Fat Boy

Ode to a Michelin Star

Oh! Strong and proud Krylion,
The journeyman of the lot.
You've been under me thousands of miles;
protected me from sharps and rock.

I put on my final one this morning.
They say the Enduro's as good.
At twice the price 'same's' not enough,
Be double the tire it should.

big john

I learned on a 1968ish Yamaha CT-1. Later, I had a Montessa, a friend had a Sherpa. Another friend had a Hodaka Combat Wombat. I like to say that.

hammy56

when I was 4 my grandpa (he and my uncle were avid motorbike people, dirt bikes and street bikes) bought me a Honda mr50. I had no choice but to learn to ride, they wouldnt have it any other way...he bought me that particular model because it had a manual trans. Not automatic like most kids minibikes. Similarly, he tought me to swim by throwing me into the deep end, literally.

I still have the mr50.


and I can still swim.

carpediemracing 

A big factor in my chicken-ness was a guy named Howard. He raced bikes too, and he was one of a trio of us when we went to Florida to train. He talked about a group of 6 or 8 guys that used to go out early in the weekend mornings around Orange County (NY). I asked why he stopped.

"Most of the guys are dead."
"Dead?" (I was thinking soldiers or some other hazardous type work life).
"Dead. Every now and then we'd show up for a weekend and one guy would be missing. It was down to 3 of us when I stopped."

He spoke of "group rides" where they'd pick up some random (motorcycle) riders who'd join their group. The hotheads would accelerate out front, even on roads they obviously didn't know. He said there were a few times where a guy would go way hot into a twisty section, crash, and die.

Granted, if you go stupid fast on a motorcycle you radically increase the chances of crashing and dying. Still, though, I have a feeling that I'd have been pushing hard, even if it was just technical. If I got a motorcycle I'd want to learn how to do stoppies.

A customer at the shop had a good 5-6 250cc (street type) race bikes. He said that he'd never ride on the street but that he felt much safer racing. He seemed like a level headed guy.

shovelhd

Those things were nasty.

shovelhd

Which is why I am alive today. The closest I've ever gotten to owning a sportbike was a modified Buell RS1200. That was close enough.

big john

Yeah, I knew some guys who were killed on street motorcycles, but nobody ever got badly hurt in our off-road adventures. Some of the best fun was the low speed stuff. I had a friend who raced 125cc MX and desert and when he showed up we would chase him through the tightest course he could dream up. That was a blast.

big john

I think they were old Yamaha tooling and design reproduced in Taiwan. They were cheap.

ericm979

I learned on rental Yamaha DT100s at the local riding park (Carnegie, outside Livermore). My dad hated dirt bikes and wouldn't let me get one, probably because he didn't want to be hauling me to riding areas. When I was 17 I ended up with a Kawasaki S3 400cc triple two stroke street bike as my first motorcycle.

When I was learning to ride on the DT100s, trials was the new big thing in the dirt bike magazines. I'd have killed for a Sherpa T or Montesa Cota 348 back then. I had the 348 brochure memorized when I was 15. I ended up buying a 348 Cota in '98 or so when I was doing a lot of trials competition on modern bikes. Compared to modern bikes it's junk- heavy and doesn't turn or stop. You can't use the clutch in sections, but the flywheel is so huge that you don't need to. You dare not shift in a section because you are likely to find a neutral. But it's still fun. My best moment on it was at a vintage trials competition and vintage bike fest where Dick Mann was the guest of honor. He loves trials and builds really nice trials bikes, and was out helping to put the vintage trials on. On one of my loops he'd stepped in to check a section that happened to be one of the few that I had wired. I did a clean ride and Dick freaking Mann punched a zero on my card and said "nice ride". Of course at another vintage trials I was making my way down a gnarly descent on the loop between sections, and Dick, who was at least 75 then and on a bike 15 years older and 50 lbs heavier, passed me like I was standing still and while going by gave me a look that said "why are you so slow?".

big john

Oh, I forgot BF member zzzwillzzz does stoppies on his Cannondale. It's impressive.

ericm979

That's one reason I got into trials riding. You can push your boundaries all day, fall off 10 times an hour, and since speeds are so low you'll usually just get scratched up. The worst that happened to me was breaking a wrist when I snagged a tree with my bars as I was hopping off a rock. If I'd rolled I'd have been ok but I stuck my arm out.

On the street it's not too hard for me to remember that the throttle goes both ways. After I started doing track schools I slowed down (even more) on the street. After having flaggers to tell me there's an obstacle on the track over the next blind hill I suddenly noticed the lack of same on the street. When I wrote for the magazine we had a good relationship with Buell so I got to ride a lot of them. They were nice but the Harley engine was a big heavy lump.

mattm

Wow Celtic just won.

kensuf

firefox.

kensuf

For you gear heads, do any of you want to buy my BMW K1200RS? It's an '02, has about 75k on the odo. I used to ride it all over the place doing some iron butt type things and a bit of sport touring.

wanders

Amish MMA?

Who knew?

Creakyknees

watched some local cyclecross this morning. wow, what a silly game.

Racer Ex 

I tried to race an XR1000 in the BOT at Daytona one year. Not a great race bike. It finally blew sky high going into the chicane during practice. Trying to hold that thing upright in the pickup that took me back to the pits was an invitation to falling harder than I would have if I crashed during the actual race. I wasn't heart broken handing it back to the owner.

Best use of a Harley and perhaps the coolest 7 minutes of movie making about motorcycles ever:


I got to race against a few of the guys in the movie. I ended up with a Yamaha 750 that was raced by Steve Eklund, former AMA #1 who was killed in a mile race. Restoration project.

saratoga

Which gen Buell did you have... a tuber or an XB?

I had an 09 XB12 SS. It wan't a sport bike by any stretch but handled very good. There are a few pics posted here somewhere from when I did moto duty at the Tampa crit.

shovelhd

I had an original RS1200, I think it was a 1991. Chassis #200. Handmade by Erik before he was consumed by HD. I did some minor mods like S&S heads and carb, Andrews cams, and I had the monoshock modified by White Brothers for my riding weight.

botto 

if only folk in the 41 were so self aware.

ericm979

Nice! Got pics?

I got to interview Erik when I was playing moto journalist. He's a cool guy. We ended up talking about obscure 70's two strokes and of course about his first go at making motorcycles- he bought the rights to the Barton square four two stroke road racing engine with plans for making customer bikes for AMA's F750 class to replace the ageing TZ750s... then AMA canceled the class.

It sounds like Buell's going to come back. His chassis designs are too cool to not have a place in the market and the motor that Rotax made for him is worthy of the chassis.

gsteinb

dude, you're not old enough to relentfully beat the same drum. don't you grow tired of that schtick?

hammy56

I had a 98 Buell S1 White Lightning. Short wheelbase, good torque. Pretty fun, and surprisingly reliable.

hammy56

a good friend of mine worked for Buell's AMA effort on Danny Eslick's side last year...

saratoga

I ran a Drummer exhaust and had an EBR race ecm. They got rid of the flat spot from about 2750 to around 4500. Also had the Showa forks revalved and resprung which made a huge difference.

Never had any problems from that bike up to when I sold it with about 20k miles. Ran pretty good for what's basically a Sportster engine.