The Motorcycle Obsession

Ugly, but almost the best bike I've ever ridden. Almost.

"Hold me closer, ugly dancer." That's the song I found myself singing to the almost-wonderful Triumph Tiger Explorer XC recently as I explored the famous roads of Peak District National Park. It is a bike that is so close to being exactly the sort of thing I want but falls horribly flat on just two points.

The first one is, admittedly, subjective. The Tiger Explorer XC is stupid ugly. It's a machine that looks to have been designed by the same bloke who produced the 2012 London Olympics logo. There are many good things to say about the bike but I'm afraid that no matter how I turn my head or squint my eyes, I cannot say it looks good. This is the girl in the bar who always goes home alone.

But the 1,215-cc three-cylinder machine has so many great qualities that it almost makes up for its looks. Almost. As Samuel L. Jackson says in Pulp Fiction, personality goes a long way. But still there is one other aspect of the Tiger Explorer XC's personality that is impossible to overlook and which eliminates it from any list of bikes I'd consider buying.

I don't want to be too negative of an otherwise amazing motorcycle, though, so let's look at some of the good things first. And there are a lot of good things.

Apparently the "XC" stands for "cross country," but it could just as easily mean "extra comfortable." I took on more than 130 miles in the Triumph's saddle and this was after having already pushed 160 miles from Penarth to Stoke-on-Trent on my own bike. But at the end of the day I would have been happy for more. Seat, wind protection, heated features and riding position all combined to create an experience that was anything but tiring.

The seat was large and offered an unobtrusive comfort. You didn't notice it. The day's weather was such that I didn't need it but the seat came with heating for both rider and passenger, the pillion seat being equally large and providing plenty of space for an actual-sized human. I will say, though, that the angle of the seat was just a little strange and had me occasionally slipping forward on hard stops.

I was amazed at how well the screen worked.

Wind protection, meanwhile, was surprisingly effective. I would not have guessed from looking, but the windscreen and basic fairing offered a happy cocoon that kept the wind away from everywhere but the very tippy top of my helmet. Within that space I was warm and happy and somewhat shocked at what an incredible difference wind protection can make. I made a promise to myself to invest in better wind protection for my own bike before the next winter.

Part of that protection involved hand guards, which kept my frustratingly-susceptible-to-cold hands from hurting as they usually do when spending too much time in a cold wind (I fell through the ice as a teenager and the ensuing frostbite made me less able to tolerate cold in my extremities). Helping things, of course, were dual-setting heated grips.

The Tiger Explorer XC produces a whopping 135 bhp, making it the most powerful vehicle I've ridden thus far, but everything worked so beautifully that all its power and torque (89 lb. ft.) were easily managed. Wide bars made the big machine simple to move through corners, and when you wanted that power it was so incredibly accessible. The distances that I usually look for when passing suddenly halved –– the shaft-driven engine easily launching me forward as if I were attached to a giant rubber band.

There was a bit of grumbling if you tried to throttle up when in too high a gear, but by and large the machine was willing to move regardless of where you were on the shifter. The engine offered a tractor-like sound and reassuring clunks when hitting gears, something that I'm sure sportbike guys might moan about but that, as a cruiser lover, I thoroughly enjoyed.

I'm 6 foot 1, so obviously the bike's height was something of a selling point to me. Another person in our group was a good 7 to 8 inches shorter than me and actually chose to hop off the bike at stops, because he could not put feet to ground when seated. He managed this in part because he was a superior rider (I saw him take a corner at such speed it made me feel queasy) but also because the Tiger Explorer XC's weight is so well balanced.

It really is an incredible machine and, I think, very much worth its £12,300 asking price...

Ugly from any angle.

...until you get on the motorway. There you find the bike's biggest flaw. Once your speed starts to crawl above 75 mph the Tiger Explorer XC begins to dance, swaying in the turbulence of cars and trucks like an American newsman reporting from a hurricane. Because I am used to the bum-clenching gusts that hit a person when crossing the Severn Bridge, all this kicking around didn't bother me too much. But it was visible to other riders in my group and made them feel nervous for me. And it made me nervous to think of how terrifying it would have been had there actually been any wind at all that day.

I mean, if this thing was jumping so much in the wake of a big truck, what would it be like to ride in the great exposed space of the Severn Bridge? Or how would it handle the valley gusts that plague the A449? Maybe the weight of a passenger and luggage would better anchor you, but on your own it would be hell.

It's a fatal flaw that I simply wouldn't be able to overlook. Which is too bad, because the Tiger Explorer XC is otherwise one of the best bikes I've ever had the pleasure of riding. Ugly. But an absolute joy to ride. If I lived in the United States, where it is possible to still travel efficiently on slower roads (the slow roads in the UK are really slow) I'd very seriously consider overlooking the aesthetics of the bike to shell out the cash. As is, though, it is simply a bike that has helped me get a better sense of the features I'd love to have. It is not a bike that I would buy.

The three questions

For me to consider spending my own money on a motorcycle it needs to answer in the affirmative three questions:

Does it fit my current needs and lifestyle?
Pretty much. Off the motorway, the Tiger Explorer XC is 100-percent an ideal vehicle for tackling British road and weather conditions. I suppose it makes sense that a British company would know how to make a bike for the British environment. But once you approach the speeds that Britons achieve on their morways it becomes a nerve-wracking disappointment.

Does it put a grin on my face?
Yes, as long as I'm not looking at it. I loved being in the saddle of this thing. Absolutely loved it. But when taking it in visually I felt almost embarrassed. This bike is the equivalent of having a really ugly wife who is really, really good in bed.

Is it better than my current motorcycle?
Yes. I'll state that unequivocally. It's not as stable at high speed, but even so it is immensely superior to my trusty Honda CBF600 SA. If someone were to offer me a Tiger Explorer XC at a discounted price I would jump at it without hesitation. I could avoid motorways or just learn to love dancing at high speed.

It looks the part...

Almost exactly five years ago, I set out on a Great American Road Trip that took me across both the width and length of the United States. That adventure lasted nigh 3 months and saw me travelling close to 20,000 miles. The amount of planning I did for that trip, however, was minimal. I rented a car from Avis, I told a few friends I might be around, and that was about it.

Tomorrow, I set off on my first true Great British Road Trip. It will last only 8 days and consist of just a little more than 1,000 miles of travel. Britain, after all, is a very small country. But in contrast to my U.S. road trip, for this adventure I have invested weeks of planning and fretting and downright panicking. The big difference, of course, is that it is also the longest road trip I will have ever taken on my bike.

I've done overnights to mid Wales and the English Midlands but this is something different. This journey will demand that I go further and that I carry more stuff. Both of which are aspects I've been working on especially in the past week or so.

Powis Castle, near Welshpool

Stage 1 of preparation for the Great British Road Trip has involved working on my riding stamina, something I've been focusing on for quite a while now. My very first day of riding will demand that I take on roughly 300 miles -- the space between Cardiff and the Lake District region of Borrowdale, where I'll spend the weekend before continuing on to Scotland. The goal is to cover this distance within 8-10 hours. So, last week I decided to make a run of equal distance -- up to North Wales and back -- to make sure I could handle the physical toll.

The good news is: I can make it. Probably. The route I took last week actually worked out to be closer to 260 miles, and it took almost exactly 10 hours. That route took me up to the frustratingly misspelled Powis Castle in Welshpool (it should be "Powys") then back to The 'Diff via Shropshire, which meant slower roads.

On the side of arguing that I'll be able to cover 300 miles in the same time (or, preferably, less) is the fact that much of my journey to the Lake District will be via motorway. That means a higher official speed limit, a much higher unofficial speed limit, and no stop lights/roundabouts/etc. Additionally, on my test run last week I did a fair amount of lingering at Powis Castle and fellow National Trust property Berrington Hall, taking a leisurely walk and cream tea at the former, and lunch at the latter (a).

On the side of arguing that I may still struggle with time/distance are much of the same facts: I was riding on slower, less-stressful roads and taking very long breaks.

Berrington Hall, near Leominster

One thing I know for certain, though, is that my new Pilot Road 4 tires are up to the task. The weather on the day was perfect until the very last hour or so when suddenly heavy cloud moved in and started dumping rain. My tank bag soaked through. Parts of the M4 flooded. But the tires held perfectly. I mean, I don't want to sound like a shill for Michelin here, but, damn, them is some good tires.

Meanwhile, Stage 2 of preparation has centred on all the things I need to bring and how to bring them. This is a business trip, which will see me attending three different conferences, so I'm going to need to rock the smart-casual look on several occasions, as well as the hiking-up-a-mountain look, and the having-dinner-with-people-whom-I'd-like-as-my-employer look.

If you're a regular reader of this blog (thank you!), you'll know that the nice folks at Vikingbags.com sent me a set of AXE saddlebags not too long ago (crikey, are they getting their money's worth with the number of times I mention them), which will serve as the foundation of my luggage system, along with my trusty tank bag and a lagniappe backpack my Michelin homies gave me when they were winning my heart through free tires and fun stuff.

I'll get into this more when I write an eventual review of the saddlebags, but when first inspecting them they raised a few questions in terms of suitability to purpose. Indeed, for a while there I was spending quite a bit of time on eBay trying to score a good deal on Kriega bags that I could use instead, but without success. Finally, a combination of knowing my tendency to be over-anxious, the state of my finances, and that old thing they say about gift horses made me decide to just stick with what I've got.

Luggage full of towels for a test run.

Because Britain loves Mexico (b), Monday was a holiday here on the Island of Rain and that gave me an opportunity to fully pack up my bike and make a quick luggage test run. I did 37 miles of riding at unofficial motorway speeds and am very happy to report that it was without incident. I still plan on being armed with great quantities of spare bungee cords and duct tape, but I am now much more confident in my luggage system.

Since Monday I have moved aggressively into Stage 3 of preparation: mapping, planning routes, researching places to eat, working out contingencies, and waking up two or three times a night in an anxiety-fuelled sweat. I have written a list of every single thing I need to take with me. I have made a list of nearby Honda dealerships. I have put together a folder of routes to various locales, with optional routes if it is raining heavily or if I am tired. I have waxed boots, gloves and my jacket. I have counted pairs of underwear. Quite frankly, I need to go on this trip just so I can stop thinking about it.

It will be an adventure. At present, the weather forecast is calling for heavy rain the whole way up. There is supposed to be an hour or two of dry right when I'll be loading everything on the bike; if I can have just that I promise not to complain (much) about whatever gets thrown at me thereafter. Which may be a lot; the forecast for Borrowdale is thunderstorms.

I've got a few blog posts lined up to auto publish while I'm away, and, of course, I'll be yammering about this trip endlessly once I return, but if you'd like to follow my adventure in real time I'll be posting updates on my Twitter as signal allows.

See you later, mis amigos!

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(a)If you live in the UK, I strongly advise getting a National Trust membership. Their properties are almost always located in places you want to ride and they treat motorcyclists really well, always offering me a place to store my helmet and gear rather than my having to carry it around.

(b) Not really. In truth, we had the day off because we are socialist scum. Sadly, no one here celebrated Cinco de Mayo.

Victory Jackpot

I'll admit right up front that I've never really liked the look or the idea of the Victory Jackpot. To me, it represents an outdated OCC-style of thinking: motorcycles as ridiculous trophy objects for people who are woefully uncultured.

Yes, I know I'm breaking the golden rule of this blog by criticising other people's riding choices but, you know, ugh. That fat-rear-tire-skinny-front-tire thing is just so... so... I can't quite explain what it is that annoys me so much. Basically, it's the equivalent of wearing a designer T-shirt to church. Just because it's expensive and flashy doesn't make it good.

Though, as it turns out, the Jackpot is a slightly better motorcycle than I had thought it would be. Sure, it's generally impractical, but at least it's a lot of fun. For a while.

Much of the reason for that, of course, is the fact that it's a Victory. And as such, it comes equipped with the stalwart and powerful Freedom 106 engine. The gears are long (i.e., you get a lot out of each gear before the engine even begins to suggest that you shift up) and always easy to find. Power is delivered smoothly, without the arm-ripping jerkiness I've experienced on Harley-Davidson machines. And there is plenty of that power, too. At 70 mph, the engine was tootling along with such ease it felt like I was in idle.

The massive rear tire, meanwhile, creates its own sort of fun. In corners, the mismatched front and rear create odd angles that you have to overcome with aggressive counter steering. This means that you really get to put some oomph into corners, which, in its own weird way is confidence-inspiring. In heaving myself into turns I lost some of my usual nerves on sharper bends. With the Jackpot, I felt more able to push aggressively than I have on other bikes (a).

It's worth asking, though, how long you'd want to keep that up. I mean, you wouldn't really want to tour Europe on something that needs to be muscled through every damned corner. Nor would it be particularly wise to do such a thing considering the state of the Jackpot's brakes.

Like its Victory stablemate, the Judge, the Jackpot is equipped with sub par stopping power. There is a too-small single disc up front that needs to be yanked back to deliver only a modicum of "whoa," and a single rear disc that is on-off and only slightly more effective than the front. According to some reviews I've read, the rear is prone to locking up. Thankfully, I did not experience this but the lack of ABS on Victory's line of cruisers is one of the reasons I can't really take them seriously.

That engine, though.

Not that I would seriously consider the Jackpot anyway. The mismatched tires seem to make all the bike's weight even more difficult to handle at slow speeds. I pride myself on being able to keep a bike upright at extremely slow speed but with the Jackpot I was duck walking like the noobiest noob of Noob Town.

On the go, the riding position was more appropriate for a visit to the OB/GYN than getting from point A to point B. Keeping in mind that I am 6 foot 1, my legs were splayed forward in such a way that wind both shot up my pant legs and pushed my knees apart. The seat was plenty comfortable in and of itself, but my seating position meant that I was not able to lift up on the pegs to avoid the omnipresent British potholes. The bike being nowhere nimble enough to avoid them all, I was forced to eat quite a few and each one delivered a small attack on my lower back. It was an experience that reminded me of the observation I made when test riding the Triumph America: cruisers are generally not well suited to British conditions.

When the speedometer crept upward, the wind blast also pushed at my shoulders and, because I was not at all leaned forward, started to get under my helmet and shove my head around –– something I hadn't experienced on the equally fairing-free Judge.

As time wore on, I grew less and less fond of chucking the bike through corners; I just wanted to get off the thing. In contrast to every other motorcycle I've ever ridden, when it came time for me to dismount I was perfectly content to do so.

Taking the time to assess the Jackpot afterward I found myself asking: "What the hell is this bike for?"

Yes, it's fun to push through corners, but you wouldn't want to keep it up for a run any longer than, say, 30 miles. And you'd need to somehow be sure said run is free of anything that might require a quick stop. Your best bet is to keep it moving in a straight line, at 60 mph or less on a windless day, on an empty road that has been recently paved. Or just park it and let people look at it while you put on your best designer T-shirt and head to sermon.

Baby got back.

I love Victory Motorcycles and think they produce some amazing things (be sure to check out my upcoming review of the Cross Country), but the Jackpot is proof that even the best can get it really wrong sometimes.

The three questions

For me to consider spending my own money on a motorcycle it needs to answer in the affirmative three questions. I'll bet you can guess how this will go:

Does it fit my current needs and lifestyle?
No. In many ways, the Jackpot is the antithesis of life in Britain. Its ideal riding scenario exists nowhere on this archipelago. Also, not that you'd necessarily want to subject a loved one to the Jackpot experience but it has no passenger seating to speak of. Pillion accommodation is even less adequate than on the Judge.

Does it put a grin on my face?
For short periods of time, yes. Most of that joy, though, is coming from the Freedom 106 engine, which is better showcased by a number of Victory's other platforms.

Is it better than my current motorcycle?
Nope. The engine's better, but in terms of brakes, handling, comfort and overall usability, my cheap little Honda beats the Jackpot all day.

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(a)Note what I'm saying here. It's not that the Jackpot corners better than any other bike. It definitely does not. But because it is a big monster that I had to shove around, I was less afraid of taking too tight a line, etc.

The following is a guest post, provided to me by a digital PR company that is trying to sell you something in a clever way. As this blog has grown more popular (thank you!) I have found myself receiving an increasing number of offers of this sort: "Hey, Chris, we've got a great product that we think will really suit the interests of your readers" and so on. My standard reply to such offers is a polite "No thank you."

But in this particular case, I find the content of the article interesting -- alternative energy. Remember that not too long ago I wrote a post about electric motorcycles. And I'm a card-carrying member of the National Trust and the Sierra Club. Plus, as you read this I am still in Scotland and not really able to blog. (Expect several posts related to that trip when I return)

I am not being paid for posting the following content, nor am I receiving any goods/services in exchange. Genuinely, I just find it a bit interesting.
______________________________

A 2012 American Community Survey found that 864,883 people commute to work via bicycle, a 10 percent increase from 2011. Another study by Transport and Mobility Leuven in Brussels found traffic congestion would be eliminated and carbon emissions substantially reduced if 25 percent of cars on the roads were replaced by motorcycles.

Riding a bike in 2014 is no longer a matter of pedalling to get to your destination, and re-fuelling your motorcycle doesn't necessarily have to take place at Qwik-e-Marts. Alternative fuel sources, along with advances in electric motor technology, have made 2-wheel transportation more versatile and efficient for commuters. Others countries are far ahead of U.S. firms as far as alternative fuels and technology, but riders are taking notice regardless of location.

The Alter Bike

Three French companies, Cycleurope, Pragma Industries and Ventec, came together to develop the first bicycle powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The Alter Bike uses pedelec (pedal electric cycle) technology, which assists cyclists when traveling in hilly areas that require more leg energy to traverse.

The motor, powered by a combination of a lithium-ion battery and hydrogen fuel cells, balances the power needs so neither source is unnecessarily expended. Gitane, the official brand name of the bike, said the revolutionary fuel source stores the hydrogen in recyclable cans that connect directly to the bike. There is no need to locate a charging station to re-fuel as many electric cars require.

GizMag reports the official launch of Gitane's Alter Bike will be sometime in 2015 for companies, and 2016 for regular consumers.

Compressed Natural Gas

Motorcycles in Buenos Aires, Argentina have been powered by compressed natural gas (CNG) since 2006. It is not only one of the cleanest fossil fuels in existence, but also one of the more efficient. Argentinian bike-maker Zanella, along with Honda, teamed up on the project to produce a special gas tank to hold the fuel.

The technology is compatible with virtually all makes and models of motorcycle. Some new bike accessories might be necessary to make a successful conversion from gasoline to CNG. Treehugger.com says the cost of the tank and install is only $300, but additional engine modifications are necessary.

ECOP Rosario, another Argentinian company, started making motorcycles pre-equipped with a CNG tanks in 2009. The company claims a six-fold fuel cost reduction and increased engine life. ECOP Rosario is also considering exporting its technology to other countries.

Toilet Bike Neo

One thing humans will always be able to produce is waste. Japanese plumbing company Toto put this fact to practical use when it developed the Toilet Bike Neo. The 250 cc engine runs on bio-gas, which can be derived from feces, urine, and other organic matter.

Despite its gross-out description, the Neo is environmentally-friendly and even speaks to the rider and plays songs. Toto took the Neo on a 620 mile (1000 km) tour of the country to promote it in 2012.

Victory Cross Country

A strange and interesting thing about the Victory Cross Country: it gave me the worst riding experience of my life, and yet the reason for that terrible experience is so easy to fix I am willing to overlook it and tell you that this is The One. This the motorcycle I need in my life.

Honestly, as soon as I got home after my Cross Country experience I set up a savings account and labelled it: "CROSS COUNTRY FUND." Goodness knows how long it will take me to save up for the £16,500 (US $27,725) American bagger, but the point is that's how great an effect the machine had on me.

So, let's start with that one bad thing: the little sliver of a stock screen is about an inch too short for someone who is 6-foot-1. Or, considering that I normally ride with my helmet in the wind, perhaps it is an inch too tall.

To be honest, I don't fully understand the particulars of aerodynamics as pertain to screens, but the long and short of things is that the screen was wrong for me. I suffered intense, intolerable wind turbulence akin to having someone banging on my helmet with a club. Really, it was hell. After my demo ride I had to sit down and hold my head for a few minutes. If we accept the Chris Nowinski definition of a concussion as being any trauma suffered to the head, it is wholly correct to say the Victory Cross Country gave me a mild concussion.

I guess that could be a selling point: the Cross Country is so bad ass that it will knock you out. But, uhm, I'd prefer to just fix the problem with a different screen. Victory offers several, as do a number of aftermarket providers. Or, you could just remove the screen altogether and keep your skull in the breeze. I have no doubt that if I explained it was a make-or-break issue, most dealerships would just switch out the screen for free.

That's it, though. Everything else about the Cross Country is amazing. I mean, really amazing. I mean, so amazing that I could get the hell beat out of me by this thing and still go home trying to figure out how to get one. This is no Cruel Shoes experience, though, it's just a great bike.

The best place to start is that engine. Though this may be subject to change in the near future, at the moment all Victory motorcycles are powered by the Freedom 106 –– a 1,737-cc V twin that produces upward of 100 bhp and 110 lb. ft. of torque. I'll be honest, y'all: I still don't totally understand the meaning of the figures I just threw at you but it sounds impressive for me to use them, doesn't it? As if I were a real motorcycle journalist instead of some guy who squeals like a happy little girl when he gets to test ride a new bike.

But, of course, the latter is what I am, and the smooth yet powerful pull of the Cross Country had me whooping and shouting even as the wind kicked me in the head.

The Cross Country gives you a real sense of presence.

I'm guessing that, like the Victory Judge, the Cross Country would audibly benefit from the Norse-god-like rumble of Stage 1 exhaust. But I found the grunt of its stock pipes to be equally pleasing, making me want –– almost need–– to ride on and on. And that was a spirit that carried to every other part of the bike.

Stock screen aside, the wind protection was excellent. The large batwing-esque fairing cuts out a huge cocoon in which to sit and be happy. More than happy. Although the bike was obviously built by Americans and primarily for Americans, that front end makes it perfect for overcoming the perpetual misty-cold misery of Britain. Add to this the lower wind protection afforded by the enormous floorboards, which block out a space that came more or less to mid shin.

Initially I wasn't too hot on the idea of floorboards. I prefer the look of pegs. But the space afforded by the boards meant that on the move I was able to shift my feet down and put myself in a fully upright seating position. And that meant I didn't suffer any of the lower back pain that cruisers can sometimes give me. Also, I was able to lift up out of my seat when encountering the worst of potholes.

For all the other bumps in the road (and on a British road there are many), the suspension was blissfully plush and backed up with the most pleasant motorcycle seat I have ever experienced. There is plenty of passenger room on the seat, as well, so instantly I found myself fantasizing about dragging Jenn on long trips to Spain.

In addition to being able to handle the bumps of a typical British road, the Cross Country was surprisingly adept at handling its curves, too. There is no denying the Cross Country is massive and its nigh 800 lbs. of weight is not the sort of thing you'd want to try pushing uphill. But all that weight is so well distributed that it feels lighter than the Judge or Jackpot I rode. It handles better than them, too. Corners were easy and enjoyable, and the bike was happy to lean over far more than you'd expect.

Perhaps because it has a shorter rake than Victory cruisers, the Cross Country also –– shockingly –– handles better at slow speed than its cruiser brethren. Particularly when compared to the Jackpot. I was able to keep my feet up without wobble even when crawling through a crowd of people.

At high speed, ignoring the head kicking I was taking from turbulence, the Cross Country was solid. As with all Victory motorcycles the gears were long, meaning I could get up to 40 mph in first before the engine even started to suggest I shift gears. Acceleration was joyful and when I twisted the throttle it felt as if I was being shot forward by a giant bungee cord.

The dash offers plenty of information
but keeps a clean look.

I was happy for such an experience because, contrary to machines of Victory's cruiser line, the Cross Country can actually stop. Up front, it has two discs that actually work the way actual brakes are supposed to. Which means less aggressive reliance on the single rear disc, and an overall less stressful "whoa" experience. Especially because the Cross Country's brakes are anti-lock.

Anti-lock brakes! On a Victory! My one major complaint resolved! I felt, to paraphrase Steve Johnson, that Christmas had come early. And while they were at it, Victory had gone ahead and responded to a few of my other complaints. In that lovely big dashboard there is, in addition to the speedometer/odometer a tachometer and a fuel gauge. A digital gear indicator sits in the middle of the dash and the screen offers all kinds of other info.

There is also a radio, which I had no real interest in and didn't mess with. But the controls on the left handlebar looked easy enough to operate with one's thumb. Assuming one is not wearing winter gloves. The same is true of the cruise control buttons that would be operated from the right handlebar. Again, I didn't get a chance to test that out –– few and far between are the British roads clear enough to maintain a single speed long enough to make use of cruise control.

The radio accepts auxiliary input like an MP3 player, though I don't at the moment remember seeing any place to put such a thing. There probably was a storage compartment and I just didn't notice because such a feature isn't relevant to me. Also on the dashboard is a 12V plug in for said devices or one of those heated vests that everyone is always saying I should get.

The lockable hard panniers were easy to operate but smaller than I was expecting. They were not wide enough to hold a helmet of any size in them, but could still definitely carry several days of clothes. The Victory guys told me larger panniers are available, and you can add a top box to create the Cross Country Tour. Though, I feel that is an expensive and ugly option. I personally would choose to go with Kriega bags for additional storage, which I think would fit the bad-assitute of this bike well.

Meanwhile, speaking of bad-assitude, the panniers are relatively easy to remove if you don't need them and the bike sans saddlebags looks pretty cool. I suspect the absence of the panniers' weight and drag would also give just a little more kick to the already-fun acceleration experience.

The Victory guys gave me this key ring.
It is now one of my most-prized possessions.

The Cross Country has been on my What I Want list for quite a long time now and having now seen and ridden the bike I find I want it even more. Back when I first fell started falling for it I wasn't that hot on the fairing, but since then it has really grown on me. In person, that fairing gives the bike an aggressive look, it makes you feel you have real presence on the road. and it meshes so well with all the other aspects of the machine. Like the majority of Victory models, it is fun to just stare at –– to follow the lines with your eyes, to examine every little aspect.

It is a bike with a sense of spirit; it is the sort of thing you find yourself speaking to. It is the sort of thing for which you set aside your pennies. For who knows how long, because great googly moogly is it pricy, but I think it's worth it and one day I'll have one of my own.

The three questions:

For me to consider spending my own money on a motorcycle it needs to answer in the affirmative three questions.

Does it fit my current needs and lifestyle?
Yes. It also fits the lifestyle to which I aspire. It is a bike for what I am and what I want to be. It is surprisingly capable in corners, it has plenty of space to carry a passenger comfortably, and it has a decent amount of storage which can be expanded if so desired.

Does it put a grin on my face?
Yes. A massive stupid idiot grin. I was in the process of being concussed on my test ride and I still was hooting and shouting with joy. I mean, I know I'm saying it but I really don't feel I've conveyed just how much I enjoyed being on this bike.

Is it better than my current motorcycle?
Yes. Is sex better than a flu shot? It looks better, it rides better, it has more features, it has more power, it has more torque, and it's from Minnesota. I loved this machine.

My route

I suppose the best thing to do is to split my adventure into four posts, commenting on the days I actually spent riding to and from Scotland, rather than talking too much about the space in between. This is a motorcycle-related blog, after all.

Though, of course, it is usually the stuff in between that is most important. Motorcycles, as much as we may love them, as much as I may obsess over them, are essentially just vehicles -- hunks of dirty metal, rubber and plastic to get us to those places where life happens.

I suppose that's not entirely true. One of the real joys of motorcycling is that you experience so much more in getting from place to place. You feel the sun's warmth, taste the acrid pollution of Manchester/Liverpool, hear the rush of wind, smell the earthy damp of Scottish rain, and see it all with much less hindered view.

And there is, too, the time to think. Riding roughly from the bottom to the top of Britain and back afforded me several hours of mobile solace in which to consider all those important things that get lost in the day to day: what I want from my life, who I want to be and how I want to go about achieving that, and, of course, that most important of all questions: What are the lyrics to the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" theme song? (I spent a number of days trying to draw them back from the part of my brain that stores memories of the 1990s)

In total, I covered a little more than 1,000 miles on this trip. It was my first true long-distance, multi-day adventure, which meant more planning and more packing. And that's a facet I could definitely stand to work on for future trips; getting everything ready to go consistently took too long.

Borrowdale or bust

The first day of riding took me 300 miles from Penarth to Borrowdale -- an interminably wet valley within Lake District National Park that instantly leads one to thoughts of Hobbits and Dungeons & Dragons and countless other mythical adventure tropes. The Lake District is easily one of Britain's prettier places but it is also an example of really good marketing. An estimated 15 million people visit the national park each year -- more than visit all three of Wales' national parks annually -- despite the fact that it is the wettest place in England. Borrowdale, in particular. It receives roughly 140 inches of rain a year, or 11.6 feet.

So, I knew there was no way I could avoid getting wet. Inside my Viking Bags AXE Saddlebags I had placed my clothes in dry sacks and my shoes in plastic grocery store bags, then wrapped both in large garbage bags. I'll get to this in detail when I review the saddlebags, but the rain covers that come with them aren't actually all that useful when attempting to place them on the saddlebags. However, I was able to make use of the covers to help protect a backpack and small case that I strapped to the seat and rack. Leaving nothing to chance, I also lined my backpack with a garbage bag and important items (e.g., laptop) were additionally wrapped in their own plastic bags.

Throughout the trip, packing all my bags generally took an hour. Meticulously strapping everything to the bike took another hour. In Scotland, my annoyance with this level of time consumption would boil over and I'd end up detouring into a bit of quiet countryside so I could throw a full-on yelling-and-jumping-up-and-down tantrum by the roadside. But it should be noted that the result of such meticulous packing was that nothing ever came loose; no bits came undone, none of my possessions were sacrificed to the gods of British roads.

Entering Lake District National Park

And (most of) my stuff stayed dry despite the laudable efforts of Mother Nature. The forecast in the days before had called for particularly awful weather, so I started off in full rain gear. This included a cheap waterproof over jacket I had bought just for the trip. Within minutes of hitting the road I was kicking myself for not having bought one sooner; it turns out that over jacket is the best £8 that I have ever spent.

Up until then, I had simply relied on the waterproof-esque qualities of my leather riding jacket, as assisted by regular treatments of Nikwax. I figured it was good enough. And generally it is for situations where I'm riding and get caught in an unexpected bit of rain. But what I didn't realise was that a simple over jacket also provides additional wind protection. Had I invested that £8 sooner I suspect this past winter would have been more tolerable, allowing me to hold warmth better.

So, despite cold rain and powerful gusts of wind, I was comfy and happy as I hit the road to Northern England. I was able to make it to Strensham (80 miles from home) before feeling the need to take a break, and I found that the additional weight from the bags actually seemed to improve how my motorcycle handled. This makes me think I may want to invest some time playing around with suspension settings when it's just me on the bike.

The ride north was mostly motorway, so nothing really notable. Traffic got heavy as I ran the gauntlet between Liverpool and Manchester and the air was so thick with pollution that both cities have fallen dramatically down my Places I Want To Visit list. As I neared the 180-mile mark on my journey I started to develop pain in my right shoulder and numbness in my right hand. A little further on, a tension headache started in. I knew the problem: the wind was gale force (30+ mph) in sections and I was being kicked around. I tried to loosen up, to not clench my jaw, but couldn't really shake it off. So, the final 100 miles came slow because of multiple stops.

Eventually, I made it to the Lake District. For those of you playing along at home, national parks in Her Majesty's United Kingdom would probably not be recognisable as such to Americans. The best comparison I can come up with is that of the Lake Tahoe basin, on the Nevada-California border. People live and work there, and there is a sense of delicate environmental balance. Planning decisions are made by an overarching body that magically makes everyone angry by being too stringent or not stringent enough (depending on what side you're on).

There is a whole ridiculous six-tier system of categorizing protected areas around the world. I won't bore you with details except to say that most U.S. National Parks are Category II. Denali, in Alaska, is Category I. The lower the number, the more "wild" and untouched by man the place is. There are no Category I sites in the UK. Or Category II. Or Category III. The national parks here are, in fact, Category V. All of which gives each visit to a UK national park a sense of urgency to me. Very little is holding back the tide of progress. Things that I find inspiring and beautiful can, and in many cases definitely will, disappear before I have children to show them to.

So, once I got to my guest house in Borrowdale, I threw my things into my room as quickly as possible and ran outdoors to explore.

A few pictures from the Lake District

The view from my guest house in the Borrowdale valley.

Starting the 5-hour hike to Scafell Pike. It's up there in the clouds somewhere.

A river runs down from Scafell Pike full of heavy rain and snow melt.

Atop Scafell Pike. I'm on the far right, top row, wearing a red jacket and grey scarf. All of us were completely soaked through by fog, mist, rain and snow. My smile is an utter lie; I really disliked this hike.

Looking down on the Borrowdale valley.

I thought I'd share this video of Jay Leno talking about his 1962 Norton 650SS. I can't say I have any real love for Nortons, but I understand those who do love them, and he says a lot of things in here that I really agree with. A few things, even, that I have talked about before on this blog. He talks about the collapse of motorcycling in the UK, chalking up Britain's failures in terms of market dominance to arrogance. That makes sense, definitely; the same thing happened to U.S. manufacturers. But I still wonder how motorcycling's popularity fell into such steep decline over here.

Jay also talks about something that I thought a lot about recently on my trip to Scotland: that one of the true joys of motorcycling is the absence of rest-of-the-world white noise.

"(I've) never quite understand why people put radios and Bluetooth and MP3 players on their motorcycles, " he says. "This is the one time when you can... kind of be alone and enjoy the solitude."

Welsh-language poet T.H. Parry-Williams (who also once wrote an emotive essay about his motorcycle*) said there was an under-appreciated value to sitting and staring at a fire, that people simply do not take the time to remove distractions and actually think about things. Really, truly think. When was the last time you used your brain to such an extent that it hurt? There is great value in pondering, and if you live an existence in which you cannot go 5 minutes without needing to have someone or something else fill your head with noise, there is something wrong with you. No doubt this is why people vote for UKIP -- they've abandoned the challenging work of thinking.

Getting my head out of the constant Twitter/Facebook/Google+/Tumblr/blog cycle and having nothing but wind and my own voice to listen to is always immensely beneficial. It rights me.

Jay starts to walk down the Old Man path when he says, "Your iPhone and Google Maps can show you what this looks like, but this machine can actually take you there." Then he waxes poetic about the joys of having to perform constant maintenance on an old motorcycle (for me, the maintenance required for a modern Honda is more than enough). So, I can see how someone might feel he's being a bit of a fuddy-duddy for criticising having media/connectivity on a bike.

But I don't think it makes you a grumpy old man to value the zen and mentally restorative experience of keeping the rest of the world out of your helmet. All the time I had between Cardiff and Scotland gave me time to reconsider who I am and remind myself of where I want to go.

Anyway, point is: you can see in Jay a real fondness for his 1962 Norton. Which is a feeling to which many of us can relate, regardless of what bike we ride.

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*Which Dr. Simon Brooks is convinced is actually an essay about sex. His reasoning for this was: 'Who would write an essay about a motorcycle? It's obviously about something else.' Indeed. Who would write a series of essays on motorcycles, create an entire blog about them, even?

A panoramic view from the summit of Cairngorm Mountain in Scotland

I spent a few days in the Lake District, my bike protected from the frequent rain by a heavy-duty cover I had bothered to strap to rack. I was up there for a conference, which somehow translated into walking up a mountain in the pissing cold rain and wind, followed by many pints of German lager. The second part I liked most, obviously, but in hindsight I enjoyed the first part, as well. It was one of the most fun work-related things I've ever been to. Next year's conference is in the Broads and I am already planning my route.

Back in the Lake District, a perfectly timed break in the rain meant I was able to strap all my gear to the bike in the dry. It started raining again right as I pressed the starter, as if the button were wired not only to the Honda's engine but the clouds. I settled into it and hoped my motorcycle gear would hold up better than my hiking gear. The day before, I had ascended Scafell Pike with a group and discovered that my rainproof hiking gear was ridiculously sub-par when confronted by eight hours of constant rain.

Your faithful correspondent at the summit of Cairngorm Mountain.

On the motorway, the rain turned to hail at one point, which was less than pleasant, but I stayed dry. And huge love goes to the guys at Michelin for the Pilot Road 4 tires they gave me recently. Honestly, those tires are (so far) fantastic. They hold so well in torrential rain that I legitimately thought to myself at one point: "You know, when pondering which bike I want next, I may want to consider limiting my options to those bikes that can wear these tires."

So, you know, bikes like the BMW F800GT or the other sport tourers I wrote about not too long ago. Indeed, despite my extreme love for bikes like the Victory Cross Country, I couldn't help feeling that a middleweight sport tourer is considerably better suited to my present needs. Effectively, that's what I have now in my Honda CBF600 SA. And, but for a few additional creature comforts, I can't say I desired for much more on this trip than the bike I already had. That was especially true when I had to ride on gravel or spin the bike on its centre stand. Less weight means a bike that's easier to push around. Middleweight sport tourers aren't the bad-ass rumbling machines that some part of me seems to want, but this trip showed they are ideal for zipping around Europe.

I pumped my fist in celebration as I rolled across the border to Scotland. In total, roughly 9 years of my life have been lived in the UK and this was the first time I had managed to get to this part of it. By way of welcome, the rain subsided as I rolled into the services at Gretna. I ate a KFC lunch and took in the Scottish accents around me.

If you follow Steve and Sash and their various Road Pickle adventures, a common occurrence with them is their eating at unique, local places. It's much harder to find such a thing in the UK. At least, it is if you're just rolling into town and don't know the place. This is in part due to the fact that eating out in the American sense is a relatively new concept over here. They've long had fine dining, of course, as well as hotels with (usually not that great) restaurants, but they didn't really have a large middle class with lots of expendable income until the 1990s. And as such they didn't have a whole lot of stand-alone restaurants.

When I first came here as an exchange student in 1996, a restaurant of the sort like TGI Fridays (ie, not terribly expensive but also not a greasy spoon cafe) was extremely rare, usually very new, and generally only to be found in ultra-cosmopolitan places like London. I am inclined to digress into a train of thought on how utterly different Britain is now than it was two decades ago but the point is simply to say that when you are travelling from point A to point B in the UK you still too often find yourself eating at chain pubs and American fast-food joints. The best places are hidden and generally not open for lunch.

With my belly and gas tank full I got back on the motorway, riding through increasingly sporadic squally showers. The rain was never so heavy that it obstructed my view, and as I rolled toward Perthshire, the picturesque mountains of Cairngorms National Park loomed enticingly to my north. By the time I got to Perth, my home for the next four days, the sun had come out.

Loch Morlich in Cairngorms National Park

Traffic, too, had thinned to the sort of levels one might experience in farm areas surrounding a major US metropolitan area –– not so quiet that one could even begin to think about setting up a baseball game in the street, but sparse enough that I could maintain a steady speed for more than a minute. If one had such a feature he or she could almost –– almost –– consider clicking on cruise control. I have some very good friends who are originally from Scotland and they have long responded to my complaints of Britain's crowded nature with suggestions that I visit the wide open spaces of their homeland. I suspect that if I were to take them to a place like Paint Rock, Texas, the sheer quiet and solitude of it would cause their minds to melt.

But in comparison to the claustrophobia and pollution I had encountered between Liverpool and Manchester it was bliss. The air smelled fresh and clean. The vast majority of drivers around me behaved in a sane manner (safe following distances, reasonable speeds, etc.). And already, within hours of arriving, I was making promises to myself to return to Scotland soon.

That night I ate dinner at The Bothy, a great local pub in the heart of Perth that sources many of its foods locally. I drank pints of Schiehallion, I struck up a long conversation with my waitress who said her boyfriend looked like Benedict Cumberbatch (she showed me pictures; he does) and felt thankful for the life I have. Then I went back to my hotel and sent rude texts to Jenn.

Some pictures from Scotland

A field of bluebells I came across whilst walking in Battleby.

Looking up to the Cairngorms from Loch Morlich.

View from the summit of Cairngorm Mountain

Gorse flowers in Battleby

The tranquility of Perth city centre on a Sunday evening

At Carter Bar, marking the England-Scotland border.

If life were a TV series, this episode would probably, for the sake of dramatic license, start with me standing on a no-name country lane, somewhere off the A91 in Perthshire. Actually, I'm not standing, I'm jumping up and down in circles, waving my clenched fists in rage and screaming at the top of my lungs.

I am angry at a whole host of things, not least of which the present moment –– in which I am suddenly unable to control my temper enough to safely ride a motorcycle. And I am subconsciously aware of just how ridiculous it must look to see a 38-year-old man throwing a tantrum in full riding gear and full face helmet at the side of the road. To that end, I have deliberately chosen this remote spot for this moment. But I am aware, too, that I need to sort myself out quickly because even on Scottish country lanes it is never so very long before a car comes along.

It is a little past 11:30 a.m. and this moment is a boiling point –– a culmination of annoyances that have been building since 7 a.m. That was when I had rolled out of bed in my hotel and headed downstairs for breakfast. For those of you playing along in the United States, the hotels here serve actual breakfasts. My goal was to fill up my belly for a full day's riding, pack my things and be rolling by 8:30 a.m.

I should have known from previous experience this goal was stupidly overambitious. An offer of free pints of Schiehallion the night before had meant I'd gone to bed without packing, leaving it for morning. Throughout the trip, stuffing the Viking Bags AXE Saddlebags was in and of itself a fiddly process; in combination with the packing of my backpack and tank bag, it meant that just getting everything ready to go on the bike took at least an hour.

So, it hadn't been until just before 9 a.m. that I found myself finally lugging everything out to the car park to begin strapping it all to my bike. I took off the heavy duty cover I had brought, rolled it up and packed it into its bag. By this point I was already sweating profusely, the sun of Perthshire morning being warmer than I had anticipated. I strapped the cover bag to the rack, along with cans of chain lube and GT-85, and the heavy security chain I had used to lock the bike to a birch tree. Then I put the fully loaded saddlebags on, adjusting the straps several times to ensure everything was secure. I strapped my backpack to the seat. After that, I pulled rain covers over the rack-and-chain bags and over the backpack. Two straps of Velcro, two luggage straps, four trident buckle straps, five bungee cords, and one cargo net. I would go through the gear-loading process four times on this trip and at no point would it take me less than an hour.

So, when I finally rolled out of the hotel's car park at about 10:45 –– more than two hours after my intended departure time –– my annoyance level was approaching a 6 on a scale of 1 to 10. At the petrol station, the guy at the counter wouldn't wait for me to dig 53p out of my pocket so I could give him exact change. When I tried to give him the 53p regardless, so he could give me a £5 note rather than an overflowing handful of coin, it was clear he was unable to do such math on his own. The cash register had told him to dispense £4.47 and he was unwilling to trust the arithmetic trickery of an American. My annoyance level notched to 7.

I rode out of the petrol station and almost instantly spotted in my side view mirror that I had forgotten to zip up the jacket pocket in which I keep my wallet. I immediately pulled to a side street, performed an awkward U turn, cut the engine, made sure all the zippers on my jacket were secure, started the engine and couldn't help feeling that the clock on my dashboard was taunting me. My annoyance level notched to 8.

The countryside of Northumberland National Park

Within a few hundred metres I realised a lot of air was pushing up my right leg; I had forgotten to zip the leg of my riding pants. I immediately pulled to a side street, performed an awkward U turn, cut the engine, made sure all the zippers on my riding pants were secure, started the engine and promptly found myself stuck on a too-narrow-for-filtering road behind the slowest driver in Scotland. My annoyance level notched to 9.

Before long, though, I made it to the motorway. I opened up the throttle as a kind of emotional release. When I tucked down I noticed that I had neglected to hook my tank bag to the headstock. That's just a safety measure, the bag actually being held in place by magnets. But after several minutes I managed to convince myself that despite my lateness and annoyance, or perhaps because of it, this was not a good day to ride without strapping the bag to the headstock.

So, I took the first exit I found and discovered it to be one of those exits where there is no return ramp to the motorway. I had been dumped in the relative empty of the Perthshire countryside with no idea how to get back on track. I would have to stop, dig out my map and sat-nav just to figure out where I was, and burn even more time getting back to where I wanted to be. My annoyance level hit 10.

Which brings us back to the present, where we started this episode. I have ridden just a short way down the quiet A91 to the most backcountry-looking road I can find. I have cut the engine, carefully stepped off the bike and immediately launched into a full-on toddler tantrum. My face shield is fogging up and I am hyperventilating slightly from using up the oxygen in my helmet. Through the fog, though, I am suddenly able to see my bike is listing severely. I have parked it in mud and the sidestand is sinking.

In a panic, I rush over and muscle the bike upright. Then I push it well onto the solid pavement of the road. With all the calm I can muster, I remove my helmet, set it careful on the ground on top of my gloves, and return to jumping up and down and shouting obscenities.

I cannot figure out why I am behaving this way, but also I cannot stop. Some part of my brain feels it is better to get it all out of my system rather than risk carrying any of that negativity on the bike. My throat is starting to hurt from screaming. I am drenched in sweat. And suddenly I have this sense of myself and my place in the universe. If life were a TV programme, the camera would be rapidly pulling back, showing a ridiculously angry middle-class white man throwing a fit in the tranquil late spring beauty of Scotland because... uhm... he's running a few hours behind on an arbitrary schedule. A schedule that has no meaning. He doesn't have to be anywhere at any time. The whole point of this day is riding and meandering to a budget hotel in Northern England where he'll spend the night. That's it. There is nothing to be upset about.

I stop screaming and within seconds the birds in the tree I'm parked near go back to flirting with one another. It is quiet and warm and I am surrounded by green. I dig my map and sat-nav from my tank bag, figure out where I am and where I need to go, then suit up –– triple checking that all zippers are zipped and buttons buttoned. As I start my bike, an attractive woman in a high-end Land Rover rolls past and winks.

Border country

At Carter Bar. The trailer in the background is the roadside cafe.

Getting through Edinburgh was confusing because in order to go south and east you had to follow roads that claimed to be heading to Glasgow, which is due west. Eventually, though, the traffic opened up and I was speeding to the English border. It was well into that part of the day that could be called "lunch time" by the time I hit Carter Bar, home to a 16th-century border skirmish between England and Scotland, and I considered grabbing food at a roadside cafe but decided to press on.

I did this despite the fact I knew I was entering Northumberland National Park, which holds as its claim to fame the fact it is the least-populated region in all of England. Which, of course, means pubs are few and far between. But the thought of stopping to eat a bacon sandwich served from a dirty old van made me willing to try my luck.

The roads of Northumberland were fantastic: well paved by British standards, with little traffic and good sight lines on the curves. Again I feel the need to praise my Michelin Pilot Road 4 tires, because ever since having them fitted I've felt more confident in corners. I was able to ride smooth and flowing, and was having such a good time I almost didn't mind that I was hungry. Almost.

I slowed at the only place I had seen for miles, the Camien Cafe. Its car park deserted, a sign out front declared: "BIKER'S AND HGV'S WELCOME!"(a) Some day in the not too distant future I plan to write a post about what makes a good motorcyclist pub/cafe. To me, one of the tell-tale clues that you have not arrived at a good place is a large, grammatically incorrect sign out front welcoming your "kind." To me, such a sign is, in fact, saying: "WE EXPECT YOU TO HAVE LOW STANDARDS!"

I rode on. After realising my options were incredibly limited I followed signs to Otterburn Mill, where I got a meal that wasn't pre-processed pub food. Not that homemade sausage casserole is so much healthier, mind. But, hey, those grilled onions and bell peppers count as vegetables, right?

With food in my belly, my mind seemed to unwind some and I found myself able to enjoy Northumberland even more. On certain sections of road I would like the run so much that I'd turn around and ride it again. When I hit the long straight of the B6318 I delighted in its undulating hills, hitting the throttle right as I crested so as to lift the bike just a little.

That road is straight because it runs parallel to Hadrian's Wall, a 1,900-year-old defense built by the Romans to, well, prove that the Romans could build a wall from one end of Britain to the other. And perhaps to serve as everlasting proof that it is actually possible to build stuff in straight lines in Britain, despite the circuitous and nonsensical planning habits of the island's native inhabitants.

The view from some of the finest toilets Rome ever built.

I stopped to stretch my legs at Vercovicium, a fort along the wall that housed a large Roman garrison for about 275 years. I sat on Hadrian's Wall and thought again on the issue of significance within the universe. Here I was, a middle-class white man in the tranquil late spring beauty of Northumberland, sitting on a structure built by an empire that ruled this place for nigh 400 years –– a space of time greater than the space of time between the present day and when the Mayflower pilgrims arrived in North America. As I thought about this, my phone rang and I suddenly got looped into a conference call at work, a surreal situation that allowed me to utter this brilliant statement: "Well, I'm afraid I can't answer that question right now as I don't have my computer in front of me. Presently, I'm standing in some latrines built in 122 AD. They're quite impressive. So, if you'd like to learn about Roman toilets, I'm your man. On other topics, it might be best to wait until I get back to the office on Monday."

I lounged for as long as my anxious self could allow. Despite having no particular place to be I still had the pressing feeling I was running behind schedule. Plus, I wanted to get back on those Northumberland roads. Sadly, they soon became crowded Cumbrian roads and thereafter Lancashire motorway. I arrived at my hotel just before 6 p.m. I got all the luggage off my bike, oiled the chain, took a shower and discovered that like the staff in every hotel everywhere the people at my hotel were utterly clueless about the surrounding area.

In hindsight, I should have just eaten at the restaurant in my hotel. But I felt there would be a tiny bit more atmosphere at the chain pub across the road. I was totally wrong on that one. My first-ever experience of eating at a Brewer's Fayre served not only as my last-ever experience of eating at a Brewer's Fayre but also one of the most depressing dining experiences of my life.

Walking back to my hotel in the warmth of late-spring sunset, though, I shook it off. I thought again of my place in the universe and what a lucky little place it was to be: a man out on a road trip across Britain, with another full day's riding ahead of him.

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(a)HGV stands for "heavy goods vehicle." A semi-truck, in other words.

An incredibly common sight in Wales.

It took me nearly an hour and a half to pack everything up and get it on my bike. And as had been the case in previous parts of my journey, I felt annoyed at the process taking longer than I had anticipated.

Calming down, though, was easier than it had been the day before. I reminded myself that with Jenn staying that night at a friend's house in West Sussex there was no one for me to rush home to. Additionally, I was in Lancaster, which meant riding through the urban tangle between Liverpool and Manchester was inevitable; better to avoid tackling that during rush hour.

Because I had nowhere to be and motorways are boring and I felt good, I decided to increase my mileage for the day and meander home via the winding A roads of Wales rather than speed down the relative straight of English motorway. For those of you playing along in the United States, a motorway is the British equivalent of a freeway/interstate; an A road is an undivided highway where speed limits can range from 30-60 mph depending on whether you're in a built-up area. A roads have no U.S. equivalent because there are no public roads in America that are so narrow.

In Wales, A roads are generally the least efficient means of getting from point A to point B. Unfortunately, they are also often the only means. My joke is that no one trusts the Welsh with explosives; so, rather than being able to cut through the country's multitudinous promontories, road builders had to go around them. The end result, though, is that if you are on a motorcycle on a sunny day with no particular time schedule, Wales is an incredibly good place to be.

According to my ledger, I bought tea at the Chester motorway services at 10:58 a.m. that day, so I suppose I was making better time than I remember. The services are roughly 70 miles from the Holiday Inn where I had started out and they mark one's arrival in Wales and departure from motorway efficiency. Whilst there, I encountered a large contingent of Welsh-speaking blokes riding raked-out, loud-piped, custom-painted, shiny Harley-Davidsons. I thought of the Dr. Simon Brooks claim that the Welsh are just Americans who couldn't afford the boat ride to the New World. Certainly I've not seen such ornate bikes anywhere else this side of the Atlantic.

So I had, on multiple levels, the sense that I was back home. Firstly in that I was arriving in a part of the country with which I've become pretty damn familiar over the past 8 years; secondly, I had stumbled upon a gaggle of Harley riders; and thirdly, I was able to speak with said riders in Welsh. Speaking Welsh is on par with a Masonic handshake. More so, actually. If you know it, you're in, son.

The riders were on their way to Hull, then onto a Belgium-bound ferry en route to some festival they seemed to think I already knew about because none of them explained it. Eventually they all mounted up to head out, with one of them saying to me in Welsh: "All these people around us are giving us dirty looks for speaking Welsh; this will really piss them off!"

They roared away, the sound of their pipes setting off car alarms and causing people to hold their hands to their ears.

More sheep.

A Honda, of course, is a much quieter machine. Which is really what you want as you glide along the curves of Welsh roads. Soon, I was dancing through UKIP country. Full of racist, immigrant-hating homophobes, sure, but certainly a very pretty part of the world. This was just before the recent European elections and I was disturbed by just how many UKIP signs I saw posted in front of houses. I thought back to Scotland and the fact that in a few months it will be deciding via referendum whether to declare its independence from the United Kingdom.

"It's a topic that's a bit like religion," one Scotsman had told me over pints. "We don't talk about it in polite company."

But when the Scottish do talk about the referendum I imagine it can be difficult to find strong emotional arguments for staying together when you have so many people south of the border voting UKIP –– a party whose leader once referred to the Scottish as "yobbo scum."

All this went through my head as I wandered southward. As mentioned in Part I of this adventure, this trip gave me a lot of time to think –– about my life and my place and what I want to be. That's a self discussion that throws up a lot of problems, because certain really important things come into conflict with other really important things.

I let these things slip to the back of my mind as I pushed down the beautifully winding section of the A483 that runs from Newtown to Llandrindod Wells. It is 25 miles of curve after curve after curve with good sight lines on most turns. In the United States they'd give this road a scary name and sell T-shirts. In Wales it's just a way to get from one place to another.

I had run this section on my road trip to Pennant several months before, and back then certain turns had given me The Fear. Now, though, I was comfortable keeping a slightly-faster-than-the-cars-wanted-to-go pace throughout. Credit the Michelin Pilot Road 4 tires, credit the way the weight of my Viking Bags panniers seemed to help the bike hold a line, but probably also credit the extra experience. It is fun and interesting to see yourself "grow" as a rider –– developing and improving. I still have a lot to learn and very much want to take a BikeSafe course soon, but it is nice to know I'm developing some skills on my own.

By the time I got to Llandrindod Wells, though, all I could focus on was my empty stomach. I parked my bike in the town centre and set off on foot to try to find a place that wasn't the warmed-in-a-microwave fare I had been eating too much of on this trip. Eventually I came upon a place that served local lamb burgers and home-made strawberry milkshakes.

From there it was exactly 80 miles to Casa del Cope. But the hundreds of miles from this trip were starting to have their effect, so I stopped halfway to take a deep breath and gather focus for the traffic of the valleys and Cardiff. Still, I arrived home far sooner than I would have imagined that morning. There was time to unload the bike, wash it thoroughly of all the bugs and road grime that had accumulated over the past week or so, and let it dry in the early evening sun before tucking it away.

In total, I had covered more than 1,000 miles, through three countries and all kinds of weather. Sitting at my table that night, drinking beer and staring out the window, one thought kept coming back to me: Where will I go next?

If you are a member of the South Wales Police Department I want to stress to you that the following story is totally made up. Actually, let me extend that to all police forces in Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland. And maybe the UK Home Office. And the DVLA. And any other body or individual that has the power to issue fines, take away my license, deport me or in some other way sanction me for riding a motorcycle at 110 mph. That did not happen. Or, if it did happen, it was on a closed track and I was supervised by professionals. Because on British public roads I always ride at or below the speed limit, and according to the relevant conditions. Always. I am respectful, courteous and law-abiding. Always.

For everyone else, though: Dude, I did the ton for the first time the other day.

Before I moved to this country I had never heard the phrase "do the ton"–– an old-school British term for riding a bike at or above 100 mph –– and I still can't say I totally understand its etymology. That is to say, a ton is equal to 2,000 lbs. Or 907 kg. Or 142 stone. As far as I can tell, there is no unit of measurement by which a ton is equal to 100 anything. Saying "ton" to mean "100 mph" makes no sense. But such is the way with the British; they don't understand their own language. It's like how they shorten "Hampshire" to "Hants." What is that?! I don't even.

Anyway, I was on the motorway, riding back from Bristol, where I had spent several hours looking at and drooling over the myriad awesome bikes at Fowlers. My head was full of thoughts on The Bike I Want To Get Next: what style I want, what features I want, how much power I want, etc.

Officially, I was there to get an MOT test. While that was happening I had spent the time wandering around, checking out every single machine that appealed to me even in the slightest: Triumph Thunderbird, Triumph Sprint GT, Kawasaki Versys, Yamaha XV950, Yamaha FJR1300, Honda VFR800, Honda CBF1000, Honda CTX1300, Moto Guzzi Norge, Moto Guzzi Griso, Suzuki GSX1250FA, BMW F800GT, Harley-Davidson XL883R, and on and on. Fowlers has a lot of bikes.

I had sat on the bikes, shifted them from side to side, put my feet up, clicked buttons, tried to imagine myself on the machine, and made little decisions about which ones I wanted to test ride (e.g., the Suzuki GSX1250FA) and which were definitely off my list (e.g. the Honda VFR800). I had eventually left Fowlers feeling I had put in some good "work" into getting my next bike, the bike I really want. Because, after all, the bike I have is more the result of tremendously good fortune than choice.

Nearing Cardiff, a BMW 6 series screamed past me. That is how drivers of BMW cars are in the UK. They feel it is their God-given right and responsibility to never, ever go the speed limit. Fine, I say; let them. When I spot that distinctive BMW front end in my mirrors I always just slide over into a slower lane, they zip past, and I go on about my day.

That happened here. But as the distance between myself and said BMW rapidly increased, three things occurred to me:

1) On this very particular stretch of motorway there were no speed cameras, nor any place for a police officer to hide.

2) If somehow there were a police officer hiding somewhere –– perhaps in the mix of cars far ahead –– it would definitely be the BMW drawing his or her attention, because...

3) The BMW was definitely going in excess of 140 mph.

I just wanted to see how quickly my bike could accelerate. I fell into the fast lane behind the BMW and twisted the throttle. There was that half-millisecond of nothing that I guess happens with carbureted bikes, or Hondas, or my Honda, or I don't know, then the needle on the speedometer started to move up. A gentle, quick, steady acceleration, as if the bike were attached to a bungee cord. From 80 mph, the numbers came almost as fast as you can say them: 85, 90, 95, 100...

One hundred miles per hour. I eased up a bit, held the bike here. This was the fastest I had ever gone on a motorcycle. Since I am a strong believer in the philosophy of riding within your limitations, I had never really tried before. Now, perfect conditions had allowed me to achieve the holy grail of speed.

"Well, hell," I said aloud. "I guess since I'm already up here..."

I twisted the throttle, tucked a little, and watched the needle dance to 105, 110... and here it was me that gave out. My nerves forced me to let the throttle roll forward, made me sit upright to catch the wind, and I slowed back to the speed limit while the BMW disappeared.

Suddenly, 70 mph felt springtime peaceful. And in its solace I thought to myself: Well, let's examine what just took place here. When I had let off the throttle I had not been wide open. Nor had the engine been anywhere close to screaming. The fact is: the Honda still had had more to give. She hadn't been shaking. There had been no wobble. Nothing about the bike had made me slow down, it was just my own fear/sensibility.

So, wait...

Do I actually need a different bike?

Ever since the Triumph Bonneville episode I have found myself looking at a number of bikes semi-seriously, with the aim of getting one sometime in the next 12 months or so. And, of course, one of the underlying motivations in considering the purchase of a new motorcycle is telling yourself that you "need" it in some form or another, that it has something your present machine doesn't.

So, I've got this bike that can easily go much faster than I'll ever want to, that I have ridden to Scotland without problem, that has anti-lock brakes, heated grips, decent fairing, and great tires, and which presently has less than 14,000 miles on the odometer.

Yes, the bike is 9 years old, but thanks to MOT documents I can see that my its previous owner averaged less than 1,000 miles a year on the machine. Thanks to Google Maps and the fact he wrote his address in the owner's manual, I can see that he lives in a very nice house that has not one but two garages, and a shed big enough to house a motorcycle. My Honda was kept well before coming to me. Add that how much I baby the motorcycle, and I feel it's safe to say its age belies its condition.

So, again: do I actually need a different bike? The evidence seems to suggest pretty strongly that I do not. Especially in light of what I could actually get for my present budget. Sure, a Victory Cross Country is better than a Honda CBF600, but that purchase is just not going to happen any time soon. Anything I could possibly afford right now is going to be very similar to what I already have, or will require a step down in terms of features/power.

Such a realisation makes me a little sad because I still feel my Honda is so terribly uncool. It's just so grey and plastic and, I don't know, not cool. But is also so damned reliable and good and, quite frankly, superior to bikes that would cost five times what I could sell it for.

Damn you, Honda, for making a bike so good that I can't force myself to realistically consider getting rid of it.

Yamaha XV950

Imitation, Charles Caleb Colton famously noted, is the sincerest form of flattery. If that's true, the flattery the Harley-Davidson Iron 883 receives from Yamaha's XV950 is enough to make one blush. Put the two bikes side by side, and the inspiration for the latter is undeniable. Yamaha claims its bike has a "new neo retro Japanese look," but that's clearly just nonsense –– lorem ipsom that was used instead of "totally looks like a Harley-Davidson Iron 883."

Certainly the XV950 –– known as the Star Bolt in the United States –– isn't the first example of a Japanese OEM adhering faithfully to the styling cues of America's best-known motorcycle manufacturer. The orthodox members of the Church of Jesus Harley Latter-day Davidson write these bikes off as "wannabes," and tend to be pretty dismissive of anyone who would dare consider purchasing one. But I'm going to commit blasphemy here and tell you that the XV950 is unquestionably the superior machine. In look, sound, feel, and, of course, performance.

I've now had a chance to ride both bikes, having loved my experience on the Harley-Davidson 883 last summer, and certainly it's true that the similarities between the bikes are not just cosmetic. Both are 5-gear air-cooled V twins that have the kathunk-style gear boxes that I think are part of the fun of such machines. There's something cool about having your gear changes punctuated in that way, reminding you that you are on a machine, that your fire-driven dandy horse is a great big hunk of metal. Especially since, in both cases, that kathunk doesn't have any negative effect on your ability to change gears. Though things are just a teeny bit smoother on the Yamaha.

Once you hit your gear, both bikes are torque-happy and loads of fun to twist the throttle on. In the United Kingdom and other places where filtering is legal, these bikes are fantastic ways of reducing your TED (Time Exposed to Danger) to milliseconds when launching from a red light –– you won't have to worry about being stuck between two accelerating cars, you'll be ahead of them.

And though both machines weigh in upward of 550 lbs., their low seat height and low centre of gravity make them far more manageable than you might think. OK, sure, you'll never out-maneuver a dude on a scooter, but they are really easy to move at a crawling pace and would suit the needs of just about anyone in an urban/suburban setting.

With mid controls, the seating position on both is chair-like: your feet are forward but not so much that wind blows up your trouser leg. Additionally, the seating position means that when you encounter rough road you can stand up on the pegs.

Both the Harley and the Yamaha are available with anti-lock brakes. Both are belt driven. Both are fun to ride and incredibly popular. In the guise of the Star Bolt, the Yamaha XV950 is presently the best-selling metric cruiser in the United States. And, of course, through its various faces (Iron, Roadster, Super Low) the 883 Sportster is Harley-Davidson's best-selling machine.

I love the XV950's lack of chrome

But Yamaha does it better

I was genuinely surprised at just how much I enjoyed riding the XV950. I was expecting it to be more or less a carbon copy of the 883 Sportster experience, which is great... but the XV950 experience is better.

Performance superiority is usually a given when it comes to comparing pretty much any bike, save a Royal-Enfield, against a Harley-Davidson. People don't buy Harleys for performance. And that's OK. I get that. In the world of four wheels I am, unabashedly, a pickup man (a). You don't go fast in pickup trucks; you don't tear through corners; you don't travel in plush comfort. So, I can understand that when it comes to motorcycles some people just don't care whether they're on a machine that could keep pace with Guy Martin.

Still, it is possible to make improvements without detracting from the experience of a thing. Again using pickup trucks as an example, no one (save those blinded by misplaced allegiances) would deny that a Toyota is superior to a Chevrolet or Ford. If you've never seen the "Top Gear" episodes in which they try and fail to kill a Toyota Hilux, take the time to be amazed: Part 1– Part 2– Part 3. I'm not sure the Yamaha XV950 could take that much a beating, but it definitely outmatches its Harley-Davidson inspiration in a number of ways.

Although a Motorcycle.com comparison last year saw the Harley producing 0.1 horsepower more on a dyno test, the power of the Yamaha seems a hell of a lot more usable. Whereas things get pretty challenging above 60 mph on the Harley, I found that on the Yamaha 85 mph (b) was perfectly easy to reach and maintain. Actually, it was more than just easy, it was fun. Getting up to speed on the motorway was like being fired from a cannon, and I actually had to slow down to match the flow of traffic.

And at that speed things are a lot less hectic on the Yamaha. The seating puts you just a bit more "in" the bike and its big headlight blocks a decent amount of wind, the blast hitting me (I'm 6-foot-1) just below the xiphoid process. Though, I would still want the optional bullet cowling for additional protection.

I have no doubt the XV950 has it in her to do the ton (as could the Harley, maybe) and perhaps a little more. MCN says it has a top speed of 110 mph. But with the engine producing roughly 52 bhp, it's fair to say that getting there would be a more gradual process.

I kind of like the exposed frame.

If you do, though, you can take comfort in the fact that the XV950's brakes are up to the task of delivering enough whoa for all that go. Although the H-D Sportster's brakes are perfectly good, and far better than what you'll experience on the Triumph America or any larger cruiser, the Yamaha's are even better. I made a point of bringing the bike to a very quick stop on a few occasions and came away pleasantly surprised. And, as with the 883 Sportster, anti-lock brakes are available for a bit more cash.

Adding that option to the XV950 results in your getting the R-spec version, which has a few extra bells and whistles. Along with ABS, the XV950R / Bolt R-Spec has, in my opinion, cooler paint options, a slightly plusher seat, and better shocks. Though, even the standard XV950 shocks are superior to the Sportster's. Sure, 110 mm of rear travel isn't exactly off-road worthy, but it's pillowy bliss compared to the 40 mm of travel found on the Sportster.

Less than an hour on the Sportster had left me in a certain amount of pain, but the XV950 seemed perfectly capable of handling a typical British road. Plus, as I say, the seating position allows you to lift up on the pegs when hitting particularly nasty stretches.

Speaking of seating position, I found the ergonomics of the XV950 a little roomier and more comfortable, though still "sporty" enough that corners were easy and fun. Indeed, those last two words –– easy and fun –– probably best describe the overall experience of the XV950. Riding it is simple, intuitive, effortless and just so much fun.

Another good word to use is "cool." This is a bike that you're happy to be seen on. As well as heard. The stock exhaust has a nice, aggressive growl that is fun to hear but not so loud that it will annoy your neighbours or drive you crazy on long rides.

A matter of opinion

Some of the things that make the XV950 better, though, are very much issues of individual taste. For instance, the indicators. Harley-Davidson's system is to have a button on each grip. Want to turn right? Push the button on the right grip. I find that system confusing and prefer the more standard method of having the indicators controlled by a single button on the left grip. Yamaha does this and to me it's just easier.

You can see my Honda in the background trying not to be jealous.

Although the XV950 is very much modelled on the Iron 883 it does go off script in a few places. It is less refined in certain ways. There's that awkward bit of frame that juts out at the front, the gap between the tank and the seat, and the fact that all the wires are lashed to the bike with zip ties. Obviously, one way to interpret that is laziness on the part of Yamaha's designers. But to me it gives the bike more personality. It adheres to the bobber spirit, I think, retaining much more the feel of being a machine that was put together by human hands.

And, of course, that fits with Yamaha's philosophy of the bike. They really want you to mess with it –– to tinker with stuff, to add things, to reshape the XV950 so it doesn't look like anyone else's. Yes, they got that idea from Harley, but there's something about the Yamaha that makes you more willing to tamper.

Another facet of the bike that I prefer is its size. It is bigger than the 883 Sportster. That benefits me because I'm 6 foot 1. If you're a little shorter in the leg, the XV950 still has a very low seat (27 in.) but you may prefer the more compact nature of the Sportster.

Some room for improvement

Though the XV950 is a great bike and I find myself now very seriously considering getting one, I have to admit that there are a few tiny foibles. The wind issue, for example. Even with the bullet cowling a winter ride is going to demand a good, thick sweater. And I suspect the "avoid motorways" box would be ticked more often when planning trips on Google Maps.

But that's just part of the experience, I suppose –– something to get used to. The same is true of the heat that comes off the XV950's air-cooled engine. You definitely notice it –– especially on your right knee/calf. Admittedly, that's probably an added benefit in Britain for 48 weeks of the year. I can imagine it being incredibly helpful in combating my notoriously cold hands. But for that month that we get something resembling a summer I suspect that suffering traffic on the XV950 would be a little uncomfortable.

On the issue of comfort, although the rider's seat and ergonomics are great, the same can't really be said of passenger accommodation. At least it exists, I suppose; pillion seats are add-on options for the Iron 883 and the Star Bolt in the United States. For some reason, in the UK the XV950 comes standard with a cushy brick of a seat that is long enough for a normal-sized human being, but not so terribly wide that he or she would want to go on really long journeys. Add to this the fact that the passenger pegs are quite high. I suspect the seating position would remind Jenn of a visit to the gynecologist.

Meanwhile, I am somewhat on the fence when it comes to the XV950's digital speedometer. I suppose the accuracy of a digital display helps one avoid speeding tickets but I just can't decide if I'd prefer a good old-fashioned analog speedo. I know that I would like a tachometer, though, as well as a gear indicator and fuel gauge. But none of those things are really deal breakers for me.

My main complaint is the price. At £7,800, the XV950R (i.e., the version with anti-lock brakes) costs £300 more than an ABS-equipped Iron 883. OK, yes, it is still a fair price. And the cost of the Harley would go up considerably if you added the pillion seat and better shocks that are standard on the XV950R. But, still, £300 dude. Especially considering the Yamaha won't have as good a resale value.

The three questions

In order for me to seriously consider a motorcycle it needs to answer in the affirmative to the following three questions:

1) Does it fit my current needs and lifestyle?
Yes. Long hauls to Scotland or the like would probably demand one or two additional pit stops (if not simply because the tank's range is only about 120 miles) but by and large I can see this bike taking me to all the places I want to go, doing all the thing I want it to do.

2) Does it put a grin on my face?
Yes. It is loads of fun in acceleration, moves fluidly through corners, looks cool and sounds great. Over and over on my test ride I found myself whooping at the bike's torque and quietly, vainly delighted by the idea of how I looked on it. As much as I love my Honda, this bike offers the same levels of reliability with the addition of having a look that is more in line with my traditional view of what a motorcycle should look like.

3) Is it better than my current motorcycle?
Yes. Pretty much. Obviously its engine delivers fewer horses than my CBF600, and that means achieving outrageously illegal speeds would be more of a challenge. Additionally, it lacks the fairing of my Honda. But otherwise, as I've just said, it delivers all the fuel efficiency and reliability of my bike, but in a much cooler, more fun-to-ride way.

Perhaps I don't need any other bike than my CBF600, but the Yamaha XV950 really makes me want one.

––––––––––––––––––

(a)When I was 18 years old that song was my mission statement; my raison d'être expressed in musical form.

(b)If you are a member of South Wales Police, please note: the claim of 85 mph is a lie. I never ride above the speed limit.

The EBR 1190RX
Crikey, that seat looks uncomfortable!

I'll admit I've never really been a Buell guy. That is to say, I've never really been that hot on the look of the bikes he's produced. The guy himself I don't know that much about, though. And his vision of producing American-made motorcycles that aren't cruisers is something I applaud. So, for that latter aspect alone I'd be willing to try to force myself to like his bikes.

If you've been in a closet for the last few decades, Erik Buell is a guy who fell in love with motorcycles thanks to a P.O.S. 1957 Harley-Davidson panhead he rode around in his home state of Pennsylvania. After college, he got a job working for Harley-Davidson and in 1983 branched out to start his own small venture, Buell Motor Company. The company, based in Wisconsin and always maintaining close ties with Harley-Davidson, produced the first American-made sport bike since the Nova Project had been axed.

The close relationship was a blessing and a curse, of course. And it wasn't too long before Harley-Davidson bought up a controlling stake in Buell Motor Company, seeing this as a way for H-D to have its cake and eat it, too. Most people feel Harley-Davidson never really understood the cake they had, though, and in the wake of the Great Recession it decided to pull the rug out from under Buell Motor Company.

Almost immediately thereafter, Erik Buell formed a new company, Erik Buell Racing, aka EBR. Which more or less brings us up to the present. EBR began full production of its 1190RX sport bike this past December and just this week announced the first European shipment had arrived British, German and Dutch shores. And on the back of this announcement came a glimpse at the forthcoming 1190SX, a naked version of the aforementioned fully-faired sport bike.

Information is not yet available for the SX, but the RX appears to have impressive statistics in terms of power, torque, etc., and has spiffy features such as 21-setting traction control (though, I can't help notice there is no talk of ABS). And it competes price-wise with other very high-end, high-performance motorcycles. Yes, the US $19,000 asking price (I can't find info on what it costs in the UK) is a bit steep, but so is the US $24,500 being asked for the Ducati 1199 Panigale S.

Perhaps I really only think that's pricey because I don't quite "get" pure super-sport motorcycles. But ask me to fork out US $24,000 for the BMW K1600 GTL, or US $19,000 for the Victory Cross Country, and, would that I had it, I'd do so happily.

EBR 1190SX

And certainly I want to see the RX succeed. If someone were just handing out EBR bikes, though, I'd want the newly revealed SX more. I'm guessing the ergonomics on the naked bike would be slightly less ridiculous.

The machine I'm most interested in, however, is the AX, something that is only listed as a future model on the EBR website. No pictures. No explanation. The interwebs speculation, however, is that the A stands for "adventure."

I've mentioned before that I really don't like the look of most adventure bikes. To me, there's nothing very cool in the aesthetic. But ever since I spent a day astride a Triumph Tiger Explorer XC, I haven't been able to scratch ADV bikes from the What I Want list. Their coolness comes in what they can do and how well they can do it.

In the guise of Buell Motor Company, Erik Buell has already produced an ADV. With the somewhat-maligned Ulysses, he managed to be in on the ground floor of the current ADV craze for blurring the lines between an actual off-road-capable machine and a tourer (look at this 2005 review for the bike and you'll see that Kevin Duke wasn't even sure how to categorise the bike at the time). If EBR can learn from the mistakes of the Ulysses and deliver a solid, American-made ADV bike I'm pretty sure I could force myself to love it regardless of its looks.

Well, that's assuming Victory or Indian don't produce such a bike first.

The point is, although I like the look of, want, and probably eventually will buy a cruiser in the not-too-distant future, it is very good to see something being produced in the United States that isn't same-old same-old. I can't help but wonder whether Harley-Davidson unintentionally spent several decades damaging the state of motorcycling in the United States by sticking so faithfully to the idea of giving people what they want. Sometimes you need to push forward, try different things and not worry about what people want, hoping that if the thing you produce is good enough they'll realise they want that, too.

And that's what I'm most wishful for in thinking about the forthcoming 1190AX, that EBR will produce a machine that will make me think: "I didn't know this until now, but this is the machine I've always wanted."

Hello. Just a quick note to apologise for the sudden quietness on the blog. The lovely Mrs. Cope and I are in the United States for a few weeks and I'm finding myself too occupied with the consumption of ice cream and barbecue to sit down and blog.

Which is kind of a shame because there are some exciting things happening. I am really really interested in the Harley-Davidson Livewire project, for example.

Anyway, if I don't get a chance to do so sooner, I'll be back on 9 July. Thanks for your patience.

Full of all the hipster clichés you can imagine, but still an enjoyable little film:

Finding Main Street from Sole Creative on Vimeo.

Don't hate on the future: the Harley-Davidson LiveWire

We seem to have fallen into an unhappy pattern in the modern era: any time anything happens –– anything at all –– there is an instant chorus of vicious critics.

Take Ann Coulter, for example. If you live outside the United States and have never heard of her, count yourself lucky. She is an awful and ridiculous person who goes out of her way to say awful and ridiculous things. Recently, while the United States men's soccer team was finding success in the World Cup she declared it was "a sign of the nation's moral decay."

Obviously, she is simply saying nasty things to get attention. Sadly, she's nowhere near being alone in such behaviour. We have built a culture in which vitriolic criticism is instantly issued for all things. The new, the old, the different, the same, the big, the small, the beautiful, the ugly, the stupid or the brilliant –– it all gets met with a tidal wave of harsh words on the internet.

But listen, y'all: sometimes a thing is just good. Sure, it's not perfect. Nothing is. But overall, it's so innately good that any fault-finding is really only a reflection of the critic's flaws.

Such is the case with the Harley-Davidson LiveWire. When America's oldest continuous motorcycle manufacturer –– renown and often lambasted for its restrained approach –– is on the verge of becoming the first major OEM in the world to deliver an electric motorcycle, that is good. It's good for motorcycling, it's good for the environment, it's good for green technologies, it's good for America, it's good for Harley-Davidson.

This is more than just "good". It is big. Actually, no. Let's move beyond the gentle superlatives and call this what it is: a potential seismic shift in motorcycling. The LiveWire is the Reformation; it is the Industrial Revolution; it is Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon; it is the point at which everything changes.

"[My] time on the LiveWire was fleeting but I still came away with a profound sense that I'd covered the biggest motorcycle story of my life," wrote Motorcycle USA journalist Mark Gardiner in a recent review.

Gardiner isn't the only one. Every review I've seen has expressed a sort of wild-eyed giddiness for this almost-certain future offering from Harley-Davidson.

Out of the blue

If you've been out of the loop for a while, let me get you up to speed on what everyone's so excited about. A few weeks ago, pictures emerged of Scarlett Johansson riding a rather unique motorcycle on the set of an upcoming Avengers film. Or, well, Scarlett Johansson's somewhat boy-faced stunt double. (Take a good look at this picture and you'll see that the rider's "hair" is actually a very cleverly disguised helmet) What's important, though, is the bike. Carrying the Harley-Davidson badge, observers noticed that the bike was just a little too polished to be a standard movie-set machine.

Those road-compliant yellow reflectors, for instance. The mirrors. The overall finish. The fact that the bike's name –– LiveWire –– was emblazoned on the motor housing. All these clues pointed to an actual bike that someone actually intended to produce for the mass market.

That's not so strange. Harley's pulled this sort of thing before, cleverly working its Street 750 into Captain America: Winter Soldier before ever announcing that the bike existed. But what was different here was that the bike being ridden by Johansson's stunt double was so very much not like a Harley-Davidson. It looked a little more like a Ducati Diavel with its styling. It had a sit-up-and-beg seating position. And –– least H-D-like of all –– it was an electric motorcycle.

An electric motorcycle. From Harley-Davidson.

Cats and dogs living together, people. And before we could recover from having our minds blown at the very thought of such a thing, Harley-Davidson announced that the rumours were true. They have indeed embarked on an electric motorcycle project.

That's what they're calling it right now: a project. They go out of their way to point out that the bikes are not for sale. Yet. But they have produced several dozen of them and will be touring H-D dealerships in the US and Europe over the next year or so, offering test rides and "gauging customer feedback."

That's probably marketing speak for "generating consumer demand". In his article, Gardiner says the LiveWire is just too polished, too ready to simply be a project. He says most moto-journalists expect an announcement on the LiveWire going into production will come within 18 months. You know, about the time that upcoming Avengers film will be released...

A new era

So, take a moment to let all this sink in. All of it. Ignore the internet hater machine and just think about the countless implications of the LiveWire. This is so very big, it's hard to know where to begin.

Obviously, we've had electric motorcycles for a while. Not too long ago, I wrote a post in which I stated my belief that electric motorcycles would be a part of the mainstream within 10-20 years. So, Harley-Davidson's not doing anything new there. Indeed, with the LiveWire's current claimed range of 55 miles on a charge (a) it is a little behind the curve of Zero, Brammo and the like.

The seismic shift, however, comes in the fact that it is an electric motorcycle from Harley-Davidson–– a major, worldwide OEM. Existing e-bike companies can't touch the dealer network, publicity strength or clout of such a major player. There's a possibility that Yamaha could release its PES-1 before the LiveWire, thus earning it the distinction of being the very first major OEM to offer an electric motorcycle, but I would argue that the release of the LiveWire will have greater impact.

Harley-Davidson understands better than any other OEM the importance of intangibles like emotion, experience and impression. Performance and cost always play a part in our motorcycle-buying decisions, but Harley-Davidson gets that how the bike makes us feel is just as important, if not more so. And Harley-Davidson equally has the power, and the marketing muscle and know-how, to shape these intangibles. Yamaha (or Honda or BMW –– who knows what they're up to) may manage to get an electric motorcycle to the public sooner, but Harley-Davidson will be more successful at making the public want to buy one.

Additionally, it can use its clout and financial muscle to push for better charging network infrastructure, develop more efficient batteries and win government subsidies to encourage people to buy electric. All this would be accelerated as soon as Harley-Davidson saw even a modicum of success with the LiveWire because other OEMs would very quickly jump in the pool. To that end, I want to amend my claim that electric motorcycles will be mainstream within 10-20 years.

I am now happy to go on record saying that electric motorcycles will be a part of the motorcycling mainstream (b) within 5 years of the LiveWire going on sale. Seriously, y'all. Bookmark this blog post. It will happen.

Take my money, Harley-Davidson

While I'm making bold declarations, how about this one: I am so confident in the game-changing nature of Project LiveWire that I will state here and now that I plan to buy one. I want to be one of the first. Many decades from now, I want to be able to look back and say that I saw the seismic shift for what it was and that I was there on the ground floor when it began. So, when the day comes that the LiveWire goes into production, I will head straight to my nearest Harley-Davidson dealer and put down a deposit. I promise.

Of course, one of the reasons I'm willing to make that promise is the fact that, in the LiveWire, Harley-Davidson has managed to create an electric motorcycle that I'd actually want to buy. Thus far electric motorcycles have only been offered in the guise of ungodly expensive sport bikes or rickety things that look like glorified bicycles. The LiveWire, though, looks cool. Someone with a genuine sense of style and design has put some effort into this thing.

A lot of effort, actually. The bike is covered with nifty touches, such as the industrial-looking motor casing, or the oddly cool front turn signals. This, as I say, is an electric motorcycle that manages to speak to the intangibles. And in so doing it makes me willing to take on the unique challenges of an electric bike as related to range, staying forever aware of just how far I am from a charging station.

I like, too, that the bike has a more "normal" seating position. If you're a regular reader of this blog you'll know that I am forever waging an internal battle over what looks cool and what's actually enjoyable to ride. I liked the look of the Triumph America, for example, but couldn't stand to be on the thing for more than 5 minutes. Whereas I loved the comfort of the Triumph Tiger Explorer XC but hated its aesthetics. The LiveWire manages to mix those two worlds.

With it being a Harley-Davidson, of course, the bike will almost certainly be customisable in some fashion, with roughly a million different accessories ranging from fake fuel caps to peg relocation kits. I'm fond of the bike more or less as it is but I like the idea of being able to create a more unique look –– something that isn't really possible with, say, a Zero.

OK, yes, I'll admit that to a certain extent I'm drinking the Harley-Davidson Kool-Aid where this bike is concerned, but I think that's part of the reason I'm so excited by it. It is exciting to think of an electric motorcycle actually being cool rather than simply a morally admirable purchase.

And speaking of which, the bike sounds pretty cool, as well. At high speed it's got that devilish TIE fighter whine. At lower speed, you are free to just listen to the world around you and better connect with it. No, the old men of the American Midwest won't be able to sit and rev it at stop lights, but those of us who don't have a tiny penis will get by just fine sans loud pipes.

The LiveWire is a harbinger of the not-too-distant future. The rumbling joy of a combustion engine will never completely die, but I genuinely believe we will one day mark this as the moment when the combustion engine's monopoly on motorcycling began to fade. I can't wait to see the LiveWire in the metal. I can't wait for the opportunity to hand my hard-earned money to Harley-Davidson in exchange for one.

Because this motorcycle is a very good thing.

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(a)Most journalists feel this is the only real "project" part of the bike and that a production LiveWire would have a larger (and heavier) battery, giving it greater range. Additionally, there is suspicion that Harley-Davidson has worked/ is working pretty closely with Mission, who claim a range of 140 "real-world" miles for their Mission R electric motorcycle.

(b) I predict they will be at least as popular as sport-tourer bikes are now.

Stillwater, MN

Hola, by the way. I was so eager to write up a post about the Harley-Davidson LiveWire as soon as I got back that I didn't even take the time to mention it's good to be back. Well, back blogging, at least. I wouldn't have minded staying in America for a little longer.

Mrs. Cope and I were there for a little shy of three weeks, visiting my family in various parts of the Central Time Zone. First we spent a few days in Texas, where we celebrated my grandfather's 90th birthday. Then we flew up to Minnesota to spend some time with friends and family in the Twin Cities, as well as celebrate the United States' 238th birthday.

As I say, I would have liked to have stayed longer, and one of my biggest regrets is that I didn't get a chance to meet up with Lucky, who I count as one of my real influences in this whole motorcycle obsession thing. I especially would have liked to have gotten his thoughts on some of the things I observed about the state of motorcycling in the United States. Or, at least, the state of motorcycling in Minnesota.

I guess I had always known but never truly observed just how dominant Harley-Davidson is in American motorcycling. But, yeesh, it was almost creepy to see that level of uniformity. Outside of Austin, I'd say a solid 95 percent of the bikes I saw were cruisers. The overwhelming majority of said machines carrying the name of Milwaukee's famous motorcycle company.

In Austin, I saw a little more moto-variety (I even spotted an old BSA!), so that gave me hope. Which is somewhat the opposite of what I felt when I was up in Stillwater, MN.

Get your wobble on

It's likely you've never heard of Stillwater, Minnesota. The town gets name checked in Soundgarden's "Rusty Cage," but beyond that it's pretty unspectacular.

Or, at least, I think it gets mentioned in that song. The line "I'll take the river down to Stillwater/ And ride a pack of dogs" certainly makes sense in a Minnesota context; Stillwater sits on the St. Croix, once a major logging river. I'm not wholly sure about the "pack of dogs" bit, though. Maybe Chris Cornell is referencing sled dog racing, which takes place in the surrounding St. Croix Valley.

I could be grasping at straws, however. Perhaps Soundgarden is singing about a different Stillwater. In which case, the Minnesota town's claim to fame is that it is a quaint Americana spot on the Minnesota-Wisconsin border that has become a destination for local motorcyclists. The roads through town are arrow straight, and curves on the surrounding roads are few and far between, yet the rumble of motorcycle engines is constant. Perhaps bikers of the Upper Midwest just really love homemade fudge and bridal boutiques.

You could be forgiven for thinking
only one type of bike is sold in America.

Jenn and I visited Stillwater one afternoon and chose to take a leisurely lunch at a place called Charlie's, which is notorious for its slow service. Never go there hungry, or if you want good food, or if you have anything to do that day. But on a sunny summer afternoon its large patio is a great place to drink beer while taking in the boats on the river, and the endless parade of V-twins that trundle the town's main streets.

Jenn and I sat at Charlie's for nigh two and a half hours. It was a weekday, so traffic was light, but I'd venture to say that a bike would pass by at least every two minutes or so. I saw just one bike that wasn't a V-twin -- a BMW K1600 -- and only a handful of riders wearing helmets. The longer I sat there, the more disheartened I felt by the apparent state of motorcycling in Minnesota, and, by extension, the United States.

"This is where fat, old men come to ride their bikes," observed my wife.

She had said it in a joking way, but the truth of her statement was undeniable. A good 80 percent of the riders we saw were very definitely closer to (or beyond) retirement than middle age, and not one of them looked to have skipped a meal since the Carter administration. Almost without exception, the only people wearing helmets were female. And no one -- not one person -- wore a protective jacket of any kind. By and large, riding gear consisted of T-shirts, shorts and tennis shoes.

We were sat within eyesight of two intersections, so we got to watch no less than two dozen dudes nearly drop their bikes as they struggled to overcome the oh-so-mighty challenge of going in a straight line slowly. Everyone else (but the BMW guy, of course) took off from a stop with both feet splayed out. Additionally, I saw an annoyingly large number of dudes attempting to navigate town while keeping their feet on the highway pegs. And, of course, almost all were revving their engines (because, yeah, you need to keep the RPM up on that brand new fuel-injected Harley-Davidson).

It was a constant flow idiocy that suddenly reminded me why I hadn't gotten a bike after earning my motorcycle endorsement 20 years ago: I didn't want to be associated with people like this. What 18-year-old kid wants to loop himself in with these goobers? Sitting there, I felt a wave of embarrassment to think that this is what my Minnesota friends must imagine when I tell them I now ride a motorbike.

I thought of my previous assertion that the Upper Midwest is the motorcycling heart of America. I thought, too, of a conversation I had in April with one of the UK engineers for Victory Motorcycles. He told me of getting to visit Polaris headquarters in Minnesota, and the company organising a group ride to Stillwater. Thinking about that now made me sad. This is the sort of thing that Victory engineers are shown; this is the audience they are targeting. No wonder they don't bother putting good brakes on the Victory Judge.

And all of it offers a less-than-rosy picture of the future of motorcycling. If you look at the people and bikes rolling through Stillwater, there is very little to make you envious, to make you think: "Ooh, I want to be like that guy." And if you love bikes like I do, seeing the utter lack of good examples in terms of riding and riders makes you feel that motorcycling must be doomed.

I'm ashamed to inform you that the behaviours I spotted in Stillwater extended to many other parts of the state I so desperately love. My people are morons.

The comforting news is that there are other people in other states. And somewhere out there -- in Austin, for example -- there are people who aren't living up to bad "South Park" stereotypes. Enough of them that even Harley-Davidson is making some new and different bikes, like the LiveWire. It's just a pity that so few such people are visible in my adopted home state.

So, for the sake of my 18-year-old self and the 38-year-old man who wishes he had gotten a bike way back when, if you are one of the non idiots of America please do what you can to make yourself visible. Be a good example. Ride your bike properly. Don't be a bonehead. Help combat this stupid, embarrassing image.

If you are a motorcyclist in Minnesota, meanwhile, please take an MSF course and learn how to ride.

Dirt Quake II by Iron Bird from SIDEBURN on Vimeo.

I'm missing Dirt Quake III this weekend and I can't help feeling ridiculously foolish for doing so. Oh, sure, I have a good reason for doing so -- actually, two good reasons -- but that doesn't make me feel any better. I can't help feeling that this is the sort of thing that will go on the list of Greatest Regrets to be flashed before me in my final moments within the mortal coil. Right up there with the time I chose not to dance the polka with Miss El Cajon at an Oktoberfest celebration in Santee, California, and the time I changed my mind about going to senior prom with a girl after she had already bought her dress.

OK, perhaps it won't be that bad. But, still, I really wish I were there.

Dirt Quake, for those of you who don't spend hours of your life searching motorcycle tags on Vimeo and Tumblr, is a ridiculous motorcycling event that takes place each year in eastern England. Perhaps it is best known for hosting flat track races for bikes that are woefully ill suited for flat track, such as choppers, scooters and well, whatever else is inappropriate for use on a dirt track. It is a weekend of hipster/chopper/flat-tracker/nuevo-rocker boneheadedness.

How could you not want to see this?

If you haven't heard of it, don't feel bad: it is not all that well known. Well, not here, at least. You'll find no mention of it on Visor Down or MCN or any other major UK-based motorcycling website. People here aren't into that sort of thing. Or, that's the perception. I often wonder if things that Britons allegedly dislike are actually disliked or simply said to be disliked by the cynical, creatively lazy people in the UK who control the mainstream.

I digress. And certainly if you take a look at the cheerless, middle-aged, shaven-headed, bacon-sandwich-eating, rollie-smoking, worn-leather-onesie-wearing, let-me-tell-you-why-the-1998-Honda-Fireblade-was-the-best-bike-ever-talking numpties that are so prevalent at UK motorcycle shows, it's not hard to imagine that Dirt Quake wouldn't be up their street. That's doubly true of motorcyclists in Wales. Here in the Land of Song, the Suzuki Gladius is king. The Welsh love cheap mediocrity. They are like people of the Appalachia without the good music, interesting personalities, or innate ability to jerry-rig machinery.

It was my frustration with this situation that led to my discovering Dirt Quake. Why oh why, I lamented, did Britain not have things like Mama Tried or Born Free or Wheels and Waves or Deus or See See, etc.? Why, in the country that created the mods and rockers and cafe racers and the Triumphs ridden by Marlon Brando, Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, Elvis, Steve McQueen and the Fonz, was there no modern "cool" motorcycling culture?

It turns out there is. It's just really hard to find. British subculture is a lot more sub. But with some digging I found out about things like Bike Shed and places like Krazy Horse and, eventually, Dirt Quake. And when I saw the video for Dirt Quake II, I made a vow to myself that I would be there when Dirt Quake III rolled around.

But, as I said above: I won't be there. Firstly, because the guys at Sideburn Magazine (who organise the event) chose to have the event take place on the same weekend that Jenn and I are celebrating our wedding anniversary. Really poor planning on their part, if you ask me.

I had considered trying to convince Jenn to come along, to convince her this would be a fun/funny way to spend our anniversary, and I think I probably could have succeeded (a), but we burned all our money on our recent trip to the United States.

I'm missing all the fun.

So, I won't be there. And I am heartbroken about it. Sure, it falls on an inconvenient weekend, at a time when I have no money, and it would require that I ride to the other side of the country and sleep in a field on a weekend for which thunderstorms are forecast. But that doesn't feel like a good enough excuse. Deep down in my gut, I feel this is something I will really regret missing.

The good news is that it seems likely there will be a Dirt Quake IV. This year's Dirt Quake is big enough to draw Guy Martin as a participant (who said of Dirt Quake: "There's nothing else like it... everything else is like a sea gull following a tractor"). He will be there racing a chopper on the flat track.

The event has also drawn enough attention beyond the shores of Blighty that there are replica events elsewhere. Back in May, the first-ever Dirt Quake USA took place. (The video of that event makes me think that a pilgrimage to Washington state may one day be in order.) Hopefully, all this bodes well for the future of the event.

And hopefully, next time I will make it.

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(a)Just the other day, she expressed passing interest in getting a scooter. And she has said that when we move to the United States she might get a motorcycle since licensing is easier.

Viking AXE Saddlebag

I've been a little sloppy about posting ever since Jenn and I returned from the United States, because the weather here in Her Majesty's United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been unusually fantastic. And we are desperate to make the most of it, hopping on the bike whenever we can. To that end, we both skipped out of work a little early recently to speed over to the Gower, a tiny peninsula on the southern coast of Wales that -- when the weather's nice -- is arguably one of the best places in the world.

For the past 34 years, Jenn's grandparents have made an annual pilgrimage to the Gower, trundling up from Devon in their camper van and spending two weeks at a camp site on the peninsula's southern coast. Every year, y'all. For 34 years. To the same place. The fact that this sort of behaviour is quite common in Britain is at the heart of why I will never really understand its people. But I digress.

To carry our clothing and sundries to see Jenn's grandparents, we stuffed everything into the saddlebags that the good folks at VikingBags.com had sent me a while ago for my trip to Scotland (a). The bags had been sent on the promise I would review them on this site. And I think it's a sign of just how cool the people at VikingBags.com are that they didn't pester me to write that review. So laid back are they that, uhm, I had kind of forgotten about my promise until I was in the Gower. Lounging beside the camper van, Jenn was digging through the bags for our swimsuits and remarked: "These bags really are OK. I don't see why you wrote such bad things about them."

But, in fact, I had not written bad things about the bags; I had not written about them at all. And in hindsight perhaps that's for the best. Because, as Jenn noted, my original impressions were negative. But with a little time to think about it, I realise my primary criticism was unfair.

I struggled to express it, but essentially, when I first got the Viking AXE Saddlebags in the post, I was upset because they were soft, throw-over bags. Yes, that's exactly what I was expecting, but on an emotional level I guess that's not what I wanted. Subconsciously, I looked this gift horse right in the mouth and bemoaned the fact I had not been sent a set of lockable hard cases. I realise now that I'd kind of like a set of those -- so Jenn and I could go places and safely store our gear on the bike -- but initially that was not a thought I had managed to logically form in my tiny brain. So, instead I just badmouthed the things to Jenn. Because she doesn't read this blog, she assumed I had badmouthed them to you, as well.

I am glad now that I didn't.

Throw-over saddlebags are not hard panniers. Whether that's good or bad depends on you. When thinking about motorcycle luggage, take the time to think about what you want the luggage to do and what you want out of it. There are advantages and disadvantages to both systems. VikingBags.com, by the way, offers a range of hard side cases. Though, sadly, they are all intended for use on cruisers.

So, let's take a look at the Viking AXE Saddlebags and review them fairly.

What's good:

My bike (and the bags) on the Scottish border.

+ Durably made. The bags are constructed of a thick Cordura-like material. I have put something approaching 1,500 miles on them thus far and the material still looks brand new. It has suffered rain, high winds and countless exploding insects at motorway speeds without rip, tear or fade. I have had a teeny tiny bit of stitching start to come loose on one of the side strap loops, but I think that is the result of my deliberately overloading the bags once by stuffing them with a week's shopping.

+ Simple, good look. If you've ever bought an Oxford product, no doubt one of your greatest complaints was that it was clearly designed by someone whose sense of style became frozen in time somewhere around 1986. Generally their stuff is pretty good, but it looks awful. It declares to the world: "I am a cheap bastard." This is not the case with the Viking AXE Saddlebags. All black, and decorated with little more than a VikingBags badge, they look good on any bike.

+ Expandable. As is, each bag offers about 22 litres of storage space. They can be expanded to provide 26 litres, giving you a whopping 52 litres of space. When I went to Scotland, that was enough to hold all the clothes I needed for eight days (save two pairs of jeans I put in a different bag), as well as a pair of running shoes, a pair of hiking boots, and various small things for bike maintenance.

+ Relatively easy to put on. The first time you put these bags on your bike, you should allocate roughly 45 minutes for you to stand around swearing, contorting and trying to figure out the best way to ensure the damned things are on your bike securely and without causing damage to your bike. This is because there are no instructions. Once you work out a system, however, you'll find that getting the bags on or off the bike takes closer to 45 seconds.

+ Passenger friendly. As evidenced by Jenn's joining me on the 60-mile ride to the Gower, the straps that go over the passenger seat do not prevent you from carrying a passenger. Jenn says she cannot feel the strap when she sits on it. And on my Honda CBF 600 SA, at least, I am able to push the bags far enough back that they don't have any effect on how she places her feet on the pegs.

+ Affordable. Certainly one of the initial selling points of the Viking AXE Saddlebags is that they are incredibly affordable, usually cheaper than any comparable bags I have seen. As with a lot of Viking products, such as the Viking Cycle Hammer jacket, the quality is better than the price would suggest.

What's not so good:

In Lake District National Park

- Poor quality control. Having just said that overall quality is good, I have to admit there are some aspects of the bags that make me think their production is lacking a certain amount of oversight. Such as:

The side straps don't make sense. The bags are secured to your bike firstly via two large adjustable Velcro straps that go over the passenger seat, but also by four smaller straps. The smaller straps -- two on each bag -- have trident-style buckles that clip to buckles you've attached to the frame. That probably sounds a bit confusing, so take a look at this picture and note the strap running from the bottom of the bag toward the passenger foot peg. Note, too, that the strap is on the inside of the set up. As it should be. And as it is on one of the bags I have. But not the other. My left-side bag has the strap running away from the bike, so I have to twist it back and place stress on a cloth loop that's probably not designed to hold the bags in place at 80 mph.
Velcro patches to close the bag don't match up. Once the bag is zipped "shut" there is an additional little flap that, presumably, would help to keep water out -- if it worked. Sadly it does not. Where the tapered flap meets the bag is not where its corresponding Velcro patch is located, so you are left with a wee bit of material that flaps in the breeze.
Zipper design means bag does not fully close. You'll notice that in the preceding paragraph I put the word "shut" in quotation marks. This is because the bag doesn't really shut. When zipped fully there is still a gap large enough for my finger to poke through. It is a problem that probably would not be a problem if the aforementioned flaps worked correctly.
Random strange bits. Mysteriously, there are two large buckles concealed in elastic on each bag. They do not connect to anything. This is either a design flaw or a feature that has not been fully realised.

- Expanded bags not as useful as you'd like. Although the expanded bags hold a lot of stuff, getting that stuff in there is something of a challenge. This is because the size of the bag's opening does not change. So, for example, an expanded bag could easily hold a full-size helmet but you will never get one in there because the bag's opening is only about 4-5 inches wide. When packing and unpacking the bags on my Scotland trip, I suffered a fair few cut knuckles scraping my hand on the zipper when stuffing things in.

- Rough "anti-slip" coating scratches paint. The back of the bag (i.e., the side that faces your bike) has a lining that is supposed to help prevent it from slipping around. The problem is that this lining will scratch the living hell out of your paint. I learned this the hard way, which was one of the reasons Jenn heard me badmouth the bags so vociferously. My workaround was to cut up an Oxford Blanket (it's kind of like a thin yoga mat) and glue it to the bags. This protects my paint and keeps the bags from slipping.

The bags have held up well in all weather.

- The bags are not waterproof. This is an issue exacerbated by the problems in keeping the bags fully closed. I dealt with this by making sure that everything within them was wrapped in at least two plastic bags.

- Rain covers are useless. The bags come with rain covers that are supposed to slip over the outside of the bags and cinch shut via elastic cord. The problem with this system is that it offers no protection on the back (the side facing the bike), and, more problematically, does not account for the straps that are securing the bag to the bike. The rain covers really only fit the bags if they are not attached to your motorcycle. So, I just used them as extra cover for things I had on my passenger seat and rack.

- Cumbersome to carry. The bags pictured on the VikingBags.com website have handles. The bags I received do not. This means that when you are transporting them to and from your hotel room it can be a little awkward. Eventually I settled on a method of slinging the bags over my shoulder, pack mule style.

The final verdict

All in all, I'd say the bags are value for money. Especially if what you're really looking for are soft bags. And certainly there are advantages to such things: they are lighter, easier to throw around, and you don't need to permanently affect the aesthetic of your bike with mounting hardware. Additionally, their being made of fabric allows a little more wiggle room in terms of the shape of things you put in them (though, as I mentioned above, not as much as I'd like).

And certainly when you start to do price comparisons, the Viking AXE Saddlebags become quite appealing. They're not perfect, but for the money you save you might find yourself happy to put up with a few foibles.

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(a)I wrote about that adventure in four parts: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4

Honda CBF600 SA5

Many, many moons ago, when I was attending college at a forgettable Midwestern state university deep in the heart of American farmland, I dated a girl who was, by any metric I chose, close to perfect. She was easy on the eyes, witty, intelligent, strong, caring, attentive, a good cook, and, uhm... well... good at some other stuff, too.

But I didn't love her.

Despite the fact she was wonderful, I more often than not found myself in her company thinking: "Oh, man. When are we gonna be done with this?"

It annoyed the hell out of me I felt that way. I felt evil. I felt vain. I felt hypocritical. I knew that if you were to have asked me to describe my perfect woman, the ideal girl for me, I would have more or less described this girl. OK, maybe my 100-percent perfect partner would have had a bit more fashion sense, and maybe she wouldn't have worn a perfume quite so sickly sweet, but that's kind of my point. I really had to dig to find problems with this girl.

Still, I could not make myself love her. I liked her, thought very highly of her and never spoke ill of her to anyone. But I didn't love her. Goodness knows I tried. I would stare at her picture and recite to myself all her qualities. But, no. No love.

Eventually we broke up because, as I say, she was smart. When she could not pry the words, "I love you," from my lips she moved on. I've not heard from her since.

For the sake of this story, let's say the girl's name was Ethel. It wasn't Ethel, obviously; I have never met anyone named Ethel. Which is why I'm using that name.

Anyhoo, about a month ago, as I rode home from test riding the Yamaha XV950, I found myself thinking about Ethel. My Honda CBF600 SA purred easily through traffic and responded complacently to my twists of throttle. At an intersection, she clicked on her radiator fan to breathe out the excess heat of early summer. Her sliver, arched back of a petrol tank glistened in the sunlight, slightly chipped in a few spots from my magnetic tank bag.

"Ethel," I said aloud. "You are the motorcycle equivalent of Ethel."

And almost immediately I became depressed. Because it's true. There is nothing wrong with my bike; as I mentioned just recently, on paper she is as good if not better than most machines I could realistically buy at this point in my life. She has faithfully, reliably taken me all across the United Kingdom, has opened up this island to me and helped me feel more free. She is fast, she is powerful, she is ideal in almost every situation. But I just don't love her.

A great bike, but not the one for me...

I've decided we need to go our separate ways.

Understanding the feels

But now I've fully accepted that mine is not the bike for me, it opens up the question of what I want to do about it. And I'm finding that coming up with the answer is harder than I would have thought. Because whatever the answer, it won't be entirely rational.

Motorcycling is, in part, an emotional thing. Emotion is what gets us on the bike in the first place and what keeps us there. Sure, we can make compelling arguments about efficiency and cost and lessened environmental impact, but we know the same arguments can be made about Smart cars. We choose motorcycles because they speak to the insular cortex, that mysterious part of the brain that makes us human -- the part that controls emotion.

And when choosing a motorcycle, it's good to be aware of that part of the brain.

"If you settle when getting a bike, then it's sad for the bike," says one of the interview subjects in Cafe Racers Japan. "And the rider will be disappointed... It's not about money, it's about feelings."

This is something I think is especially important for myself, living in the United Kingdom. The winters here are long, dark, get-in-your-bones cold, and interminably wet. Whereas summers are short or, in some years, non-existent. To maintain one's passion for motorcycling in such conditions it helps to have a bike that you just love, that you want to look at, and that you want to be seen on. A Honda CBF600 SA simply isn't one of those bikes.

So, I have told myself that when I get my next bike (and who knows when that will be), I will allow my emotions to play a part in the decision. I will give credence to ridiculous things like aura, styling, sound, how I look on the bike and what it "says" about me. I'm not going overboard. These are not the most important things, obviously -- I'm still unyielding in my insistence that a bike have anti-lock brakes, for instance -- but they are more important than I had previously thought.

I'd like to think I'm not wandering down the dangerous path of trying to project an image or lifestyle via a mass-produced piece of machinery, but I will admit to setting foot on it. I will admit to thinking: "OK, such and such bike has some foibles, but I can learn to accept them because it's otherwise soooo cool."

Mass-produced coolness

Case in point, the Yamaha XV950R. I really like the look of that bike -- especially in green. I have taped a picture of one to the wall by my desk. For a solid three or four weeks I was telling myself that this was it, the bike for me, and I would get one as soon as humanly possible. Despite the fact that it is a little underpowered (52 horsepower), has very cramped passenger accommodation, and no wind protection.

Yamaha XV950R

"Well, I don't even use all the horsepower of my Honda," I told myself. "Jenn doesn't ride with me all that much anyway. And I can get a sport screen for the XV950R; that still won't keep a whole lot of weather off me, but I can learn to toughen up."

This thinking then gave way to a kind of competition in my mind: a race between several bikes to see which will become my own. The race was this: will the Triumph Bonneville, Triumph Speedmaster or Victory Vegas 8-Ball(a) offer anti-lock brakes before I build up the money for a sizable deposit on the XV950R? Anti-lock brakes are coming to all those models (and exist already on the XV950R); anti-lock brakes will be legally required on all new motorcycles (above 125 cc) sold in Europe from 2016. So, I'd expect announcements on ABS-equipped models to come within the next year.

The above machines are the sort that appeal to my heart. I think they're cool. I'm trying to be realistic in terms of what I would actually be able to afford, though. Hence the reason I make no mention of things like the Victory Cross Country. The Harley-Davidson XL1200 Sportster pops on and off the list, too, depending on my mood that day.

To me, these are bikes that have character. They are also motorcycles of the sort that my wife would refer to as "real" bikes. And I can't stress how important her opinion is to me. Yes, I'm my own man and can make my own decisions and grrrrr-harrumph manly bollocks, but I care what she thinks.

The case for practicality

In regard to my caring about what my wife thinks, the XV950R is now no longer an official competitor in the Race to Be Chris' Next Bike. I still love the look of it, but its passenger space is just too cramped. I had told myself that wasn't an issue because Jenn rarely joins me for rides, but I learned the other day she finds my existing bike a little uncomfortable on rides more than 40 miles. The XV950R's passenger accommodation is far worse. I suspect that a bike offering plenty of room and, perhaps, a backrest of some sort might entice her to join me more often.

In other words, I might get Jenn more interested in biking (and thereby fuel her recent musings on the possibility of getting herself a scooter) if the bike I rode were, you know, a little more practical. Indeed, she'd already be eager to hop on the bike with greater frequency if I had practical things like lockable side cases. That way we could ride out to one of Wales' many beauty spots, lock all our riding gear up, and go hiking.

And, hey, while I'm being practical, remember what I said about the almost-always-crappy British weather? Fairing helps to mitigate that. None of the bikes I mentioned above have weather protection. In all cases, I accept that the purchase of a windscreen would be an automatic part of getting one. And even then it's quite likely I'd suffer more of Mother Nature's wrath than I do now.

The fact is, my experience has been that cruisers/standards are most enjoyable at speeds below 60 mph. And I'm not sure that really fits with the kind of riding I do, nor the kind of riding I want to do.

BMW F800GT

I started thinking about all this recently when I was visiting Minnesota. By and large, I ride my motorbike for pleasure. I ride as often as I can, but my day-to-day routine sees me walking or riding a bicycle to places because I live in a compact urban area where doing so genuinely makes the most sense.

Where I actually live is not like the Twin Cities, which is where I want to live. There, in the great urban sprawl of a metro area that includes some 182 cities and townships (a few more than are implied in the name "Twin Cities"), one could keep off the freeways and ride for hours and hours and hours well within the speed comfort zone of a weather-protection-free bike. Here, unless you live in London, that's not really the case.

Sure, by U.S. standards I suppose all of Britain could be classed as urban or suburban, but where I live one really can't go too far without needing push to speeds that can be a little traumatic sans windscreen. And because it is for pleasure, I tend to cover larger distances when I ride -- I rarely do less than 120 miles.

And this is the kind of riding I want to be doing. I want to be riding further. When I daydream about motorcycling it is almost always of covering great distances. In September, I'll be heading up to Yorkshire, and later in the month out to West Sussex. At some point in autumn, I'm hoping to take the ferry over to Ireland and visit friends there. And I am constantly fantasising about multi-day journeys down to Spain, and so on. You know, the kind of riding to which a Harley-Davidson Sportster is perhaps not best suited (no offence to Curt Carter, who would probably argue otherwise).

And this is pretty much how I sometimes break from thoughts of a Bonneville/Speedmaster/Vegas and slip into very serious contemplation of the BMW F800GT. I wrote a little about it in a post several months ago, but it's been on my mind a lot more lately. That's definitely a knock-on effect of my visit to Minnesota. I couldn't help noticing that almost every person there was astride a cruiser. I also couldn't help noticing that the overwhelming majority of said riders displayed an appalling lack of basic riding skills. So, naturally, there's a part of me that is desperate to separate myself from such boneheads.

The other other me

But talk of practicality is a ruse. I will spend long hours daydreaming about the F800GT but not, say, the slightly more powerful and considerably less expensive Suzuki GSX1250FA. Why? Because the latter is not a BMW. The same goes for the also-more-powerful, also-less-expensive Triumph Sprint GT SE (b).

Truthfully, it all comes back to emotion. Perception. My perception of the "character" of the bike, and my desire in terms of how I want to be perceived. And if I'm going to be honest with myself and admit that feelings are relevant to my next motorcycle purchase, the big challenge is to figure out what my feeling are. What am I hoping to project?

Victory Gunner –– a bike I wish they sold in the UK.

With cruisers, I sometimes wonder if their greatest appeal to me is my incredible desire to be back in the country where they are most appropriate. A homesickness-induced affection, like the Englishman who moves to a different country and only then develops a taste for fish and chips. Like the way I drink Coors Light here but absolutely hated the stuff when I was living in the United States.

As I say, I was a little put off cruisers recently by all the boneheads I saw in Minnesota and the fact that said bikes were so ubiquitous. It made the scene so homogeneous. But that is not the case in the UK, so most certainly I haven't gone off them completely. That said, though, if I'm entertaining the idea of forcing myself to adapt to a bike that's not best suited to the conditions in which I presently exist, I must be trying to say something through that act. There is a statement being made.

I'm not 100-percent clear on what that statement is. I suppose it's something along the lines of: "I'm not Welsh; I never will be. And I'm proud not to be one of you."

Certainly motorcycling for me has long been wrapped up in those emotions. This whole Motorcycle Obsession thing started in part because I was frustrated with the too-small nature of my world; I wanted to be able to get away. A Speedmaster, or Vegas, or Sportster would allow me to do that: both physically get away and assert my psychological desire for separation. But, so, too, can an F800GT -- albeit in a slightly different way.

Perhaps better suited to my present situation, the BMW doesn't really say "I'm different in a cultural sense," but instead asserts: "I'm better than you."

Both bikes are means of offering the same sentiment, I suppose: that I don't belong.

All of this, however, leads to an even greater question. Going back to the start of this post, like every motorcyclist who's honest with him- or herself, I want to find a bike that I can truly love. Love looking at, love riding, love being seen on. But is that really possible when my motivators in choosing a bike are so spiteful?

___________________

(a)You may ask: "Wait, Chris. Didn't you say a while ago that the Vegas has looks that could only appeal to someone living in a trailer park?"
I did. That was before I really took the time to really look at one in person. Also, I have since seen pictures of a Vegas with bullet fairing and I think it looks pretty cool. If Victory were to offer the Gunner in the UK, I'd go with that one instead.
True, a stock Vegas/Gunner would cost £1,000 more than a fully kitted Bonneville T-100. But engine-wise it's so much more bike for not a lot more money. And it's a bike with Minnesota connections; for that I would bend myself more to make payments.

(b) Actually, depending heavily on my response to a test ride, I could probably induce in myself a bit of love for the Sprint GT.