And another thing is that I don’t really like the look of sport bikes.
Oh, I should probably back up that train of thought a little since you’re not privy to the conversation that’s been running in my head the past few days.
In my previous post, I talked about the dead-end feeling of not having a bike, nor the money for a bike. I ended the post, though, with the observation that –– with a bit of effort –– I can probably dig enough from my very tight budget to have £500 by the end of the summer. I name that figure because it seems to be the watermark on eBay and BikeTrader for bikes that (allegedly) run. And, indeed, it is an optimistically low figure, with a more decent choice of bikes found at the £900 mark.
“Well, you know, if the bike actually runs, why not?” I’ve been asking myself. “The point is to be on a bike, and if it’s a POS, well, that’s just storytelling fodder.”
Afterall, my first car was a rusted-out 1969 Ford F250 that I bought for $300. It held up for about a year before I sold it off for scrap. But a year is a year, right? And thanks to that old truck I learned a lot about working on cars because I had no fear of permanently messing things up.
In my present situation I don’t need a bike for commuting; I don’t need something I can depend on to take me to Spain or some such thing. Sure, I’d like something like that, I’d love something trustworthy and reliable. But reliability costs money and I don’t absolutely need it right now. In my present situation, I probably wouldn’t do rides much greater than 30 miles –– mostly down to Southerndown or up to the Brecon Beacons. Bristol occasionally, or perhaps Abergavenny.
My bank gives me RAC coverage for free, so if I broke down there’d be someone to come pick up me and the bike. And if the bike decides not to start one day, I live within pushing distance of a small motorcycle garage. With the most important thing for me at the moment being the simple act of being on a bike, why not buy a POS?
That’s the argument I’ve managed to build up over the previous few days. Hitherto, I think I was too locked on the issue of quality and everyday reliability. In March and April I had interviews for jobs in Bristol and Swindon respectively, and imagined myself using a bike to commute. For that sort of journey I knew I would need something I could 100-percent depend on, and which preferably had antilock brakes. But with no such job opportunities on the horizon, I can shift my focus and dramatically lower my standards.
 |
| A 1982 Yamaha XJ650 rat bike advertised for £600. Note the seat consists of electrical tape. |
So, after a long conversation with myself I started dwelling at the bottom end of the classified ads, looking at what is (and isn’t) available. Doing so has introduced me to a world of sport bikes from the late 80s/early 90s, and adverts so badly spelled as to be almost indecipherable. Old sport bikes, yo. Or bland all-rounders dressed up with sport fairing and terrible “sport” paint schemes. Honda CBRs, Yamaha Fazers, Suzuki SV650s, Kawasaki ZZRs and on and on and on. This is clearly the kind of bike that Britons like. Indeed, some refuse to accept there can be any other kind of machine; a blogger for Motorcycle News recently suggested a Victory Judge is “not a ‘proper’ bike.”
(I now refuse to read MCN as result of that comment)
And certainly I can see the appeal of a sport/sport-like bike. When it’s new. But when it’s 30 years old, its fairing cracked and faded, its technology now awkwardly out of date, and its look so painfully stuck in a specific era, my emotional response is: “No thanks.”
To me, those bikes just don’t look cool. They don’t meet the Chris Jericho test.
Chris Jericho is quite possibly the greatest professional wrestler of all time, and he said the key to his incredible success was developing a character that guys wanted to be like and girls wanted to be with. When I’m on a bike, ideally, that’s how I want to feel.
When I was learning to ride, in shop windows I caught vision of myself on the CBF600s my training school used, and I wasn’t ticking the boxes. Maybe other people would, but I didn’t. I didn’t look sexy or threatening; if I saw me riding past, I wouldn’t turn gay for me. Sure, I’ll happily suffer such a fate if my bike’s got ABS and 70 mpg. But without it, it becomes a thrift store Cosby sweater whose irony I am unable to appreciate.
So, I find myself looking at old cruisers. The pickings are incredibly slim. But maybe, maybe I’ll find something. And then won’t I look cool standing on the roadside, waiting for the RAC to come pick me up?
Leave a Reply