…the spice of life, or so they say. My old dad used to say the same thing only he used to say that it was a good thing that everybody was different otherwise it would be a boring old world.
Nowhere is this variety more evident than in motorcycling. The sportsbike rider can’t understand what the cruiser rider sees in the feet-forward, pull-back handlebar riding position and the cruiser rider usually fails to grasp the passion that the adventure rider has for getting dirty every weekend and so it goes.
Some riders cross these and the other arbitrary divides but most don’t. And, even within the disciplines there are sub-groups. BMW riders, for example rarely wave to any other riders except those on other BMW’s. Harley riders have a similar disposition.
But it is this very variety that makes motorcycling the rich tapestry that it is. I’ve always been a bit disappointed to acknowledge that, while my riding experience has been long, it hasn’t been very varied. I have never, for example, ridden a Ducati (or a BMW for that matter). On reflection the main reason for my limited exposure to other brands and types of motorcycles has been my unwillingness to risk myself riding someone else’s bike though the offer has often been made. Motorcyclists tend not to lend their bikes anyway as the sentimental attachment to the bike seems, to me at least, to be vastly stronger than the attachment to a car, for example. I guess that the fact that it’s a lot easier to damage a bike than it is a car probably has something to do with it.
In my halcyon days of Canberra Road Racing Club it was a constant annoyance (yes, really) to me that I would see dozens of riders out riding on race day when they (in my view) should have been at the races watching the battles taking place on the track. It took a bit more maturity for me to come around to the idea that some motorcyclists (most of them in fact) would rather ride their motorcycle than watch someone else riding one.
And it IS this variety that encompasses all the spectrums of two-wheeled (and even three-wheeled) endeavour, that makes what we do so addictive and compelling. I can’t really get my head around what would be good about riding a full-dress touring bike. For me, touring is taking as LITTLE with you as possible and not having mountains of luggage ruining the agility of the bike. A friend once rode a postie bike across the Nullabor. Why? Because he could. end of story. There is a British journalist who has ridden twice around the world on a Yamaha R1 fitted with huge aluminium panniers and a top case. Why? Because nobody else had done it.
The French have a lovely way of expressing it, “Vive la difference.” Long live the variety. And that thought segues into the Isle of Man TT Races. Beginning mid-week, the practice sessions have already claimed a life which is tragic, but it’s not the danger that I wish to highlight here. The TT has changed dramatically in the last decade or so. From being a meeting where every sort of bike competed from pure GP bikes to production and improved production bikes, it has now degenerated into a meeting where every bike is an I4 Japanese bike that looks and sounds the same as the hundreds of other bikes competing. The classes now only cater for Supersport and Superbikes and (thankfully) sidecars but there are no GP bikes, nor even any two stroke machines at all.
Would I like to go and see the TT? Actually, no, I wouldn’t. I’d much rather go in August and watch the Manx/Classic TT, the amateur version of the TT that still caters for a huge variety of different types of bikes. Not that I’d get the opportunity to do either, but that would be my choice.
Yes, variety IS the spice of life. This weekend the Grand Prix circus descends upon Mugello in Italy, Valentino Rossi’s home track. Each class (there are only 3) features four stroke bikes and they all sound and look substantially the same. I guess somebody forgot to tell them.