Aug

Um, helloo - my bike is not a “Recreational Vehicle”!

Chris on August 27th, 2008

“Motorcycles are no longer a cheap mode of transport, they’re now recreational vehicles.” - Larry Hagman on Discovery Channel

The other night I was watching a video someone taped from the discovery channel. I think the program was called “The history of Harley-Davidson Motorcycles”. I enjoyed the video even though I’m not a Harley fan.

Anyway, this isn’t about Harleys, so read on if you like your Harleys. What struck me was a comment one of the celebrity guests made, I think it was Larry Hagman, the guy from Dallas that got shot - apparently he’s also a bike owner. Anyway, he said motorcycles are no longer a cheap mode of transport, they’re now recreational vehicles. That got my attention, because if that is indeed the case, I must be living in the dark ages of motorcycling.
I’ll be the first to admit that my bike isn’t a cheap mode of transport. It’s a Superbike and is trying to do it’s best to cripple me financially. Between tyres, chains, sprockets, regular services etc, it will never be a cheap mode of transport. But it’s my preferred mode of transport. It’s definitely not a recreational vehicle, even though I use it for recreational purposes when the opportunity presents itself.

My bikes main purpose in life is to get me to work and back home on time during my daily 90km commute through rush hour traffic. I ride it every day and weekends when I can break away I go for a ride with my friends.

If you look at my bike, it’ll be easy to identify it as a working bike. It’s wearing almost square touring tyres, lots of dead bugs, some battle scars and the odometer will tell you it’s covered around 60 000km plus by the time you read this (it’s 3 years old). The chain is a mess of thick chain-lube and metal shavings and the rims are scarred from numerous tyre changes. To me, it’s my most prized possession and she’s cleaned regularly, serviced on time (even gets new oil between services) and of course, ridden daily. And when we go out to play, she gets ridden hard and fast whenever I get an opportunity.

So imagine my outrage when someone points at my tyres and laughs at their squareness. He must have heard somewhere that it makes you more of a man if your tyres are worn evenly and right to the edges. Now, that might be the case but my rear Bridgestone BT54 has already covered in excess of 10 000 km’s and there’s absolutely no way you’re going to keep them from squaring off - even if you take them to a track regularly, which is not a good idea with BT54’s, but it’s never stopped me. Then they refer to the unused parts of the tyres as chicken strips and compare them to their super sticky track tyres that has only done 3000km’s and are already reaching for the back door handle. I suppose their bikes are recreational vehicles because I’d go through a set of tyres every month if I decided to put sticky rubber on my bike. But thats a pet gripe, this isn’t about chicken strips.

A while ago a guy that almost had me convinced that I’m taking a risk by riding my bike every day. His argument was that the more you ride your bike the more the odds are against you for having a mishap. That argument was fundamentally flawed because as Axel later pointed out, the more you ride the better you become. Sure, an accident might find you but at least it probably wouldn’t be your fault, even though that wouldn’t make it hurt less. While pondering this I saw some statistics and it turned out most accidents are due to rider error and if you investigate further, it’s riders that don’t know their machinery and stand their bikes up around corners, out-brake themselves or just misjudge the circumstances. Experience will certainly help with that.

And lastly, because people think of their bikes as recreational vehicles, they think a bike with 50,000 on the clocks has done high mileage. Please. My 1300 Toyota has done 350,000 km’s. Why can’t my Superbike do 50,000?

I’ve struggled to sell all of my previous bikes because off their mileage and I’ll struggle with this one too. My Marauder had 65,000 km’s on the clock (not a single problem in the 3 years I had it), my TL I sold with 36,000 on the clock (no problems either in 2 years) and my R1 have done 65 000 - no problems with this bike either. My new GSX-R750 is now sitting on 6000km’s. It’s leading me to believe bikes like to be ridden because other people has all sorts of trouble with their bikes but mine just keeps going.

Show me the rider that can, in a mechanical sense anyway, punish the motor of a Superbike by riding it hard for any length of time. Sure people can wheelie a bike and mess up the clutch, head races and bearings, thrash it on a track (if they’re good enough) or be one of those idiots that revs their bikes and make it backfire at rallies and you’ll never be able to tell by looking at the bike.

Although my bike gets ridden a lot, it’s looked after. Even so, when my bike is parked next to a similar model with 10 000 kms on the clocks, people will often pay more for the bike with less mileage. And that’s because someone used it as a recreational vehicle, took it to a track once a month, rode to Franschoek every other Sunday and haven’t changed the oil in 2 years because it’s not at a service interval! Show me the logic in that.

Next time you walk past your bike to take the car to work, think of winter when you’d do anything for a nice day so you can ride your bike to work. So, don’t waste another minute. And if people laugh at your tyres ask them what mileage they cover in a month/year. Then tell them what you cover and kick their arses.