Love the One You're With

Love the one you're with

LEANINGS

Peter Egan

I'VE LONG BELIEVED THE NEXT-BEST thing to buying an interesting new motorcycle yourself is talking a friend into buying one, and then taking this latest object of desire for a test ride. Using this brilliant strategy back in the Seventies, for instance, I had an opportunity to ride the brand-new Yamaha SR500 Single I couldn't afford because I'd just bought a used Honda CB750 Four. A little earlier, I'd also managed to get myself an all-day ride on a silver-smoke BMW R100RS in exchange for a ride on my brand-new Norton 850 Interstate.

Both the Yamaha and the BMW were owned, sequentially, by my pal John Jaeger. Through this swapping proce dure, we both got to ride and evaluate two motorcycles about which we were curious but were temporarily helpless to buy. A four-bike experience for the price of two.

The benefits of this system came back to me dramatically last week, when Barb and I rode our Guzzi 1000SP to the Su perbike races at Elkhart Lake.

Editor Edwards flew in for all the Harley 95th Anniversary doings in Milwaukee, then rode a borrowed Road King up to Elkhart Lake. Joining him were our old European touring pals, Tom Overbey, Chuck Davis and Allan Gold. Tom had a Honda CBR900RR, Chuck recently bought a VFR75O Honda and Allan showed up on his new blue-and-white YZF600 Yamaha.

After the races (won by Ducati, of course), we spent Monday on an all-day ride in the green and hilly hinterlands of western Wisconsin, stopping at my house south of Madison, where we had some coffee and I swapped the Guzzi for my 1981 bevel-drive 900SS Ducati, just for the sake of variety and more noise. Tom and his 900RR split off from the group, but the rest of us con tinued the ride, resuscitated by caffeine.

As we rode through the curvy valley roads to Dodgeville, I traded bikes with Chuck, hopping on his VFR for about 25 miles. Within minutes of changing over to the Honda, I was ac tually chuckling to myself inside my helmet. The contrast was almost other worldly, and I later told Chuck it was "like climbing out of a WWI U-boat and into a Honda Civic."

The Ducati is hard, solid and me chanically direct, almost to the point of cruelty, sort of like riding a very fast log fence. It's a hair-shirt motor cycle for the earnest penitent, while the VFR is refined, smooth, light of touch, creamy in its operation and ef fortless to ride fast. It works with you, instantly.

Chuck got off the Ducati amazed at its long-legged, easy stride and loco motive-like power delivery. He did not, however, feel comfortable going any where near as fast as he does on his Honda, and he rode with the respectful wonder a tourist to Egypt might use while riding a camel for the first time. ("Don't do anything sudden, sir, or she'll bite your leg off.")

Next, I swapped bikes with Allan, climbing aboard his YZF600, a bike I'd never ridden before but expected to find cramped, peaky and twitchy-fast.

Wrong on all counts. I was instantly amazed by the civilized comfort of a motorcycle that, from a distance, looks like an extreme sportbike. The seat is downright cushy, its legroom ample and the relatively high bars put you in a comfortable forward cant that makes you want to ride all day. Controlled yet supple suspension, powerful brakes and almost magical agility; smooth en gine with a pleasantly raspy edge, making a lot of power above 9000 rpm, but also tons of usable thrust almost down to idle speed.

I'd ridden the VFR before, so that ride was more a reminder of the bike's excellence than a foray into any new territory, but the YZF knocked my socks off with its seemingly unrecon cilable combinations of stability and agility, hyper-drive top end and low end torque, comfort and compactness. 1 have to say, quite honestly, I've never had quite so much fun riding these familiar roads. The YZF is like a dream of flying.

Allan, who also dropped to the rear with my 900SS, nevertheless turned down several chances to trade back. He was having a good time, immersed in the world of the old bevel-drive thunder. When he finally did get off, he said, "This thing positively does not steer! It changes direction when you lean into a corner, but it doesn't really steer!" A fair and accurate com ment, I thought. He also noted it was remarkably stable in fast corners and said he loved the sound and feel of the engine, the mechanical precision of the controls.

David, meanwhile, declined to trade his windshield-equipped Harley with anyone. He was having a bad allergy at tack (we were riding in peak hay fever season, approaching the date of our fa mous Ragweed Festival), and he want ed no extra airflow through his helmet.

On the way home, I traded back to my 900SS. It felt strange and stiff at first, but then I adapted to its rhythms and limits, and by the time I got home it was booming along in all its free-flowing desmo glory. It felt magnificent.

And so it's been on so many other bike-swapping rides. Great motorcy cles of all eras feel wonderful if you accept their particular mechanical mes sages. "Betterness" transfers itself to a slightly different set of peculiarities and virtues, and soon you are riding in what is merely an alternate order of bliss, no better or worse than the other. It seems to take a short period of adap tation for the rider to soak in this new kind of soul, and then a strange variety of amnesia sets in. The memory of other bikes fades away and the one you are on begins to feel like the best mo torcycle on Earth.

Good thing, too, or we'd all be broke. And I'd have a VFR and a YZF sitting in my heavily mortgaged garage at this very moment, next to the Duck and the Guzzi. All four seem to enjoy what might be called "inde pendent superiority."