365 days of two-wheeled bliss

It was on this day in 2005 that I walked into Gold­en Gate Cycles on Pine Street and paid way too much for an under­pow­ered but shiny and pret­ty minia­ture cruis­er. I’d had my motor­cy­cle endorse­ment for all of thir­ty hours and was deter­mined not to be the squid who liqui­fies him­self on the way off the deal­er’s lot, so I was­n’t con­sid­er­ing any­thing big­ger than a 250cc bike. Oth­er than that, I want­ed some­thing I could buy with no mon­ey down. I was fig­ur­ing that if I got turned down on a cred­it check that that would be a sign not to get a bike yet, and if I were approved that it would be a good way to build my cred­it record.

19,000 miles lat­er, that Vira­go 250’s title is in my hand and I have had it on indef­i­nite loan to my girl­friend, who keeps it garaged for me. I ride an 1100cc Moto Guzzi that I have been com­pul­sive­ly mod­i­fy­ing and cus­tomiz­ing. The Moto Guzzi will be paid for in four years, after it fin­ish­es estab­lish­ing the cred­it record that the Yama­ha start­ed for me.

I spent the day with a cou­ple of friends from my rid­ing group. Turnsignal Tim had a one-piece leather rid­ing suit held for MotaL­isa, so the des­ti­na­tion for the day was Road Rid­er in San Jose. I also want­ed to drop in on Moto Ital­iano to see what they have for Moto Guzzis. I’m con­sid­er­ing some­thing a lit­tle sporti­er. On the way down we took Sky­line Dri­ve and stopped at Alice’s for breakfast.

The Vira­go came out of the shop yes­ter­day and the Moto Guzzi went into the shop yes­ter­day, so on the anniver­sary of pur­chas­ing the Vira­go, I got to take it out again for a real ride on some mod­er­ate­ly twisty roads. I’ve been grum­bling about the Vira­go for a while now, and even a bit embar­rassed about own­ing a bike that’s so small, cheap, an under­pow­ered. While it was in for its 4,000 mile ser­vice, I had the chain replaced and got a new rear tire to replace the almost-square mon­stros­i­ty that comes stock on the Vira­go. You can’t get good tires for a Vira­go, but I man­aged to find one that was less bad.

The first expe­ri­ence of the day was get­ting onto 280 going South, try­ing not to get left too far behind by Tim and Lisa, rid­ing their Suzu­ki TL 1000S and Ducati 900SS respec­tive­ly. The Virago’s top speed is some­where around 95mph, and that’s going down­hill with the wind at my back. Uphill I’m lucky not to drop below 70mph with the throt­tle wide open.

But then we got off the free­way and start­ed down Sky­line. I rode Sky­line on the Vira­go once, last April, maybe a month before buy­ing the Moto Guzzi. It was my first road with curves and it scared the hell out of me. Today I’ve rid­den it dozens of times on the Moto Guzzi, and have got­ten to know it pret­ty well, so those cor­ners aren’t blind ones to me any longer. I also have a lit­tle bit of expe­ri­ence get­ting a bike around cor­ners now, when I did­n’t at all in April.

You know what sur­prised me? How damn fun that bike is! It’s a lot lighter than the Moto Guzzi and has a short­er wheel­base, and I found that I could flick it around quite a bit. I was a lit­tle con­cerned div­ing into the cor­ners with a new tire, but by the end of the day, that tire was­n’t new any more!

Of course, some days you’re in the groove and some days you aren’t. That has noth­ing to do with what bike you’re on, but I was amazed by how fast I could go today on that lit­tle Vira­go 250.

It was dif­fi­cult, because as soon as the road straight­ened out to make pass­ing safer, MotaL­isa would pull away from me. But I stuck on her tail and dived into the cor­ners as best I could, and about two-thirds of the way down to Alice’s I man­aged to pass her on the inside of a cor­ner that was shal­low enough I could see a lit­tle ways for­ward. Yes, it does­n’t mean much, because as I said, some days you’re on and some days you’re not. But don’t think it did­n’t feel good to pass a more expe­ri­enced, more skilled rid­er who was on a pow­er­ful and sport-tuned Ducati, espe­cial­ly on my lit­tle 250.

I was amazed at how deep into the cor­ners I could go. I’d scraped the pegs on the Vira­go before, but usu­al­ly only on short, sharp curves. Today I scraped the pegs on fast sweep­ing turns. It was real­ly incred­i­ble. I think I have to give some cred­it to the new rear tire. When a tire gets squared off from too much upright rid­ing, it takes a lot more effort to get the bike leaned, and then once you push it far enough to get over the flat spot, it falls sud­den­ly right over and feels like the bike is going to fly out from under. With a not-very-round tire that does­n’t have a flat spot, you ini­ti­ate a lean and it goes. Maybe not as well or as fast as on a tire with a steep­er pro­file, but with­out the sur­prise when the lean final­ly happens.

One fac­tor in my improved per­for­mance today could well be that the Vira­go is an under­pow­ered and car­bu­rat­ed bike. I’ve been pay­ing atten­tion late­ly to mod­u­lat­ing my throt­tle in the turns, to gen­tly give myself enough throt­tle to main­tain my speed and com­pres­sion on the rear shocks with­out giv­ing myself any nasty sur­pris­es. Well, to be quite frank, with the Vira­go, I just did­n’t have the pow­er to give myself any nasty sur­pris­es. A lot of throt­tle went a lit­tle way and it became a lot eas­i­er to keep just the lev­el of throt­tle I wanted.

Now that the title is cleared, I do plan on sell­ing the Vira­go. I have the Guzzi back, so I won’t be spend­ing much time on the Vira­go. I’m real­ly very glad that I had this good expe­ri­ence with the Vira­go today. It’s nice to feel good about my first bike again.

At Moto Ital­iano, I testrode a V11 Sport Bal­labio. Not in love with it. It’s got that Guzzi motor I love, but the han­dle­bars are real­ly too high to be my less com­fort­able and more sporty bike. I’m con­sid­er­ing the V11 Cop­pa Italia, which has a much nicer sus­pen­sion than the Bal­labio, but I’d real­ly have to put clip-ons on instead of those tour­ing bars. And if I did­n’t hate the idea of clean­ing a chain again, there’s a used Tri­umph Speed Triple at Munroe for a third the price of a new V11 Cop­pa Italia. Why have two air-cooled trans­verse V‑twin shaft-dri­ven bikes with slight­ly dif­fer­ent con­fig­u­ra­tions when I could have two bikes that are actu­al­ly dis­sim­i­lar but great in their own right? Maybe my cred­it rat­ing is being built enough already. I don’t real­ly like inlines and par­al­lels, but an inline triple is unique enough to get me past that prejudice.

If I had a Tri­umph, I’m sure that parts would fall off fre­quent­ly enough for me not to miss being on a Moto Guzzi.