Total Motorcycle Community Forums

storysunfolding wrote:Reasonably, skilled and responsibly?

Put the shovel down, storys! Yer a marked man now, and yer just makin' the hole deeper....

JC Viper wrote:Well now I'm back to being without riding buddies which sucks because I was hoping to go places like the beach this summer with people instead of by myself.

Truth told, after 5 years riding I hardly ever ride with others anymore, except for Mrs. Stark. Once or twice a year with the local RAT pack, but that's usually just 4-5 guys, all very experienced. Riding in groups is overrated, just my 2 cents.

I almost always ride alone. And always have.

When your modus operandi is 'no wittnesses', bringing a group of them with you doesn't make much sense.

It sucks though because it would've been cool to just cruise around and then do some spirited riding on back roads. It would've been nice to chill out with people during stops and just go places instead of the usual of me alone such as riding to the beach. Besides the group wasn't that big, just me and 4 other guys. The sad thing is when I did ride with them I would catch up on the curves when they would be hitting the breaks standing their bikes up. Then at stop lights I would cringe a bit because they would love to blip their throttles with some of them revving the engine outright.

I'm not a slow rider but I've crashed enough at low speeds or even when stopped and crashing at high speeds on a busy highway is really not an option. Besides I have experienced that anything more than a 1/4 throttle in 6th gear on my bike will have me reaching speeds of 120 MPH in a matter of seconds and it gets much worse in 5th. (well unless you really want to reach 100 mph that quickly and yes I do have my naughty moments but mostly near the local air field).

Find another group of riders. Plenty of bike nights clubs and local riding forums out there

Maturity of the rider seems to be the key to a good person to ride with or maturity of the group at large. It may or may not come with age as I've seen my share of 50 year old's riding like teenagers in their Dad's new sports car. Younger riders can be and some are safe but it seems to be a exception rather than the rule.

I ride on my own because the people I do know with bikes are different people when riding. They talk a good safety game but not when when they are actually riding. For me it is the ride not the destination. Why hurry, to end the ride sooner ?

You know, (IMHO) you don't need to ride with anyone else. Not once have I ridden with someone else. I get a little companionship once in a while with someone on the highway and then after a while they either outrisk/outride me or they get off the highway (I'm on it for so many miles that it is rare that I get off the highway before the other rider).

It is kind of like one of those cowboy movies. He saw a woman hanging clothes in the distance and it was great. The other guy says 'Didn't you go meet her?' and the old cowboy was like 'nope, figured it could never get any better than that.'

Yeah that's true. I always did ride alone and for a bit I thought it would be great to just chill out with more people and travel to different places together. Only problem was we never really stopped in interesting places and when we did rest at something pretty decent we wouldn't relax there too long as they wanted to tear up the highway some more and then head home that is if they didn't get clipped (which almost happens quite a bit since they do 90MPH on short on-ramp roads with moderate traffic). Of course they might be riding differently during the day time as they never call me to go riding with them until nightfall and by then they usually had ridden a couple of hours already. This would be on the weekends when we all managed to get those days off.

It's funny how they would give me advice on riding yet they can't do certain techniques because they find it hard to do unless it was done on a lighter bike. I guess the writers of Proficient Motorcycling and Total Control don't know what they're talking about...

And the stupidity ensues as they say BMW cannot make a 6 cylinder bike because it's impossible for weight and handling purposes meanwhile they can't believe that Honda made a 6 cyl. bike and still maintain it was for concept only. Just because they're average mechanics doesn't mean they know all...

JC Viper wrote:.

And the stupidity ensues as they say BMW cannot make a 6 cylinder bike because it's impossible for weight and handling purposes meanwhile they can't believe that Honda made a 6 cyl. bike and still maintain it was for concept only. Just because they're average mechanics doesn't mean they know all...

Did make and still do.....tell your buddies to look up the specs for a Goldwing.

And the CBX 1100.
Goldwing, Valkyrie, and Rune are all Flat-6s and the CBX was an inline 6.
Honda also made an engine for racing with oval pistons that was originally either a V12 or V8 but rules limited it to half the cylinders it was designed for, so they still used all of the conrods but just took out the cylinder wall between the pistons to make it fit the rules. Revved to like 20K with valve springs!

I ride with or without groups. In groups I like knowing if I go down there is someone to help you out or if you have a mechanical problem. I also like riding solo sometimes it is just a great way to get "sorted out"