On the Virago today

The Moto Guzzi is in the shop today for its 1000 mile ser­vice, so after drop­ping it off last night I’ve been rid­ing the Yama­ha around again. In just two weeks I’ve been thor­ough­ly spoiled by the Moto Guzzi. It’s real­ly rough rid­ing this light­weight, low-pow­ered bike around. I hate to say “you told me so” but yeah Randy, it does feel like a scoot­er to me now.

Of course, I’m glad to have some­thing to ride while the Guzzi is in the shop. As a friend com­ment­ed last night, my worst day on a bike is bet­ter than my best day in a cage, and even the Vira­go is more fun to ride than pub­lic trans­porta­tion. Well, except maybe the cable­cars. I still get a kick out of rid­ing those as long as I don’t have to wait in line with the tourists to get on them.

I have a lit­tle bit more infor­ma­tion to go by now, and I think I know what’s both­er­ing me about the Vira­go. It’s not just the size or the pow­er, but the con­fig­u­ra­tion. because the bars are so high and the pegs are so far for­ward, all my weight rests on the back wheel. I can’t tell you specif­i­cal­ly how that affects steer­ing, but it does. The Vira­go does­n’t have the Moto Guzzi’s steer­ing damp­en­er either, mak­ing the bike feel even more twitchy in the front end. Fur­ther­more, every time I stop or slow, it makes a huge dif­fer­ence in the load­ing of the sus­pen­sion. It’s not a mat­ter of going from a neu­tral posi­tion to all the way for­ward at a stop, it’s the dif­fer­ence between going from all the way back to all the way forward.

Adding to the scoot­er feel is this feel­ing like I’m rid­ing up on top of the machine instead of rid­ing down with it. The dif­fer­ence is a lit­tle hard to explain. On the Yama­ha I’m sit­ting on my butt with each knee rest­ing against the gas tank and the feet for­ward on the pegs, which aren’t that far apart from one anoth­er. The effect is sort of like being on a barstool with feet on the footrail and a soft­ball between my knees.

The Moto Guzzi is a much wider bike and as I sit on it my legs make con­tact with the sad­dle or the tank almost to my knees, and then my feet go straight down to the pegs. Some of my weight is on my hands, some can be on my feet if I stand a lit­tle on the pegs, but my weight is rest­ing on my legs as much as on my butt. With the Vira­go I’m sit­ting up on top, where­as I actu­al­ly ride the Guzzi.

I still think the Vira­go will make a good bike for some­one else. Some­one eight inch­es short­er and six­ty pounds lighter than myself, for exam­ple. And of course I have no regrets. There will always be a fond­ness in my heart for the Vira­go 250. It taught me a lot and helped get me rolling. I just don’t real­ly want to ride one any more.