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.
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.
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.”
It’s a literal pain in the butt, the wallet. Necessary to modern life, because it hauls around who we are, how much we have and what the government has licensed us to do. When it’s all packed into a wallet, our cash and cards can add up to an inch or more of pure pain. More importantly to motorcyclists, when parked in a back pocket of our pants, the damned thing can all too easily just slip out silently and disappear onto the road. Hence, that signature behavior common to all street riders of the male persuasion who persist in not parking their wallets in their jackets or shirts: checking the rear pocket to make sure the wallet is still on board.
So long as we have to haul our drivers’ licenses, cash and credit cards around with us, the challenge becomes finding ways to minimize the problems presented by the wallet. Some riders—cruiser types and especially H-D cruiser types—solve the theft-and-fallout problem of the wallet with the “biker’s wallet,” secured by a chain to the belt. Some people split up the cash and cards and put the money in one front pocket and the cards in another, secured by a rubber band, a box clip, a card case or some other means. Others move into specialty wallets designed for a particular garment—the inner breast pocket of a suit coat or sport coat, say, or a waist bag’s purpose-built cards-’n’-cash section.
Dr. Shreve Archer lapping Laguna Seca on his Honda VF1000R.
You never know how church can surprise you. Our church, for example, has a tradition of arranging small dinner groups for parishioners to meet informally and socialize. Usually, these are called “foyer groups,” and in them, we get to meet, chat and eat. When I’m involved, inevitably the talk rolls around to motorcycling, which isn’t usually all that popular with my tablemates. But last weekend, I was very surprised when the young man seated next to me—I’ll call him Martin—told me that, though he doesn’t ride himself, nor does his wife, he chooses his doctors based on whether or not they ride motorcycles.
The second life of Moto Morini that started in 2003 has come to a sad end. On April 10, all that remains of one of the makes that helped create the legend of the Italian light- and middleweight bikes from the 1930s to the ’60s will go to the highest bidder.
Moto Morini’s assets have been valued at 5.5 million euros, but bidders will be given the opportunity to bid either for the premises alone, starting at 3.3 million euros, or for the brand and what is still in stock, starting at 2.2 million euros. The lack of credible offers to acquire Moto Morini after it applied for Chapter 11 was the gloomiest aspect of the collapse, a condition that progressively turned into a black hole from which the company was unable to recover.
Since 1893, when Frederick Jackson Turner declared the closing of the American Frontier, the United States has been urbanizing and suburbanizing faster and faster. This has inevitably produced traffic jams of sometimes epic proportions, prompting my former Car and Driver colleague Brock Yates to conclude decades ago that whenever the roads are perceived as “too open,” the ever-watchful members of the Anti-Destination League mobilize and fill them up with slow-moving vehicles, usually in the supposedly fast lanes. American motorcyclists have responded to the ever-increasing congestion with the technique of filtering, or lane-sharing, just as their fellow riders in Europe and Asia have.
It’s not just motorcyclists who filter, either. Back in the late 1970s when I was an executive editor at Car and Driver, living and working in downtown Manhattan, I realized that everyone who used the roads or sidewalks there understood what I called “New York Rules.” These rules were triggered by any traffic jam at any time. For example, where I lived, at the intersection of East 32nd Street and 3rd Avenue, I could see that every morning and afternoon, the lane-dividing stripes on 3rd Avenue would magically cease to mean anything. What might be four lanes turned into six, or however many cars, trucks, buses or other conveyances that could fit would fill every inch of space available between the sidewalks on the one-way street. It was entirely reasonable, and I never saw a cop bother to try to force people back into the official lanes.
The idea of building a racing motorcycle has changed a lot in 38 years. In 1972, we did everything we could both think of and afford to make our machines more capable of running at the front. Today, much of that is prohibited. To prevent factories from doing the unaffordable, sanctioning bodies now prevent everyone from doing so.
Our little dealership had been roadracing a 1970 Kawasaki 500 production racer—an H1-R—for two years. Now, we wanted to see if we could do better under the AMA’s new 750cc displacement limit. Before 1970, the rules had been 750cc for Harley flatheads, 500cc for everyone else—ohv four-strokes and two-strokes alike. Then, in 1970, the rules had eased, letting all four-strokes go to 750, with two-strokes still at 500cc. This let in the new 750 Triples from BSA and Triumph, Honda’s CB750 and Harley’s curious iron ohv XR-750. And when Suzuki and Kawasaki announced 750 Triples for 1972, the AMA made the limit 750 for all. Top international riders were signed. Nine brands were in competition. Suddenly, by happy accident, AMA had the world’s fastest riders on the world’s fastest bikes on the world’s fastest track—Daytona.
I never thought that when I took delivery this May of the 2010 Can-Am Spyder RT-S for its CW long-term test that I’d discover a completely unlooked-for artifact of riding it: improved fitness. See, on the night of my 56th birthday, back in May, 2004, I got much too up close and personal with the sheetmetal of a 1995 Chevy. Ever since I was able to get out of my wheelchair three years ago, I’ve been going to the local gym to get the musculoskeletal system back up to some kind of speed.
As my aging bod sweated its way through each session at the gym, though, I chafed to be outside again, on my bikes—that is, my motorcycle and my bicycle. Not gonna happen, cowboy. Fractured pelvis sheared some nerves that never got repaired, so key muscles in the left leg just don’t work. With a full leg brace and a cane, I can stump around, but the ambulation I use is called “hip-hiking,” which makes you look like a drunken sailor with a peg leg, but it gets the job done when walking a short distance is needed.
Okay, I know this is about stuff that happened 50 years ago, but it’s an interesting comment on what makes a successful motorcycle.
Most of the major Italian makers built fast four-stroke 125cc Singles after Mondial showed the way by winning the World Championship in 1949, ’50 and ’51. Once there were 17-20-horsepower 125s, people naturally thought, “Man, what a 250 we could have by just putting two of those top ends on a common crankcase!”
Every motorcyclist has likely experienced the frustration of being stranded at a traffic signal that hasn’t detected your bike’s presence. When this happens, your options are to wait at the intersection until a larger vehicle arrives to trip the signal, or take your chances in running through a red light. Gasp!
That second option can be costly on many levels, so I’ll recommend checking out this informative WikiHow article pertaining to our very plight; How to Trigger Green Traffic Lights. Now you’ll be armed with a few tricks to try the next time you find yourself stuck at a stubborn signal.
When a roller is loaded against an inner or outer raceway, a pattern of stress is generated. The critical aspect of this is a shear stress (like that in a cube, being deformed into a diamond section) that is greatest a short distance below the surface and whose intensity rises as the roller’s radius of curvature decreases.
As metal is subjected to many repetitions of such stress, internal damage accumulates in the form of broken or altered atomic bonds until a crack forms. This crack is propagated by further stress cycling until it reaches the surface of the roller or raceway, usually at some angle. The bit of metal at the tip of this crack is vulnerable to breaking off, leaving behind what is called a Class A surface pit.
Wow, I never would have guessed that the toughest part of a Laguna Seca race weekend would be the drive home. That and working hard to qualify sixth in a very competitive field only to cross the line in 16th after the opening lap.
Aside from blowing the first corner, I had a pretty stellar weekend. Team Cycle World Attack Performance Yoshimura Suzuki is still playing catch up, but our distance to the front continues to diminish. There’s still lots of room for improvement in my riding, as well as getting what I need out of the bike.
Tonight Show host Jay Leno hosted Yamaha MotoGP stars Colin Edwards, Jorge Lorenzo and Ben Spies at his Big Dog Garage in Burbank, California, prior to last weekend’s Red Bull U.S. Grand Prix at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca.
Multi-time 500cc World Champions Kenny Roberts, Eddie Lawson and Wayne Rainey also attended the event, as did current AMA Pro American SuperBike title contenders Josh Hayes and Ben Bostrom. Daytona SportBike frontrunners Josh Herrin and Tommy Aquino rounded out the pavement stars.
It never fails to amaze me how much effort it takes to make a competitive race team. Just the hours and experience alone to assemble the bike are daunting, let alone the set up, logistics and cost of the endeavor. Working so closely with Cycle World, Attack Performance, Yoshimura, Suzuki and Team Sho-Air/Specialized has already been an experience; it definitely gives me extra pressure to perform on the bike knowing just how much everyone has bled to make this project move forward.
Rolling out for Friday morning practice at Mid-Ohio in this competitive field on a bike that I saw just two weeks before as a streetbike with mirrors should have been a disaster for me. Couple that with an engine-management system that had never been on the bike and is responsible for engine decel, auto blip and traction control, as well as fuel injection. All this and we had 50 minutes to sort it out before qualifying.
I rolled out on our “home” bike that we had previously tested. After a few laps to feel things out, I switched to the new bike fitted with various toggle switches for different engine-decel maps and the turnsignal button rigged up for traction control with plus or minus adjustments. So with roughly 400 variables to control within reach of my left thumb, I took to the track with 40 minutes remaining on the clock.
