming more familiar with the 14-turn, 2.489-mile circuit and the satellite YZR-M1 that he will race for the first time on Sunday.

Halfway through FP2, with rain pelting the track, nine-time world champ Rossi closed on Hayes and then overtook the American in Turn 6. “He followed me for a while,” recalled Hayes, “passed me and then ran off the track. When he passed me, I took the opportunity to try to see some of the things he was doing, where he was on the racetrack, how he was approaching some of the turns.

“Nicky [Hayden] came by, too, and I could see how comfortable he is. He’s at home. He’s on his own machine. It was refreshing to see that some of these guys do get comfortable and are able to ride their bikes really well. I’ve got to get there.”

“I feel so out of place," says Josh Hayes. "I wouldn’t know some of the guys on the track if I walked past them on the street. I know their names, but I wouldn’t recognize them. And I know they wouldn’t recognize me.” Photo by Mark Wernham

Hayes, who ran as high as fifth in afternoon practice, knows he has a long way to go. “When I came back to the pit box after practice, eight people were looking at me, waiting for me to tell them something. It was really intimidating. I wanted to give them some information, but at the same time, I’m just trying to learn how to ride the thing. It’s more about what I can take in rather than what I can tell them.”

After practice, Hayes ran into former AMA competitor and newly crowned World Supersport Champion Chaz Davies, who said the 5-foot-9 Hayes “looked like a giant” on the Yamaha. Reality is, Hayes isn’t that big; the M1 is tiny. “It’s smaller than any 600 that I’ve ridden,” he said. “It’s about the length of a 600, but it’s unbelievably narrow.”

Hayes says the team has made him feel at home. “Guy, Andy—I don’t know everybody’s name—they’ve all been fantastic. This isn’t a ‘Look, man, just ride it and get it over with.’ But at the same time, this bike is as developed as it will ever be.

“I thought I’d be riding on a razor’s edge—everything is good and then you’re sliding on your head. So far, that hasn’t been the case. The bike has been forgiving, and the electronics work extremely well.”

If the rain continues, as is forecast for most of the weekend, Hayes may have to race on Sunday afternoon for the final race of the 800cc era without having tried either the Bridgestone slicks or Brembo carbon-carbon front brakes.

“That would be a nightmare,” said Hayes. “For five laps, I’m going to have no idea what to do. They’re going to ride off into the sunset.”

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Two-time AMA Pro American SuperBike Champion Josh Hayes had mixed emotions after learning that he’d been selected to replace injured Colin Edwards on the Tech 3 Yamaha YZR-M1 for the final MotoGP race of the season this weekend in Valencia, Spain.

For weeks, Hayes had known that he would test Edwards’ Yamaha on Tuesday, November 8, two days after the season-ending Spanish round. He was looking forward to it. According to Yamaha, the ride was a reward for Hayes’ back-to-back AMA titles. Moreover, it would be a real test, not just a few hot laps, with multiple sets of series-spec Bridgestone slicks at Hayes’ disposal. In addition, his wife, Melissa, who races a Yamaha YZF-R6 in the Daytona SportBike class, was told she would also be given an opportunity to swing a leather-clad leg over Edwards’ bike.

Then, at the penultimate round in Malaysia, Marco Simoncelli lost his life in a crash that involved Edwards and Valentino Rossi.

After learning that Edwards required surgery on his shoulder and wouldn’t be racing at Valencia, I called Hayes. I wanted to know if a) the test was still on; and b) if Yamaha had asked him to fill in for Edwards on the satellite M1. As far as he knew, Hayes said, nothing had changed. And, no, Yamaha hadn’t offered him Edwards’ seat.

“I’m not going to ask to race the bike,” he said, “but it would be difficult to turn it down.”

And he didn’t. When the official call from Yamaha came a couple of days later, Hayes rescheduled his flight and had longtime leathers-sponsor Teknic sew up two new suits in black-and-yellow Tech 3 colors. Practice begins on Friday.

Hayes knows he’s stepping into the deep end of the pool. “I’m scared to death,” he admitted.

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Allan Girdler (86d) about to put Dennis Kanegae (51E) a lap down. When asked about this devastating blow to his racing career, Kanegae stated, tongue firmly in cheek, “I don’t know where Allan found this new speed. He has this unshakable persistence to be consistent on any track surface. My hat’s off to him.” Photo by Janice Blunt

Never in my life have I found it more difficult to fake modesty.

When my friendly rival, Jeff Evans Sr., stood up to accept his second-place trophy, he pointed to me in the stands at Perris Raceway and said, “Allan took off so fast I thought he’d been shot.”

True, and all part of my cunning scheme, as they said in the boys’ own adventures books.

Putting this in context, I compete in the super geezer (actually, Premier Senior) class in my local club (Southern California Flat Track Association).

Because we geezers with our 450cc framers and 500 or 750cc vintage big bikes are a close match with the bird-legged kids on 100s, and because both classes aren’t all that populated, the club runs both in the same race.

On this occasion, I was last man entered. As we lined up for the heat, with me on the outside, second row, I staged way outside, outboard of the 100s in the front row, my plot being that although the 100s, Bill Kratkov and CW’s own Mark Cernicky, are much faster than Jeff or me, I was on my 450cc Wood-Honda, and if I couldn’t match their lap times, I, by gosh, could out-drag them through the first turn, giving me a gap on Jeff.

Why such intense effort?

Because eight rounds into the 12-round series, I was leading my class on points.

I was head of the class because: 1) I had a perfect attendance record, while each of the other four super geezers had failed to finish or hadn’t shown up at least once; and 2) my wins had come when a racer in front of me had fallen off.

This reminded me of Randy Goss and Nicky Hayden. Late in their championship seasons—Randy in Grand National, Nicky in MotoGP—neither had won a race. They’d been fast and consistent and were leading on points, which is fair, no question. But there had been in both cases some concern by sponsors, promoters, sanctioning bodies, the press and even fans that to watch a racer not win all year and then award him the title made the sport look clumsy; champs with feet of clay, so to speak.

So, as the boxer sings in the opera, I wanted to “show that crowd what I know.”

And it worked, to a degree. The green light came on and I led into the first turn, then Billy and Mark swept past and pulled away, as I knew they would. Two laps later, I slid wide and Jeff squeezed inside, as I had feared. I could stay with him, though, and closed up to a bike length behind at the finish. Two more laps and I would have had him, I told myself, and while the heat is six laps, the main is eight, not to worry.

Seems Jeff had been taking notes. When we lined up for the main, I was out near the fence but he was out there next to me.

To no avail. I nailed the start, caught the light just right and kept charging— bounced the revs off the box, as we say—and jumped in front of the other guys to the extent that I led the pack through the first lap.

My wife, Jan, in the stands, told me later that the announcer trumpeted “ALLAN GIRDLER IS IN THE LEAD!” as if he’d never seen such a thing before, which, of course, he hadn’t.

Bill passed me, then Mark.

Cernicky was having an off day. The previous race meet, he’d won the Pro class, but this week he won the heat but faded to third in the main.

In our race, when he came past, I told myself, “Mark knows what he’s doing, why not do what he does?”

I did just that, kept on his rear wheel, copying his line, rolling off where he did and six laps later, there I was, first in class, happy as a hog in slop. Oh, before I forget, Hayden and Goss both won a race late in their championship seasons, putting that issue to rest.

In my case, I was pumped and perhaps a bit embarrassed by the number of other racers who gave me delighted whoops, rather than just reminding me that I had fun.

“Mark,” I said back at the trucks. “If we didn’t have our helmets on, I’d kiss you on both cheeks. Thanks for the help,” which he took in good grace.

When I repeated that I’d been following Mark, someone else said, “No, you were racing him.”

“I couldn’t have looked that good,” I said modestly.

But I didn’t mean it.

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Photo by Mark Wernham

Reactions were varied to the cancellation of Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix. The riders knew immediately that Marco Simoncelli’s condition was grave; some even changed out of their leathers and into street clothes shortly after returning to the garages. Most of the record 67,112 spectators ringing the 3.447-mile Sepang International Circuit, however, were apparently unaware of the critical nature of the second-lap accident.

According to eyewitnesses, some fans were actually angry. They’d paid a premium for their tickets and felt shortchanged. They threw bottles of water and trash onto the racetrack, and in the accompany photo, track marshals can clearly be seen running for cover. By the time Simoncelli had been pronounced dead, most of the crowd had gone home.

Some wondered if the race would be restarted and Simoncelli’s death announced later in the day, as has happened before in motorsport. But anyone who saw Colin Edwards’ reaction immediately after the crash and, later, that of Valentino Rossi, knew those two would not be able to continue racing that day. All of the other riders would have had to pass Simoncelli lying on the track without a helmet and surely were badly shaken, as well.

SIC chairman Datuk Mokhzani Mahathir told the New Straits Times that the reactions from the fans were “unfortunate, but understandable. At the time of the cancellation, the official announcement was that, due to medical staff being fully involved in efforts to save Simoncelli, and without sufficient medical personnel on standby, the race could not be continued.

“There was a delay in the transmission of information from the medical center to the public. Simoncelli’s family had to be notified, then the organizers and the public. Under those circumstances, it was unavoidable, but I’m sure when the fans find out what happened, they will understand why the race had to be cancelled.”

Edwards’ injuries were more severe than initially thought. On his Facebook page, the Tech 3 Yamaha rider thanked his fans for their support. “I’m holding up okay mentally; it was a very tragic accident. Physically, besides a dislocated shoulder and ligaments involved, [I] think both wrists and [my] left heel have fractures, too. I feel sad for the whole MotoGP community. My heart is heavy for everyone affected, from family to fans. Godspeed, my friend, [you] will be missed.”

Edwards is not expected to compete in the season-ending round in Valencia, Spain. Factory Yamaha rider Jorge Lorenzo’s participation is also questionable. The outgoing MotoGP world champion badly injured the ring finger on his left hand in a crash during Sunday morning warm-up for the Australian Grand Prix. And his teammate, American Ben Spies, missed the last two rounds due to injuries.

Simoncelli’s team, San Carlo Honda Gresini, will be present at Valencia, but team owner Fausto Gresini has not yet decided if Hiroshi Aoyama and Moto2 riders Michele Pirro and Yuki Takahashi will take part in their respective races.

Thursday’s funeral for Simoncelli was held at the Santa Maria Assunta church in Coriano, the fallen rider’s hometown. The ceremony was broadcast on large television screens outside the church and also at the nearby Misano World Circuit.

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Since July, 2010, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has evidently made a point of being seen with Russian biker buddies. Nicknamed “Abaddon” (one meaning is “destroyer” in Hebrew) when he was inducted into a biker club by the “high council of Russian bikers movements,” Putin publicly rides a Harley-Davidson Lehman Trike with his fellow club members in the “Night Wolves.” He rides helmetless, at least for the photo-ops.

This year, at the opening of a motorcycle show in the Ukraine, according to the website RiaNovosti, Putin said of motorcycles that, “Bike is the most democratic transport vehicle. Bike is the most-daring, challenging as it gives its owner the tempting feeling of freedom, that is why one can say without any exaggeration, bike is a symbol of freedom.”

Understandably, perhaps, what most political pundits concentrate on when trying to figure out Putin’s purposes with his trike-riding is the obvious connection of the bikers to the image of being a tough guy in an international arena populated primarily by non-tough guys. But a motorcyclist could easily take away something else from Putin’s displays, whether they’re carefully calculated political acting or not.

That something is the strikingly American imagery of the bikes (okay, the trikes) he rides and the outlaw-biker image cultivated by the clubs like the Russian “Night Wolves.” Even though video clips online clearly show that helmet-wearing riders also feature in Ukrainian and Russian moto-life, the power of the Hog-rider imagery is obviously being exploited—not, ostensibly, for its links to outlaw motorcycle clubs but for its presumed appeal internationally as an expression of individual freedom of choice. In this sense, it’s obviously also important to Putin to appear helmetless on the trike, again an appearance of real significance to a developed world in which riding without a helmet is verboten.

Putin closed his comments at the bike show by cautioning the attendees to “Say no to the mad ride,” according to RiaNovosti, presumably referring to the sort of “mad riding” shown to the world by the Russian rider who gave the world the YouTube video “Black Devil—Moscow Ride on R1,” now up to eight million-plus hits.

Non-riders might think that Putin’s bad-boy biker guise and his comments welding personal freedom of choice clash with his appeal to “ride safe,” but anyone who’s ever ridden a Harley-Davidson that’s not track-ready knows trying to emulate the Black Devil on a Hog is likely to experience radically different dynamics from those of BD’s Yamaha R1, to put it mildly.

No matter what Putin’s real purposes in showing up helmetless on a Harley, and no matter what Putin might do with power he might win or seize in the future, his choice of the motorcycle to embody personal freedom—and “democratic transport vehicle”—must bring a smile to many motorcyclists’ faces.

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Periodically, I stumble across a statistic that bowls me over, changes the way I think and feel. Earlier this week, I sat over lunch, looking at a recent issue of Diesel Facts, a publication of the German MAN company, which makes diesel engines.

The statistic was in an article about 40,000-horsepower MAN two-stroke marine engines being specified for giant new 400,000-ton bulk carrier ships. The sentence that got me said that 19 such ships “will transport iron ore from South American mines to the Chinese steelworks that currently take 60 percent of all iron ore mined globally.”

Here I am, feeling vaguely green because my little car gets 30 miles per gallon, but meanwhile, zillions of tons of iron ore must be heated red-hot to extract the metal that the world uses. Something will be burned—coal, gas, oil—to provide that heat. Lots of it. I have friends who plan to save the planet by using a solar reflector to bake their bread. I will make a point of not disturbing their tranquility with any stories of millions of tons of ore being shipped halfway around the world by diesel engines.

Way too much reality.

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Like the roll of duct tape often kept handy on the wrists of mechanics on the starting grid, that wire loop also proclaimed his profession. Jim helped a great many riders over the years and not only by his knowledge of suspension. He always seemed pleasantly taken by surprise by life, and that optimistic outlook was contagious. Racers need the company of optimists.

We will miss Jim’s presence.

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Long before the Can-Am Spyder three-wheeler showed up in the United States, three-wheeled vehicles of all sorts had been a staple of automobility in Asia and India. So it’s not surprising that in 2011, Chinese-made three-wheeled scooters such as the 300cc Roadrunner, identified as made by “Dong Fang,” suddenly appeared online for sale outside China, specifically in North America.

Sold by distributors directly to retail customers, a whole lineup of trikes in various formats suggests that somebody in China sees a much bigger market for three-wheeled scooter-ish gizmos than do, presumably, the product planners of Japan’s Big Four. Of course, Honda was typically years ahead of everyone else with the Gyro three-wheeler, but it was the Piaggio MP3 scooters that seemed to raise consumer awareness of alternatives to two-wheeled motorcycles and scooters.

A little online forum snooping reveals that the Chinese products are not universally perceived as high-quality items. And because a call to the importer-distributor disclosed that a) the three-wheelers are not certified for sale and use in California because of emissions rules, and b) there were none available anywhere, period, end of report, for Cycle World  to ride and evaluate, it’s caveat emptor out there.

The general rap among the people I know who are familiar with Chinese vehicle manufacturing over the past few decades has been what can charitably be characterized as knock-off tech married to get-rich-quick manufacturing. Nothing new or particularly “Chinese” about that, of course. But as Chinese companies seek to sell their products overseas, it’s clear that they’re going to be forced to improve their machines to satisfy markets accustomed to equipment that doesn’t include, say, frame welds a quarter-inch off of the mark, as one online report claimed.

It’s useful to remember that for decades, Japanese motorcycles were considered low-quality knockoffs of “superior” technology, at least until even the most chauvinistic Britbike or American Iron fan had to admit that Japan, Inc. was making very good stuff indeed.

Will we see the same ramp-up in the output and product quality from the Chinese motorcycle (and car) factories such as the one that makes the Roadrunner—the “Chongqing Dongfang Lingyun Vehicle Made Co., Ltd.?

If we do, the answer will come one vehicle—and one customer, satisfied or otherwise—at a time.

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Go ahead, look at the picture first. My bet is, you won’t be able to guess what it is, or why it’s shown here, until you read the blog, a clear case of 1000 words giving value to one photo.

How so?

Constant surfers will recall that not long ago, I bought a Kawasaki Ninja 250R, an ’05 with barely 1000 miles on the clock, perfectly shiny as new, at a fair price even when I had to ante up the fees to re-register the bike after two years in storage.

I hauled it home, did the insurance and registration, checked the oil and coolant and tires, set choke and hit the button, and it fired right up. After a proper warm-up, I rode down to the county road, pleased with the lightness and precision of steering and brakes.

Three miles later, the engine staggered and surged, feeling as if it was out of gas, although I knew it wasn’t. Revving and using the choke, I stumbled up to my stepson’s ranch, where the engine died dead as Marley.

Home in my truck, feeling as puzzled as angry, as in the seller gave me his card and asked for an invite to our gearhead lunch, meaning he hadn’t tricked or cheated me.

In the shop, there was gas in the tank, the petcock flowed freely, the spark was strong and hot…but the engine would run only on 5/6th choke, at 4000 rpm, and would not pull.

There’s a Ninja 250 website, the technical section of which has a collection of accounts of troubles just like mine, with a bike taken out of storage and refusing to run.

Every one of these reports said the same thing: stale gas or contaminated gas, as in ethanol and varnish, with the smaller jets fouled or plugged.

I spoke with Bill Werner, head of Kawasaki’s dirt-track team; Randy Davis, retired Kawasaki technician; and our own Paul Dean, head of our Service department and a man of vast experience.

They agree: What we had there was a carburetion problem.

In matters like this, I am a vintage guy. If it’s a round-slide Mikuni or even dual Webers, or a single-fire magneto, I’m yer maun.

But a check with the Ninja shop manual showed me I’d have trouble removing even the air filter, so I called in Bill Formby, a retired racer who is Mr. Fixit in my neck of the woods.

Oh, dear. The Ninja’s two carbs were checked out. At this point, science and careful analysis and logic indicated that was the problem, but it didn’t seem that way, nor did the performance improve after all the passages and orifices had been cleaned and inspected.

Paul had recommended a jetting kit, as he’d ridden Ninjas so treated and found them improved, so I got a kit from Dynojet.

Short pause here. At this point, all the sources had used careful review, step-by-step scientific inquiry. All clues pointed to a problem…that wasn’t there.

So, with the carbs back on the bench, with the body panels off the frame, Bill began looking elsewhere.

My Ninja is, of course, a California model. The 49-state Ninjas feed air to the fuel tank through a vented cap. The California version, fearful lest fumes foul the atmosphere, have a sealed cap with a labyrinthine network of purge hoses, drain hoses, vacuum hoses, pulse hoses, feed hoses and canisters.

Yes. The mystery photo is of a section of the hose that feeds—or is supposed to feed—air to the fuel tank. If air can’t get in, fuel can’t get out.

Somehow, sometime, some way, some one put that hose next to an exhaust pipe. It was nowhere near where it should have been. The heat softened the hose, which sagged flat and shut off the air.

The jets weren’t fouled, the carbs weren’t out of whack and ethanol, for once, wasn’t the guilty party.

How this happened, I can’t fathom. My vintage Triumph was disabled at least in part through neglect and abuse—as in a dry fork, drenched brake, botched wiring.

The Kawasaki hadn’t been ridden, much less abused. I bet it has just had its first oil change. The two previous owners hadn’t tampered or even touched anything I can find. A mistake done during assembly? Not the sort of thing Kawasakis are famous for.

Not that any of the above means much. What matters here is, to rework philosopher Eric Hoffer a bit, is that we see what we look for, so sometimes if we aren’t looking for it, we don’t see it.

And the bottom lines are: Problem solved, lesson learned.

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