Street Cup On the Way

[Ulvetanna_imp]

An apposite quote from Wilhelm Busch in this respect is: "Each desire once fulfilled immediately begets another.

(Wilhelm Busch, German poet, * 15.04.1832, † 09.01.1908)

German philosophy and poetry...anytime you feel like quoting, please do so!

I have a feeling Ulve is one of those guys that can't be kept happy with one bike for too long. What I call a motorcycle transient

remember this thread from 2014? lol

http://cb1100forum.com/forum/showthread....=transient

I think forum member CIP57 explained it best:

I think for the most part motorcycles are for enjoyment not transportation. You can buy a bike for 10-15K ride it for two years at a cost of about 2g's a year. Can't do that with a car or people would trade them in too.

The thing about motorcycles is that while so many of them appear as though they would please, in the longer term they do not live up to their looks.

No one is going to wear out a motorcycle, not for the last fifty years for sure, unless that rider makes it a personal goal to do so. I know a guy who did exactly that, Mike Case. [url=http://www.sportrider.com/bikes/then-and-now-honda-cbr900rr-20th-anniversary-cbr-timeline]He had a CBR900RR, the first year model, and set out to break it, we think. He had well over 200,000 miles on it the last I heard. He must have really liked the bike, too.

I have had a few bikes I've really liked and rode a great deal. Naturally when we are younger and less able to afford more than one or two of these things, we ride just the one bike most. This creates a great familiarity with that particular bike, which often translates into a much higher skill level than might be thought. The one bike over all the years that I really return to as the very best at everything was an air-cooled 1989 BMW R100GS. And at this very moment I'm having "Voila!" revelation. That bike had almost exactly the same horsepower and weight as this new Street Cup. It was a shaft drive, 56 HP at the rear wheel, and weighed about 463 lbs wet. It also had just a single front disk with a twin piston caliper. And it was of course a twin.
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I found I could ride that motorcycle under any kind of circumstances. I used to ride it on weekends with the racer boy crowd, and what with the huge cornering clearance and wide bars, on the tighter roads it would just leave some riders with eyes like saucers trying to figure out what just happened. It was terrific for "adventure bike" riding, the low CG made it very easy to handle and I rode many hundreds of miles of offroad on that motorcycle. It was very comfortable on the freeway, as well. A guy could really just "live" on that saddle for hours at a time. That bike was a great machine and I regret trading it, but there was something else that came up which was a higher priority. It had the highest mileage of any one bike I ever owned, 43,000 miles in two years or so. And I owned another bike at that time which I rode a lot.

That other bike was also a twin, a [url=http://www.motorcycle-usa.com/2013/12/article/honda-hawk-gt-born-before-its-time/]Hawk GT 647, called by Honda fans the "RC31". I believe it made about 37 HP at the rear wheel and weighed 412 lbs wet.
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That bike was everything the article states. It was very much loved by some of the top people in the industry, the Erion Brothers, Keo Watanabe, Dan E. Coe, and of course yours truly here. That thing handled better than just about anything on the planet at the time, and was in fact a Ducati-beater, particularly if one was head downhill on Angeles Crest Highway. The Clubhouse Boys will never admit this, though.

So this new Triumph has perfectly captured all the qualities I loved so much about those two twins, but with completely modern technology. I've most definitely chosen the parallel twin as my mill of choice; my GS's with the Rotax engines have really impressed me. Here again, the F700GS is about 470 pounds, with 75 HP but impressive torque. And it's got ABS and traction control as well.

We try a lot of stuff over the years; some people have the idea that it is admirable to know what you want and have life all figured out from a perspective of philosophy, world view, personal choices, and faith (or lack of faith) from an early age, say around 15 or so. Then life is easy. It's all thought out, and those who change their minds about things must be unpredictable and thus, not trustworthy. I know some people like that, and they are about as interesting as watching paint dry.

So we try a lot of stuff, and in the end generally gravitate to what felt and worked best. What felt and worked best for me over the years was two cylinders, mid-400-lb range, great handling and versatility.