My new "motorcycle"

[Guth_imp]

I have been following GP since 1972 and remember well the 50 cc GP races. Sounding like a bunch of bumblebee bees and passing at seemingly impossible places.

Man, that's awesome. It is seemingly all to easy for me to forget the depth and width required to measure your experience with and exposure to motorcycling overall. That likely plays into your feelings that are similar to others, include VLJ's to some degree...

Reading mickey's and Guth's posts, I admit to being torn on the subject. Guth is correct, in that the experience is every bit as visceral in a soft top, if not more so. mickey is correct, in that leaning the correct way just feels better. The explosive rush of speed a motorcycle can provide is also a difference maker. No real-world car can match the instant acceleration of something even as pedestrian as an $8K Z900, never mind something like a BMW S1000-RR. If you like to feel your hair on fire exiting a corner, or approaching one, cars can't match sportbikes.

That being said, cars are just as fast on public roads, to a point. If the bike rider is willing to use every last ounce of available acceleration, nope, the car can't hang. It'll cook its brakes, never mind the driver's skill and/or nerve, or lack thereof, bottling out. If the bike rider isn't pinning it between every corner, however, yes, the car is just as fast, maybe faster. He certainly can carry more corner speed, unless, again, the bike rider is willing to treat a public road like it's a racetrack.

I'm not, and I don't pin it between every corner, so for me and, I suspect, most other people, a good sportscar is just as fast on a public road. We all know how much faster race cars are on the track, vs race bikes.

I think the main issue is fear management vs thrillseeking. Which side of the spectrum does one fall on? If one is willing to go balls out on a bike, the bike is more thrilling and much more engaging. Below that very dangerous threshold, however, I think things even up quite a bit.

Conversely, if we go the other direction and compare casual riding to casual driving, I think the top-down sportscar experience is more visceral, more thrilling, and more satisfying. Riding a very fast bike slowly, being overtly cautious on it, is not very satisfying. In fact, it's quite the opposite. It's a bit frustrating. That's why I would never want to drive a mega-horsepower supercar on a public road. It'd be worthless. It would be nothing but an exercise in impulse control. My GSX-R1000 was like that. 123 mph in second gear meant that I never got to use much of the motor, or any of the bike's capabilities, really.

The Miata is like an older 600 sportbike, say, a CBR600F2, or F4i. It's fast enough to be fun, fast enough to be thrilling, fast enough to be a terror in modded form at the track, yet not so powerful that you never get to twist the throttle hard. If you screw up a bit, it won't kill you, nor will it land you in the pokey. The ride and handling aren't racetrack sharp. It's just simple, undiluted, made-for-public-roads fun.

I do feel more of a sense of achievement following a great ride, however, or, especially, a good motorcycle roadie. It's just easier in the car, requiring less concentration, less constant attention.

Yeah, all in all, I still prefer the overall feeling from a great motorcycle. Like I said in the initial post, though, a Miata isn't a bad trade-off, if trading off ever becomes necessary. You're giving up something, but not everything.

I suppose that I truly do feel fortunate in that I am just as enamored with the driving experience as I am with the riding experience. Every single time I head out for a ride I am instantly taken back to my childhood, for however briefly. I say this as the sensation of riding almost any motorcycle yields enough similarities to those that I first enjoyed as a little kid riding a Z50 Mini-Trail. Even after technological "advances" have managed to wipe out everything else that I have found attractive about motorcycles (both in admiring them and in riding them), the "lean" will always remain.

While manufacturers are working to eliminate so many of the very things that are core to the joy I get from riding and driving, I prefer the satisfaction I receive from doing things the old-school way. Be it a motorcycle or a car, I like to interact with the machine as much as possible rather than having the vehicle do all the work for me. Rev-matching is a great example. In a car, rev-matching using heel & toe inputs deep into corner entry to weight the front wheels in preparation for the turn is more challenging yet also similar to blipping the throttle and working the clutch and front brake on a motorcycle to achieve the same thing. But I consider this type of stuff to be part of the "craft" of either riding or driving. When done properly both bring me great joy.

With driving, my heel & toe technique has quite a ways to go, but in my case that's a good thing. Working to maximize the efficiency and smoothness of my control inputs will keep me entertained to no end. The improvements that I've enjoyed from the time that I have invested in this has been incredibly rewarding thus far. My guess is that be it consciously or subconsciously, VLJ is already making a number of adjustments to his driving control inputs to compensate for his injuries. Yet even the manner in which he makes those adjustments impacts his smoothness and efficiency.

I find it entertaining watching just how instinctual Motoharu Kurosawa's (a retired Japanese race driver nicknamed "Gan-San") inputs are in this video of him driving the S2000 prototype. How hard he can push the car in for him what amounts to a casual drive impressive. Only the speed is not what I'm focused on here so much as the coordination and casualness of his inputs as it relates to the car's handling. These things can be applied at practically any speed and I find this type of thing incredibly rewarding when done right.

[Wisedrum]

Can you imagine riding on those skinny wheels and keeping the bike between 14,000 and 16,000 rpms? Lol

Van Veen was the Dutch Kreidler importer but he built his own bike a 1000cc jobbie using a Citroen car engine. It actually looked pretty good.

It has a very special motor, an 2 disks Wankel engine. Don't know that Citroen has ever built such an engine.

I remember the tests in a magazine "MOTORRAD" in the 70s.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.motorra...-veen/amp/

This article is a later one, more kind of a look back than testing an actual bike. After I read the text, the motorbike was modified rereleased and its engine was based on a NSU RO80 by Citroen.

The Van Veen was only produced in small numbers, very rare and expensive. In the 70s I owned a Hercules W2000. So I found Wankel engines somehow fascinating and extraordinary. Not many motorbikes have had them.

Wisedrum

[Houtman_imp]

The 50 cc race was always the first one to start the Dutch TT at 10 am on the last Saturday in June , like Ferret said it was as if a swarm of bees was coming as in the first lap they were still fairly close together.
Later that day the 350 and 500 cc MV Augusta and Benelli's had unbelievable sounds , I will never forget these times and sounds.

[VLJ_imp]

Guth, I've tried heel-toeing in this car. Can't do it yet. I can't articulate my ankle enough to make it work. Also, my sandal is too bulky and cumbersome. Lotta slop there.

Truth be told, it's not all that important to me. It's a great, fun skill, to be sure, but I'm not shooting for lap times up there in the mountains. I don't need every last tenth of a second. I'm just having fun.

You're right, though, in that part of having fun is learning and mastering a satisfying skill. The Miata is a perfect car for heel-toeing, which will only make the experience even more fun. Yes, I'm sure I'll get to it, once I can physically manage it.

The one thing I can say about a good convertible vs a motorcycle is they share that all-important feeling of occasion that is missing from an ordinary car. I always used to love going out to the garage, opening it, and seeing my CB1100, knowing that today gets to be a Motorcycle Day! Definitely not another day at work. Nope, today is for adventures, sights, scents, salsas, tacos, Red Bulls, rushing wind, blurred scenery...FUN!

It's no different with the Miata. It's bright red, it's sporty, you can take the top down, and there it is, the whole world before you, imploring you to come out and play.

Yep, very motorcycle-ish.

You know one other way I know this thing is kind of like a motorcycle?

Like a total idiot, I still find myself doing my usual lowered, two-fingered 'V'-shaped acknowledgement wave whenever a motorcycle goes by, just like I did when I was riding. I don't mean to. It's not a conscious decision, and I don't do it when I'm in other cars. When I'm in this car, however, it just happens automatically.

Kindred spirits.

[Guth_imp]

You know VLJ, I'm not sure that I can say being able to employ the heel & toe technique is all that important to me. I can certainly have fun without doing so, that's not in question. It's just like so many other things in life that interest me but don't really matter to most other people out there in the world — it's one of those things that brings me satisfaction well beyond any performance benefits it might bring. It can be done just driving around the neighborhood for that matter. I mention it because much like riding a motorcycle, I look at driving a sports car as something that I can choose how involved I want to be, or not.

For that matter, I generally have tended to thumb my nose at automatic transmissions, be associated with a car or a motorcycle. However, thinking about how I might feel if faced between riding or not riding, or between driving or not driving simply because my capacity to work a clutch had been lost due to any number of reasons, I reckon that I would be more than grateful for the opportunity just to remain "out there". So my stance has started to change with time. Because for me, at the end of the day "being out there" is what it's all about for me. Be it motorcycles or sports cars, the majority of my friends and acquaintances just don't get it. To them, I've always just been "that guy" who's just a little bit different. Thank God.

In the meantime, I'll keep working on my H & T technique and look forward to reading how things work out with your ankle dexterity — whether or not that means that there might be some heel * toe action in your near future is besides the point. Sometimes improvements are measured in much smaller increments. But improvement is improvement, plain and simple. Having something like this specificallyto shoot for is just a different way of measuring improvement than what the typical PT might come up with, lol.

As far as the two-fingered "V" motion is concerned, my guess is that this speaks just as much to the mindset that you once again find yourself being able to enjoy as it does anything else. S2000 drivers wave to one another, but there's nothing special to the wave and I don't see all that many other S2000 drivers out and about that I have to worry much about my technique so to speak. In my case, when I'm out in the S200o during nicer weather (much like the ferret's brother, I'm pretty much only really interested in driving the S2000 when I can put the top down) I'll usually wave at anyone in a two-seater with the top down, just as I do to anyone else out on two-wheels when I'm on the CB1100. The response rate amongst roadster owners isn't any lower than amongst motorcyclists overall. The bottom line for me is that when I'm "out there" life is good.

[VLJ_imp]

Yeah, but when you're in the S2000 do you wave at motorcyclists, and when you're on your CB1100 do you wave at people in convertibles?

That's where I'm at now, and I think it makes me even more weird.

[Stichill_imp]

^ I must be weird; I do both as well.

[Guth_imp]

Yeah, but when you're in the S2000 do you wave at motorcyclists, and when you're on your CB1100 do you wave at people in convertibles?

That's where I'm at now, and I think it makes me even more weird.

I suppose the possibility does exist. I'm usually having too much fun to pay close attention. Besides, if that was the worst of my "weird" problems I'd be so much better off, lol.

[VLJ_imp]

Her first glimpse of an ocean...



"This is where I belong," she says...

[LongRanger_imp]

VLJ, you named your CB, “Monica.” How should we properly address your new red beauty?