Let's Ride_ Sonny Barger's Guide to Motorcycling Part 2

That doesn't mean you can just take a race bike or a dirt bike, wire up some lights, and go get a license plate. Likewise you might run into problems if you try to license a custom-built motorcycle, or if you've bought a custom-built motorcycle from a builder. Almost every state requires a motorcycle to be manufactured specifically for use on public roads, meaning that it will pa.s.s all state and federal department of transportation and emissions requirements. Usually the licensing bureau can tell if your bike is legal just from the serial number.

Some people have figured out how to get license plates on just about anything, but I've never had any reason to do this. I always ride street-legal motorcycles, so I've never looked into what's involved. Besides, licensing a nonconforming motorcycle is illegal just about everywhere, and in some states doing so will even land you in jail.

I've got people from various law-enforcement agencies watching my every move so I can't get away with anything. The last thing I need is to end up in jail because I broke the law to get a license plate for a Harley XR750 dirt-tracker or some one-off chopper that doesn't meet state and federal regulations. The feds would probably say it was a larger conspiracy and charge me with racketeering. If you want to do this, that's your business, but you'll need to seek advice from someone else.

ANTIQUE MOTORCYCLES.

YOU'LL ALSO HAVE TO learn about antique motorcycles elsewhere. This book is a guide for people who want to become hard-core motorcyclists, riders who want to get out on the road and put some serious miles under their b.u.t.ts. For that you're going to need a reliable modern motorcycle that doesn't break down or need extraordinary maintenance. That rules out antique or custom motorcycles. learn about antique motorcycles elsewhere. This book is a guide for people who want to become hard-core motorcyclists, riders who want to get out on the road and put some serious miles under their b.u.t.ts. For that you're going to need a reliable modern motorcycle that doesn't break down or need extraordinary maintenance. That rules out antique or custom motorcycles.

Antique motorcycles have old parts that are often worn out and hard (or even impossible) to replace when they break out on the road. They just don't make this stuff anymore. This was true even before these bikes became antiques; back in the 1950s when we rode motorcycles built in the 1940s, it was nearly impossible to find replacement parts. Even if the antique motorcycle has been perfectly restored, you'll still be relying on an outdated electrical system. Most antique engines either use undependable six-volt systems or they have total-loss magneto systems, neither of which is conducive to having a motorcycle that starts every time you need it to start.

There is something kind of cool about kick-starting an old motorcycle. It requires skill to get an old bike running, but take it from me-it's a lot of work. Having a motorcycle that starts every time you push a b.u.t.ton on your handlebar is very convenient. If a bike has a kick-starter, it's almost certainly an antique and is best suited for sitting in someone's collection, and not for getting you where you need to go.

Old bikes might be cool, but everything about modern motorcycles is better than old bikes, from a practical standpoint. Even the basic material from which manufacturers make engines has improved over time. Now engines are made out of aluminum instead of cast iron because aluminum cools better and thus doesn't wear out as fast.

Still, antique motorcycles are great to look at in shows. It's fun to see how motorcycle technology developed, and for some of us old-timers it's nostalgic to see the types of bikes we used to ride. But when it comes to getting from one place to the other safely and reliably, I wouldn't want to go back to the old days. Give me the most functional, reliable modern motorcycle available. Unless you are a wizard mechanic who can overhaul your bike by the side of the road with nothing but an adjustable wrench and a Zippo lighter, you're better off avoiding "cla.s.sic" bikes as your main source of transportation.

CHOPPERS AND BOBBERS.

I ALSO RECOMMEND STAYING ALSO RECOMMEND STAYING away from custom motorcycles when you're starting out, for the same reason you should avoid antiques: they are complete pains in the a.s.s to own and ride. Custom motorcycles are bikes that have been modified or even built from scratch. The most common are choppers and bobbers. away from custom motorcycles when you're starting out, for the same reason you should avoid antiques: they are complete pains in the a.s.s to own and ride. Custom motorcycles are bikes that have been modified or even built from scratch. The most common are choppers and bobbers.

When I first started riding, if you said the word motorcycle motorcycle in the United States, the first thing that came to mind was a big, heavy Harley-Davidson. At the time these were the best bikes available for comfortable highway riding, but a lot of us wanted more performance than a stock Harley was capable of delivering. We didn't have much money to buy parts to make the engines faster, and even if we did, such parts weren't easy to come by. We couldn't just go online, order whatever we wanted, and have it shipped across the country. More often than not if we wanted a specific part, we had to figure out a way to make it ourselves. in the United States, the first thing that came to mind was a big, heavy Harley-Davidson. At the time these were the best bikes available for comfortable highway riding, but a lot of us wanted more performance than a stock Harley was capable of delivering. We didn't have much money to buy parts to make the engines faster, and even if we did, such parts weren't easy to come by. We couldn't just go online, order whatever we wanted, and have it shipped across the country. More often than not if we wanted a specific part, we had to figure out a way to make it ourselves.

A cheaper and easier way to make our bikes faster was to take parts off and make them lighter. That didn't cost any money at all, so most of us younger guys chopped parts off to create stripped-down hot-rod bikes. We'd take off fenders, extra lights, any bodywork that wasn't absolutely necessary, and pretty much anything else that didn't contribute to making the bike faster. Some guys even took off the brakes!

We never really had a name for the bikes we customized. According to the stories you read in the press, people called this type of bike a "bobber" or a "bob job," because some people called taking off parts "bobbing" back then. They're still called "bobbers" today, but I think names like "bobber" and "chopper" came from the motorcycle industry and not the people out there customizing bikes. They probably figured it would be easier to sell us junk if they gave it a catchy name.

By the time the industry types started calling our custom bikes "choppers," we'd begun to focus more on style. This happened during a wild time in our country's history. A lot of craziness was happening, and we were young and a little wild ourselves. Our bikes reflected that. People started chopping and rewelding frames to increase the rake of the bike (the angle at which the fork extends away from the frame). They also made forks longer and handlebars higher. Every year people made their forks longer, their handlebars higher, and their rakes more extreme until it got so out of control that the bikes became just about impossible to ride.

Throughout all this insanity I kept my bikes pretty functional. I did some stuff that I now realize was probably crazy, like removing the front brakes and extending the front forks, though never by more than four inches. I also took the rocker-arm clutch pedal and cut it in half, turned it upside down, and made a suicide clutch out of it. With no front brake and a suicide clutch, I had to hit neutral at every stop. That's not the safest way to stop.

I never changed the rake on any of my bikes; a radically raked front end is one of the main characteristics of a chopper. Then, as now, I liked to ride more than anything. I like to move hard and fast, which is not what choppers are meant to do. Engineers spend years developing the best angle for a bike's rake, which largely determines how a bike handles. In the 1940s Harley tried a different rake on its bike each year, looking for the perfect angle, but the company never quite nailed it because the Harleys of the 1940s and even 1950s needed steering dampers to prevent high-speed wobbles. I don't think Harley really got it right until the 1960s, when it was able to do away with the steering damper.

If it took Harley decades to find the perfect angle for the rake of its bikes, I don't expect that I'd be able to improve a bike much by spending an afternoon cutting and welding my frame to get a different rake. I'm not an engineer, but neither are all the other people experimenting with the rakes on their custom bikes. As a result of all this backyard engineering, virtually every radically raked custom bike built during the 1960s and 1970s was unsafe to ride.

I've talked to custom bike builders today who claim that they've figured out the right measurements to make a radically raked custom bike safe to ride, and I imagine that they're a lot safer than earlier examples, but I have a hard time believing that these builders can make a bike handle as well as the engineers who design frames using decades of research on motorcycle handling.

Arlen Ness, the king of the customs, may be an exception. Arlen has been a very good friend of mine for over fifty years and probably knows as much about engineering a motorcycle cha.s.sis as anyone at any motorcycle-manufacturing company. His bikes handle better than any other custom I've ever ridden (and better than a lot of factory bikes), but I still ride a mostly stock motorcycle. When it comes to motorcycle riding, I have enough to worry about without having a bike that is trying to kill me because of its poorly engineered cha.s.sis. I want my motorcycle to be safe; just "safer" doesn't quite cut it.

Choppers and bobbers may look cool, but they're better to look at than they are to ride. Some people claim that their custom bikes are reliable, but I've been riding a long time with a lot of people, many of whom ride choppers and bobbers, and in my experience these types of bikes are anything but reliable. They're homemade bikes, and as such they're p.r.o.ne to all sorts of oddball failures that you never encounter on a well-engineered, ma.s.s-produced motorcycle.

The welds on homemade gas and oil tanks seldom seem to stand up to the constant shaking of V-twin engines, and custom bikes spring leaks with such regularity that you can almost count on this happening if you ride any farther than the local bar or cafe. Their electrical systems are usually homemade, too, and unless the guy who did the wiring was a certified genius, these bikes are more likely to short out and leave you stranded than they are to run reliably. In Arizona during April (when we have our annual bike week), almost every bike you see broken down on the side of the road is a custom that someone thought was reliable enough to ride a lot of miles. They thought wrong.

Even if these bikes were reliable enough to use for everyday transportation, they're too uncomfortable to ride for more than half-hour to forty-five-minute stretches. The riding position is designed to make you look cool rather than to make you comfortable. As a result, homemade bikes place you in the worst possible riding position for long days in the saddle. After just a few hours, parts of you that you didn't even know you had will hurt. Your joints will hurt, your internal organs will hurt, and your muscles will feel like you've just spent an afternoon being pummeled by a boxer. Some people are into this, but then some people are into pouring hot wax on their privates. To each his own, I suppose, but pain doesn't do much for me.

Choppers are more uncomfortable than bobbers because a proper bobber will put you in a slight forward lean, taking a little pressure off your lower back. It will handle better, too, because a bobber doesn't have the long, kicked-out fork that a chopper has. Because of its traditionally shorter fork and relatively conservative rake, a bobber turns a lot tighter than does a long chopper. Even so, a bobber is still a homemade bike and as likely to suffer breakdowns and failures as any other homemade bike. Unless you're a skilled mechanic and have the patience to spend as much time working on your bike as you do riding it, I'd leave the custom bobbers and choppers to the Hollywood types who can afford to have a mechanic following them around with a complete set of tools and a spare bike.

MANAGING YOUR MACHINE.

THE TYPE OF BIKE you choose for your first motorcycle could determine how well you're ever going to learn to ride. If you start out on a motorcycle that doesn't allow you to completely control it, it will control you. You'll develop bad habits for the rest of your riding career. Take, for example, my habit of putting a motorcycle in neutral when I come to a stop, even though I know this is an unsafe practice. I developed this habit early on and I can't shake it. If you develop enough of these bad habits when you first start riding, you won't control your own motorcycle. Instead, you'll be at its mercy. you choose for your first motorcycle could determine how well you're ever going to learn to ride. If you start out on a motorcycle that doesn't allow you to completely control it, it will control you. You'll develop bad habits for the rest of your riding career. Take, for example, my habit of putting a motorcycle in neutral when I come to a stop, even though I know this is an unsafe practice. I developed this habit early on and I can't shake it. If you develop enough of these bad habits when you first start riding, you won't control your own motorcycle. Instead, you'll be at its mercy.

The most important thing to look for in your first motorcycle is manageability. The biggest mistake people make when buying their first bike is to purchase a bike that's physically too big or too powerful for them to manage. Riding well is all about being in control of your machine, and when you start out with too much motorcycle, you'll never master it.

You'll want to get a ride that is small enough to control, but picking a first bike isn't as simple as getting the smallest motorcycle you can find. When I traded my first real bike, the 45-cubic-inch Indian Scout I mentioned earlier, for a Harley, I wanted to get a 45-cubic-inch Harley, but a friend talked me into getting a larger 61-cubic-inch Harley. It took a little practice to get used to the bigger bike, but after a few rides, when I was comfortable with it, I was thankful I hadn't gotten the smaller machine.

You shouldn't get a 1,000-pound bagger or a 1400-cc crotch rocket that can hit 200 miles per hour, but you also won't want an underpowered machine that isn't capable of keeping up with traffic or a motorcycle that's physically too small for you. You'll want a bike that is small enough for you to control, but one that is big enough for you to ride comfortably and has enough power so that you won't get bored with it too soon.

How small a motorcycle you need depends on how big you are. I have a friend named Tiny who's one big motorcycle rider. What const.i.tutes a small motorcycle for him is a whole lot different from what const.i.tutes a small motorcycle for a woman who stands five feet tall and weighs eighty pounds soaking wet.

When I started riding, there weren't a lot of options for beginner motorcycles. If you had a lot of money, you bought a Mustang, which was a very cool little minibike styled to look like a full-sized motorcycle. There were a few other options for a kid with too much money, but not many. Back then Harley made some small bikes based on a 125-cc two-stroke engine from German maker DKW. Harley got the tooling for that engine as part of Germany's wartime reparation. In 1948 Harley put the little two-stroke engine into the Model S, a fun little bike with a girder-type front suspension, rigid rear, and a little "peanut" tank that later turned up on the XLCH Sportster. A lot of kids must have had the $325 that Harley charged for the Model S because the company sold more than ten thousand of the little two-stroke machines.

If you didn't have a lot of money, you did what I did and bought a Cushman scooter. I was just a kid, about thirteen or fourteen years old, when I got my Cushman. At that time you could get a Cushman for $25 to $50. That was a lot of money for a kid like me, making just $7 per week working at a part-time job. I worked a lot of hours to earn the $25 I needed to buy the Cushman, but I didn't really have a choice because I knew I had to ride, even in my early teens.

HOW SMALL IS TOO SMALL?.

GENERALLY SPEAKING, YOU SHOULD probably consider buying a 400-cc or larger motorcycle, even as your first bike. Some of the j.a.panese companies make street-legal motorcycles that are as small as 125 cc, but even if these bikes are capable of hitting a safe freeway speed, they'll likely be running at or near redline to do so. A 250-cc bike might hit 70 or even 80 miles per hour, but at that speed the engine will be revving so high that running at freeway speeds for an extended period will quickly wear out both the rider and the bike. That same bike might cruise comfortably at 60 miles per hour and be able to hold that speed all day long, but consider that traffic on metropolitan freeways often moves at 70 or 75 miles per hour, even when the posted limit is 55 or 65. probably consider buying a 400-cc or larger motorcycle, even as your first bike. Some of the j.a.panese companies make street-legal motorcycles that are as small as 125 cc, but even if these bikes are capable of hitting a safe freeway speed, they'll likely be running at or near redline to do so. A 250-cc bike might hit 70 or even 80 miles per hour, but at that speed the engine will be revving so high that running at freeway speeds for an extended period will quickly wear out both the rider and the bike. That same bike might cruise comfortably at 60 miles per hour and be able to hold that speed all day long, but consider that traffic on metropolitan freeways often moves at 70 or 75 miles per hour, even when the posted limit is 55 or 65.

Although it might be technically illegal to ride at speeds five to ten miles per hour higher than the posted speed limit, it can be dangerous not to do so. Study after study has shown that what causes accidents is not speed itself, but rather disparities in speed. If you are moving at a different speed from the other vehicles on the road, whether you are going faster or slower, you are at much greater risk of having an accident than if you travel at the same speed as the other traffic, within reason. It might seem obvious that if you ride much faster than the other vehicles on the road you are at greater risk, but a less obvious fact is that you are at a much greater risk if you ride slower than other vehicles.

Think of traffic as a flowing stream of water. If the water is flowing unimpeded, its movement is almost invisible, but if you put an impediment like a rock or log in the stream, the moving water starts swirling in all kinds of chaotic directions. When you ride slower than the surrounding traffic is moving, you become that impediment, and the drivers swerving around you will continuously create potentially life-threatening situations for the duration of the trip.

RISING FATALITIES.

IN RECENT YEARS, UNFORTUNATELY, there's been a tremendous increase in the number of motorcycle fatalities. In 2008 motorcycle fatalities increased for the eleventh year in a row. A lot of reasons account for this, notably the fact that in 2008 motorcycle registrations also increased for the eleventh year in a row. More motorcycles on the road mean more accidents. But that's not the whole story. there's been a tremendous increase in the number of motorcycle fatalities. In 2008 motorcycle fatalities increased for the eleventh year in a row. A lot of reasons account for this, notably the fact that in 2008 motorcycle registrations also increased for the eleventh year in a row. More motorcycles on the road mean more accidents. But that's not the whole story.

I blame at least part of the increase in motorcycle fatalities to the rise in cell-phone use. Recent studies have shown that drivers yapping on their cell phones are impaired even more than they would be if they were drunk. This means bikers have to concentrate even harder to prevent accidents. I always tell new riders, "It doesn't matter who is at fault in a collision with a car because you are the one who will get hurt."

Sometimes preventing accidents is impossible, but some ways of preventing wrecks are in our control. For example, you always should avoid riding while drinking alcohol; even if you've just had a beer or two and don't feel like you have a buzz, your reaction times are slowed down enough to put you in danger. We can control whether or not we ride at the same speed as traffic, at least if our bikes are fast enough to keep up with the rest of the vehicles on the road. How fast that is depends on the road. If you live in a western state with lots of open s.p.a.ce, traffic moves a lot faster than it does in the congested and heavily patrolled urban areas in the East. If you live in New Jersey or New York City, you might never need to go more than 70 miles per hour, but if you live in Aspen, Colorado, you may find traffic moving at 90 miles per hour on the freeway into Denver.

If you never leave a congested urban area and never ride on a freeway, you might be able to get by with a 250, but then you won't have the option of leaving town or using the freeway when you need to, and sooner or later that will happen. Even a 400- or a 450-cc motorcycle might be too small to be a practical bike for most people. Your best bet is to get a bike that's at least 500 cc to 650 cc to start. If you're a larger person, you might even consider something as big as a 1200 or 1300 for your first bike.

SPECIFIC TYPES OF MOTORCYCLES.

AS I MENTIONED EARLIER, motorcycles have evolved into highly specialized machines. Instead of that one BSA Gold Star that could do everything, we now have a wide variety of styles of motorcycles from which to choose, each one focused on doing just one thing well. The trick is to decide what you need your bike to do and select the type that best meets your needs. motorcycles have evolved into highly specialized machines. Instead of that one BSA Gold Star that could do everything, we now have a wide variety of styles of motorcycles from which to choose, each one focused on doing just one thing well. The trick is to decide what you need your bike to do and select the type that best meets your needs.

The main types of street-legal motorcycles include the following: - Dual Sport - Supermotard - Cruiser - Touring Bike - Sport-Tourer - Sport Bike - Standard The first specialized motorcycles were purpose-built race bikes. Companies like Harley-Davidson and Indian engineered bikes purely for racing purposes even before World War I, but since race bikes have always been non-street-legal machines, we won't go into them here. Besides, purebred racing bikes weren't available to the general public then, and they're still hard to find (and very expensive).

Dual Sports Off-road motorcycles were the first specialized bikes that were widely available. These began to show up in the 1960s. At first they were just street bikes with long-travel suspension and high pipes, but they became increasingly specialized and compet.i.tion ready. Today you can buy a bike that's ready to go motocross racing right off the showroom floor. Again, these were (and are) purely racing machines, but as they grew in popularity, manufacturers began to offer dual-purpose motorcycles that had some of the characteristics of these off-road racers in street-legal packages. Back when they first appeared, these were called "enduros," named after a type of mild off-road racing that was popular at the time. Today these are commonly called "dual sports."

Dual sports are usually dirt bikes that have been modified with lighting and emissions equipment that make them street legal. While dual sports are heavier than their dirt-only counterparts because of their additional equipment, they retain varying degrees of off-road capabilities. The most extreme examples-like the dual sports from KTM, Husqvarna, and some of the other European manufacturers-really are dirt bikes with headlights and oversized m.u.f.flers. They retain most of the off-road capabilities of their dirt-bike brethren.

Part of the reason dirt bikes perform well on dirt is because they have extremely long travel suspensions. A street-bike suspension only has to face potholes and the occasional road debris; in the worst instances, a street-bike shock or fork seldom has to compress more than a few inches. Dirt bikes have to cope with much greater impacts. Motocross and supercross racing has evolved into an extended series of high jumps, with the bikes flying twenty to thirty feet in the air; their shocks and forks compress a foot or more when the bikes land, so they need a lot more travel.

The extreme dual sports, the ones that are practically ready for off-road racing straight off the dealer floors, also have long-travel suspensions. This is great if you plan to do double and triple jumps with your motorcycle, but the drawback is that it makes the bikes ridiculously tall. Try climbing up on a KTM dual sport in a showroom sometime; just make sure you have someone beside you to catch you if you fall, because you'll be lucky if even the tips of your toes touch the showroom floor.

The extreme dual sports also have many of the same other drawbacks as dirt bikes, right down to the vinyl-covered fender protectors that pa.s.s for seats. Since dirt-bike racers usually stand when they ride, the seat, such as it is, exists mainly as a pad to keep the rider from b.u.mping his or her a.s.s on the fender. It was never designed as a place to sit. These dirt-bikes-with-lights are okay if you plan to do serious off-road riding, but they aren't great choices for practical street bikes.

The extreme examples aren't very useful for anyone but an off-road racer who has to ride his or her bike from trail to trail on public roads, but the bulk of dual-sport machines available today do make pretty good choices for first bikes, provided your legs are long enough to ride them comfortably-although they aren't as tall as the extreme versions, they're still tall enough to pose a problem for a lot of riders. Just throwing a leg over one can be a challenge if your inseam is less than thirty-two inches. Sitting that high gives you a commanding view of traffic, but if the seat is so high that you can't hold up the bike securely at a stoplight, the height can become a safety issue. I once had a vertically challenged rider fall onto me when he dropped his tall dual sport at a stoplight. He couldn't get his foot down securely and went tumbling over, almost taking me with him.

More reasonable dual sports usually range in size from 400 cc to 650 cc, and these have more than enough power to keep up with traffic. They are light, maneuverable, and generally inexpensive to buy, operate, and insure. Plus they're relatively simple so you can do most of the maintenance yourself if you have any mechanical experience at all; and if you do need to hire someone to work on them for you, the costs will be a lot less than for other types of bikes. Most of them have little or no bodywork that needs to be removed to change oil and tires or adjust valves, and because they only have one cylinder, they only have one set of valves to adjust. Since they have spoked wheels, most of them still use tube-type tires, making the repair of a flat tire a relatively inexpensive proposition, too.

If you have any interest in driving off the beaten path, if you don't mind not having the fastest and fanciest motorcycle around, and, most important, if your legs are long enough to safely ride a dual sport, then this type of bike might be right for you.

Supermotards Supermotard bikes were developed for supermoto racing. This is a type of racing that is usually done in parking lots and can encompa.s.s sections of track that are both paved and dirt. The bikes themselves are usually created by taking dirt bikes and fitting them with street suspension and street tires. They look like dirt bikes with road-racing tires mounted on them.

Supermotards can be a lot of fun for an experienced rider, but only for short bursts of hooligan-type behavior. If you like to do wheelies and stoppies or big, smoky tire slides, few bikes do these things better than a supermotard.

But if you're looking for a practical all-around motorcycle, you'd do well to look at something other than supermotard bikes, because they are basically dirt bikes for the street, which means they're extremely uncomfortable to ride for any distance at all, mostly because they have dirt-bike-style seats. Add to this the fact that supermotards are generally expensive, costing as much or more than many full-sized motorcycles, and you can see why this type of bike is less than ideal for a beginner.

Cruisers You'll most likely end up with a "cruiser," as the magazines call them. This is an odd name for a poorly defined style of motorcycle. The cruiser came into existence as a response to the custom bobbers and choppers we built in the 1950s and 1960s.

Up until roughly 1970 Harley only built two main types of big bikes: the XL Sportster and the FL Electra Glide. The Sportster was a hot rod back then, a lightweight high-performance bike. Remember, this was before Kawasaki started the j.a.panese horsepower wars with its 900-cc Z1 and right around the time Honda released its 750 four cylinder. Harley's other main line consisted of the big FL Electra Glide models. These were enormous 74-cubic-inch (1200-cc) motorcycles loaded down with touring accessories. Most people considered these old men's motorcycles; we called them "garbage wagons" because of all the touring equipment on them.

Today I ride a full-dress motorcycle-you think differently when you are seventy than you did when you were eighteen-but we were young then. Because we young guys generally didn't want to ride around on the same types of bikes that our fathers and grandfathers rode, a lot of us customized our motorcycles. Some of us built full-on choppers and bobbers, but others just rearranged the basic material we already had available. Some guys rode stock Sportsters, but most of us preferred the smoother-running and more-reliable FL platform. Still, a lot of people wanted the cut-down look of the Sportster, so they got rid of the big, heavy Electra Glide fork with its chrome-plated steel covers and mounted the sleek, light fork from the Sportster.

The people running Harley-Davidson noticed what riders were doing to the machines they built and decided to cash in on it by offering a bike from the factory that resembled the machines people were building at home. In 1971 the Motor Company grafted a Sportster fork on an Electra Glide frame and created the Super Glide, an entirely new kind of motorcycle. I got my first Super Glide in 1972, and got my first Low Rider in 1977, after I got out of prison. It was great to have a bike that looked good right from the factory, but that didn't stop us from modifying them even more. Most of my modifications during these years were to improve a bike's performance. For example, I'd take the hydraulic disc brakes from j.a.panese bikes and mount them on a Harley.

The Super Glide caused a stir, and it wasn't long before other companies like Norton, Triumph, and then the j.a.panese companies-Yamaha, Honda, Kawasaki, and Suzuki-started offering bikes with similar style. People didn't know what to call this new type of bike, exactly. For a long time the magazines called them "customs," and later they started identifying them as "cruisers," which is the term most of the trade press still uses today. Some European magazines call them "soft choppers," which sounds even more foolish than "cruisers," so I guess we shouldn't complain.

For the most part, cruisers make good motorcycles for beginners. They are relatively light, compared with full-boat touring bikes. At the same time they are full-sized motorcycles with plenty of room for a rider and a pa.s.senger. Though they can sometimes put your arms and legs in awkward positions, cruisers are generally comfortable enough for the long haul, especially when fitted with good saddles and windshields. Plus most of them have tractable engines that help newer riders develop smooth throttle control.

Cruisers usually cost more than dual sports, but for most normal-sized people who do the vast majority of their riding on paved roads, they are more practical. You can get cruisers as small as 250 cc, but the smallest you should probably consider for a first bike is Kawasaki's 500-cc Vulcan. If you're a big person, or if you have some riding experience, you might consider getting something as large as the 100-cubic-inch (1634-cc) Victory Vegas. Some of the j.a.panese companies make cruisers that range up to 2000 cc, and Triumph makes one that displaces 2300 cc, but even a lot of experienced riders find bikes that displace more than 1700 cc to 1800 cc clumsy to ride.

If you're just starting out, you're better off getting a lighter, more manageable bike in the 500-cc to 1300-cc range. You can find a lot of nice cruiser-type motorcycles in this range, including Triumph's 865-cc America and Harley's Sportster line.

Touring Bikes Unless you're an experienced rider, you'll want to stay away from the type of bike I ride, and have ridden for the past twenty-five-plus years: a touring bike. As I noted earlier, touring bikes-especially Harley-Davidsons-are often called baggers because one of their defining characteristics is the presence of saddlebags. On most touring bikes these are panniers mounted as a pair, one on each side of the rear wheel. Most often these will be made of some sort of plastic or fibergla.s.s, but a lot of cruiser-based touring bikes have saddlebags made of leather or vinyl. The other features you'll usually find on touring bikes are fairings or windshields, comfortable saddles, and often some type of tail trunk. Most of the high-end touring bikes have all sorts of electronic gadgets, like stereos, CB radios, cruise control, and even heated seats and handgrips.

I have heated grips and a heated seat on my Victory Vision, but the feature I like best is the six-gallon gas tank, which lets me ride 200 to 250 miles without stopping to refuel. This lets me pile on lots of miles each day.

Telling you not to start out with a touring bike may sound like do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do type of advice, but touring bikes are extremely large motorcycles and a rider should have at least a few years under his or her belt before taking on one of these beasts. Victory claims a dry weight of 804 pounds for my Vision.

A lot of touring bikes are as heavy as or even heavier than my Vision. Honda's Gold Wing weighs 925 pounds wet, Harley's Electra Glide Ultra Cla.s.sic weighs 890 pounds wet, and Kawasaki's Vulcan 2000 Cla.s.sic weights 884 pounds wet. If you aren't an experienced rider, keeping these big bikes under control will require so much work on your part that you'll never develop proper riding skills. Once you've been riding awhile, a touring bike will likely be the most practical motorcycle you can buy; but earn your chops as a rider and develop good riding skills before jumping into one.

Just because your ride isn't cla.s.sified as a touring bike doesn't mean you can't travel distances on your motorcycle. Any bike can be used for touring. In fact, when set up with windshields, saddlebags, and comfortable saddles, middleweight cruisers make great touring bikes. You won't be able to bring everything you own with you on a trip with your middleweight cruiser, but most people bring far too much junk with them when they travel, anyway (having lots of luggage capacity on a bike just encourages people to bring too much stuff). You should be able to get everything you need for any trip, no matter how long, into a couple of saddlebags and maybe a tank bag and a tailpack.

Sport-Tourers Another category of touring bike is the sport-tourer. Like the cruiser category, this one is a little tough to define. Sometimes things get grouped together not because they are anything in particular, but because they are something that others are not. That's about as good a description of a sport-tourer as you'll find.

This type of bike can range from enormous machines like Honda's ST1300, which weighs 730 pounds wet, to a small motorcycle like the MZ Skorpion Traveller, a German bike built in the 1990s and early 2000s that is claimed to weigh in at 416 pounds dry. The only common characteristic among sport-tourers is usually just a set of hard saddlebags; other than that, they can come in just about any size and engine configuration imaginable.

The basic idea behind a sport-touring bike is that it combines the handling and performance of a sport bike with the comfort and convenience of a touring bike. BMW created the mold for this type of motorcycle. Until the late 1990s when it got into the business of building heavyweight touring bikes, just about every motorcycle the German company ever built could be considered a sport-touring bike. Even the company's GS-series bikes, which were cla.s.sified as dual sports, were really more sport-touring type motorcycles.

Harley-Davidson was one of the first companies besides BMW to build a motorcycle that fit the German sport-touring mold. In 1983 Harley introduced the FXRT. In a lot of ways, this was an advanced motorcycle, at least for Harley. It had a rubber-mounted engine, five-speed transmission, sporty wind-tunnel-designed fairing, and a decent pair of hard saddlebags. Unfortunately it still had the old cast-iron Shovelhead engine. Most of the bugs had been worked out of the Shovelhead by that time, but it still used technology that the rest of the world had abandoned twenty years earlier.

In 1984 the FXRT used an Evolution motor-no more Shovelhead. When I saw my first Evo-powered FXRT, I got rid of the Shovelhead I was riding at the time and bought the FXRT. It might not have been the best motorcycle made, but at the time I considered it the best Harley. I rode FXRTs until 2000, when I switched to Road Kings.

Later in the 1980s Kawasaki introduced the first real j.a.panese sport-tourer, the Concours, and not long after Honda introduced its idea of a sport-tourer, the ST1100. These were good motorcycles; if they had been built by an American company, I might have bought one myself. I remember when I saw my first ST1100 in the early 1990s. I loved the look of that sleek, black machine. (I still love the look of the current 1300-cc version.) Then other European companies like Triumph, Ducati, Moto Guzzi, and Aprilia started building sport-tourers. Today pretty much every motorcycle company still in business builds some kind of sport-tourer. Some might even argue that my Vision is a sport-tourer, though it's a little too big to qualify in my opinion. Even many of the bikes that are small enough to qualify as sport-tourers are too big for a newer rider to manage. They tend to be tall, with a lot of bodywork and luggage carried up high. This increases cornering clearance, allowing them to lean way over in fast corners, but it also makes them top-heavy and thus clumsy to manage at slower speeds. Cruisers carry their weight lower to the ground, making them feel less like they are about to tip over at low speeds. Because of this, a cruiser that weighs more than a sport-tourer can actually feel lighter.

Another disadvantage of sport-tourers, at least for newer riders, is that they are covered with expensive bodywork that can break if the bike tips over. The sad fact is that when you are learning to ride, you will most likely have a minor tip over or two. I can't remember my first tip over, but I've had a few. I'd like to say I haven't tipped my current bike, but s.h.i.t happens. Even though my Vision has a lot of bodywork, it's well designed, with stop plates underneath that are the only parts that come into contact with the ground and hold the bike at a forty-five-degree angle in the event of a low-speed tip over. Most bikes with plastic bodywork hit the ground plastic first, which can get expensive. It seems the designers at Victory understand that motorcycles inevitably fall over. If you ride long enough, you will fall down; hopefully it will only happen when you are going slowly.

Even with all the plastic bodywork, a midsized sport-tourer can make a good choice for a newer rider, especially a newer rider who's fairly tall-just make sure you carry good insurance. If that's the type of bike you like, you'll find that most midsized sport-tourers are practical, comfortable, and versatile motorcycles.

Sport Bikes Back in the 1950s and 1960s Americans weren't the only people modifying their motorcycles; Europeans were doing the same thing, only they had a different aim in mind when they started customizing their bikes. Compared with America's long stretches of straight, wide-open highways, Europe is much more condensed, with narrow, twisting streets, crowded high-speed freeways, and winding mountain pa.s.ses. Americans need bikes that are stable in a crosswind on an open road, so we tend to go for motorcycles that are long and low; Europeans have to dodge fast-moving traffic on streets that often are older than the oldest American city.

The different needs of American riders and European riders go back so far that you can see them reflected in the types of saddles used on horses. American-style saddles put the rider in a roomy, stretched-out, upright position; European-style saddles had the rider leaning forward in a racer-type crouch, his or her legs tucked up behind.

When the Europeans, particularly the Brits, started modifying their motorcycles, instead of building long, low, stretched-out choppers, they copied European horse riding: low-mounted handlebars, footpegs set high and back, and cut-down saddles. This put the rider into a forward-leaning racer-type riding position. The Brits called this kind of custom a "cafe racer," because their riders often raced from one cafe to another.

This style of motorcycle was slow to catch on in the United States. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s most European and j.a.panese manufacturers equipped bikes sold in Europe with low handlebars and rea.r.s.et footpegs, whereas bikes shipped to the U.S. market featured lower, forward-mounted footpegs and higher handlebars, which were often called "western-style" bars, because they had a sort of cowboylike look to them.

BMW brought the R90S, a cafe racer with a small fairing-more of a headlight shroud, since it didn't do much to protect the rider from the elements-to the U.S. market in 1973. Harley followed suit with the XLCR Sportster ("XL" is Harley's designation for the Sportster engine, and "CR" stood for "cafe racer") in 1977, but its model wasn't very successful and was the last sport-type motorcycle to wear the Harley brand until the recently introduced XR1200. Other than an oddball European bike imported into the country in extremely small quant.i.ties, cafe racers were thinly represented in the United States in the 1970s.

That was about to change, thanks in large part to the development of superbike racing. By the mid-1970s road-racing motorcycles had become so specialized that they literally no longer shared a single part with their road-going counterparts. At that time most road bikes were powered by large-displacement four-stroke engines while road-racing bikes were powered almost exclusively by purpose-built two-stroke mid-displacement engines.

Historically motorcycle racing had been something that an average motorcyclist could do. Back in the early days most clubs formed around racing; early clubs like the Boozefighters focused as much on racing as they did on raising h.e.l.l. Remember, this was a time when you'd ride one motorcycle to work every day, then race that same bike on the weekend. But by the 1970s a person who wanted to race compet.i.tively had to buy a purpose-built race bike that cost half a year's salary, if you had a good job. Racing had changed from something that anyone with a motorcycle could do into an elite activity.

At just about the time that two strokes completely took over the top levels of racing, an alternative form of racing based on production bikes started to gain popularity. This happened when the j.a.panese introduced their big, powerful four-cylinder machines. Magazines called these "superbikes," so the production cla.s.s in which these motorcycles raced became known as the "superbike" cla.s.s.

Production-based cla.s.ses reinvigorated the sport of motorcycle racing at a gra.s.sroots level. In the early days of superbike racing, anyone with $2,500 could walk into one of the thousands of Kawasaki or Suzuki shops that could be found in any small town and buy a production bike capable of being built into a compet.i.tive racer. Within a few years thousands of people were competing in club races all across the United States. Due to the popularity of this type of racing, manufacturers began offering sportier and sportier motorcycles. Racers liked these bikes because it was less work (and less expense) to convert them into race bikes, but a lot of nonracers bought them, too, just because they liked the style of the bikes.

At first these bikes differed little from the standard bikes of the day. They had lower handlebars, maybe a small cafe-racer fairing, or at least a set of footpegs moved back a few inches from the standard position. But as superbike racing grew in popularity, the manufacturers got into the sport with factory-supported teams, which meant they started making production bikes with specifications that approached those of full-on race bikes. This is how we got the first factory crotch rockets, the Honda Interceptors, Kawasaki Ninjas, Yamaha FZRs, and Suzuki GSX-Rs.

These bikes became more and more capable, until they reached a point where it was virtually impossible (and completely insane) for riders to come anywhere near reaching their limits on public roads. Today's crotch rockets are more potent than the pure racing bikes of a generation ago.

High-performance sport bikes are poor choices for beginners. Any of the 600-cc cla.s.s sport bikes qualifies as one of the highest-performance machines you can buy of any type; probably only Formula 1 race cars generate more power per cubic inch than the engines in 600-cc sport bikes. But as mentioned in the last chapter, sport bikes don't generate much torque. Because of this they are difficult for a newer rider to ride smoothly in traffic.

In fact, I don't recommend anyone use modern sport bikes for daily transportation on public roads. I dislike telling people what they should and shouldn't ride, and if you want to ride a crotch rocket, you have the freedom to do so-sport bikes are popular and a lot of people use them for everyday transportation without any problems. But that said, I believe this type of motorcycle is best left to the racetrack. It's great fun to get out on a track and put your knees down on the pavement in high-speed corners, but out on the street that type of riding will just get you killed, and probably sooner rather than later. And when you're riding on this type of bike, you'll be tempted to ride it like you stole it every time you throw your leg over the saddle.

Even if you have the self-restraint needed to keep from exploring your motorcycle's limits on public roads, sport bikes are excruciatingly uncomfortable to ride. The racer crouch is ideal when you're on a track, throwing yourself from side to side, putting your knee down in the corners, and accelerating hard in the straights, but for the rest of the time, riding laid out over the gas tank puts a lot of strain on your body.

Sport bikes are especially bad in stop-and-go traffic, where you have to crane your neck back so far to see what's going on around you that your head is likely to stick in that position. Unless you're extremely young (and I mean young, like so young your fontanel has barely hardened over), if you put serious miles on a sport bike, you'd better keep a chiropractor on your payroll.

Standards In 1980 most of the motorcycles you could buy were still basic do-it-all type machines, much like the BSA Gold Star had been thirty years earlier. Most companies built a basic type of motorcycle and only modified it slightly for different uses. To make a cruiser, a company would take its basic bike, add a pull-back handlebar and a stepped saddle (the magazines called them "buckhorn" bars and "king-queen" saddles back then), and give it a coat of black paint. The same bike might get a square headlight and a square plastic rear fender cover, maybe a fork brace or an oil cooler, and that would be sold as the sport-bike version.

The only companies making touring bikes at that time were Harley-Davidson and BMW. The j.a.panese manufacturers began to offer touring and racing accessories, but these amounted to tinkering around at the margins; the basic motorcycle underneath remained more or less the same. But everything changed during the 1980s. Cruisers evolved into carbon copies of Harley-Davidson motorcycles, complete with V-twin engines; touring bikes sprouted barn-door-sized fairing and enough luggage capacity to carry the entire belongings of a small third-world village; and sport bikes developed full racing fairings, complete with uncomfortable racer positions. At the beginning of the decade you could count the number of bikes made with any sort of fairing on one hand; by the end of the decade the only bikes that didn't have plastic fairings were the Harley-style cruisers.

As the 1990s rolled around, it seemed like no one was building an ordinary, all-around motorcycle anymore. The manufacturers noticed this and introduced what the motorcycle press called a "new" type of motorcycle: the standard. In reality, this was just the rebirth of the regular old all-around motorcycle. Like "sport-tourer," "standard" is a bit of a garbage category. The only thing that most standards have in common is the lack of a fairing and luggage. Standards range from tiny beginner bikes like the Suzuki TU250 to BMW's wild K1300R, which is a type of standard often called a "street fighter" (street fighters are standards in that they have no bodywork but have the guts of high-performance sport bikes).

Though some of the high-performance street fighters might be a handful for newer riders to control, generally speaking, standards make good choices for first bikes. They tend to have comfortable riding positions and tractable engines, and like most cruisers, they don't have expensive bodywork to break when you inevitably drop your bike.

WHAT Y YOU S SHOULD K KNOW.

- Don't worry about what everyone else thinks; pick the bike you like.

- Custom choppers and antique bikes might look cool, but they aren't practical to use as transportation.

- The less bodywork you have on a bike, the less it costs if you tip over, which is an important consideration for newer riders.