Leanings
LEANINGS
Suspended logic
Peter Egan
HAD TO DROP OFF MY DUCATI ST2 FOR its 600-mile post-break-in check-up last Wednesday—just slightly overdue, as usual, at 1100 miles—so I called up my good friend Jim to see if he wanted to ride along in my van.
“Thought I might make the rounds of three or four different dealerships in southern Wisconsin, as long as we’re out and about, and look at some new bikes,” I said. “Want to go?”
Jim said, “Well, I don’t know. I might have to take a sick day to do it.”
“How are you feeling?”
“Kind of feverish, all of a sudden.” “Better take a day off.”
Luckily, Jim discovered he still had a useable vacation day, so he didn’t have to feign death to get off work. I picked him up at 7:30 in the morning, stopped at a convenience store for a large coffee and a fried apple fritter about the size of a catcher’s mitt, and we were on our way to a day of freedom and bike gazing.
I dropped off the Duck for service, and then swung home in a huge triangle that took us to a series of dealerships that handled, variously, BMW, Ducati, KTM, Triumph, Suzuki, Harley, Aprilia and Kawasaki. Pretty much the full gamut, except for Honda and Yamaha, and I’d looked at those a few days earlier.
It was a wonderful day. We sat on bikes, wasted sales staff time, drank tiny cups of gourmet coffee, looked at many bikes from many angles, collected brochures and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of new designs and engineering ideas. Jim, who is an engineer himself, shares my belief that motorcycle design is somehow symptomatic of the relative health of Western Civilization.
On the way home, late that afternoon, Jim said, “Well, did you see any bike you can’t live without?”
“Sure,” I responded without hesitating, “lots of ’em. But I sometimes wonder if we aren’t entering the Mannerist phase of motorcycle design.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, back when I was a D+ student in Art History 101, our professor taught us that artists spent centuries learning to depict perspective properly, so the feet of saints didn’t point straight down and buildings didn’t look all crooked and piled up on one another. Then, once they perfected realistic proportion, some painters felt they had run out of new things to do, so in the 16th century they started painting people with exceptionally long necks, exaggerated proportions and their eyes too far apart. This was called the Mannerist School of art.”
“I see where this is going,” Jim said.
I shrugged. “There are still a lot of perfectly sensible, normal bikes out there, but in a day of looking at new bikes you can see quite a few cases of logic being stretched in the name of art, or clever design.”
“For instance?”
“For instance, why would you build a BMW sport-tourer with an upswept muffler that cuts the volume of one of its two saddlebags in half? On a long, two-up trip, who’s supposed to get that tiny saddlebag? You or your wife? It doesn’t make any sense.”
This, of course, touched off a discussion that lasted all the way home, based on various bikes we’d looked at. So Jim and I decided to help out the design staffs of motorcycle companies, in our own inimitable way, by setting down some Engineering Ideas That Never Go Out Of Fashion. I thought it might help the modern sculptors who fashion our bikes leave us at least a semblance of logic and comfort. Here’s a list of timeless good ideas that will almost always warm the hearts of potential motorcycle buyers. Especially your slightly older ones, like me and Jim.
Light weight. All but pure dirt and sportbikes seem to be getting larger and heavier each year, yet lighter is always better. I know of no exceptions; a heavy bike is a pig forever.
An accessible battery. My Ducati and the BMW RUOOS testbike I had a few summers ago both have the batteries buried deeply within the bodywork. Bad idea.
A comfortable seat. The new Multistrada we looked at has the hardest seat I’ve ever sat on, and the KTM 950 Adventure isn’t much better. Even the dealers are astounded by them. We are told optional factory “comfort” seats may become available. Why not make the “discomfort” seat an option, just to see how many people would order one?
A flat seat. Men, expecially, don’t like to be slid into the tank under braking, and I’ve never met a passenger who prefers a high perch.
Centerstands. Those who fear ground contact while racing may easily take them off The rest of us love them.
Adjustable-or swappable tubular-handlebars. Fixed bars always make someone unhappy.
Big gas tanks. I don’t know a single living human-outside of drag racing-who likes small gas tanks. On a tourer or sport-tourer, 200 miles of range is a nice minimum goal.
Windshields that don’t make you deaf. Much wind-tunnel work needed here on most of the bikes I’ve owned and ridden.
Clocks. Never mind Peter Fonda throwing his watch away in Easy Rider, most of us have places to go, and we hate unzipping jackets and gloves to get at a wristwatch while riding.
Petcocks on gas tanks. Gas gauges are nice, too, but a petcock with Reserve has a less vivid imagination.
Good styling. If you think the bike you’ve just designed might be really ugly, ask around before you stick the poor dealer with it.
Heated grips. You can probably skip these on a pure sportbike, but they are a wonderful thing on any bike intended for travel.
That about does it. Oh, yeah, I forgot reasonable seat height. If seats get any taller on adventure-tourers, I’ll have to hire a Mannerist painter to draw me a longer set of legs.
And maybe take some of the gray out of my beard and lose the bifocals... □
