Nostalgia

So picture the scene, dull but dry Sunday returning (in the car) from a pub lunch. It’s a well surfaced and twisty A road, about quarter mile ahead is a right hander and round it, coming at me at close to max lean, very very fast and on full chat comes the bike.

The headlight shimmers, the bike drifts out to the centre as it gracefully return to vertical, the rider getting in line and tucking in, pipe issuing a flat wail as its approaches the limiter before an almost imperceptible hesitation as he changes up without troubling the clutch. I know the road well and it’s a gixer like the one I had before the SD. He is already going faster than the SD top speed and still accelerating hard. In that moment everything is perfect, he passes in a blur and is gone in an instant although the exhaust note lingers for a while.

No other bikes, no showing off, no road users inconvenienced, just him and the bike in a bubble of concentration. That brief man machine harmony thing that puts you temporarily outside of ordinary day to day concerns into another space that for me I only ever find on two wheels.

I had the strongest feeling of nostalgia for that immense rush, the frantic revs, speed and drive contrasting with the almost slow motion perception that comes when you are in the moment entirely. Then later and thinking back on it I remembered why I swapped out for the SD.

I have been that man many many times and for me riding like that became the only way to enjoy a superbike. Considered individually those moments are magic but each is a gamble, an invitation to chance with non trivial consequences if you lose. How many times can it keep coming up heads? I figured that I had used up more than my share so now I have my fun on the SD and as we know there is plenty of fun to be had. For the street the SD is a great bike, I don’t regret my choice at all but I do miss it sometimes.

But for a moment, just a brief moment I was transported back by a man out on the road alone exercising real skill, laughing in the face of chance and squeezing every last drop of juice from his litre superbike.

Ahh, I feel better for getting that off my chest.

Soul poetry...

We have all been there with the Jap 4 1000cc's but I was saying to to the guy I was off roading with today that they dont belong on the roads anymore. Most of the latest bikes 08 onward are no improvement at all until you get them past 10,000 revs . One of our mates has just bought an RSV4 (which is the only new litre bike that appeals to me) and he has been nicked twice already thanks to the crap mirrors.

If you were on the SD the gixxer wouldnt have seemed so great. More like an uncatachable target on the straight bits followed by a "wobbly twat get out of my way" once the road gets bendy.

However, I do feel your pain re the nostalgia. I am really hurting for a 350YPVS or RSV250 maybe a TDR250 those are the road bikes that get me misty eyed right now.

ahhhhhhhhhhh..............

All good and true my friend. Every now and then you'll see a bike or maybe a couple of bikes really going for it in fine style and you think "don't that just look great, it's what lifes all about" and then you think "how many people might that of annoyed, shame we can't all just live and let live". Mind you I see that very rarely these days!

I think the best thing about a 1000cc sport bike is that its not to hard to out run the cops
The litre bikes are amazing but I got the SD to slow myself down and maybe not be a cop magnet but I do sometimes mis the shear ecceleration of a sports bike.

In NZ I used to get that all the time as the people I ride with most have a ZX12 and the other chap a GSXR thou. Still when we arrive I had the most fun and it is cool for me to see them in the distance when the twisties start and wheel them back in.
Last time the chap on the ZX12 tried to overtake me in a turn, I just braked later went all the way to the outside before turning it in and then laid it on its ear.... He had to brake, twist and fight so hard to make it and I wasn't even trying...

Nice bit of prose Shadowman. Totally understand what you were saying, it's the same reason I ended up on a SD and remain content. What I like is that there are many other ways to enjoy time with a SD, bit of slow around town cruising, bit of fun practicing wheelies and stoppies, trip across country for a few hundred miles, even commuting and running errands. All these things that more focussed sports bikes don't really like doing, they are always saying, "go faster, use me to the limit, find a bit of racetrack-like road". The SD can do this too but it has more personality. And it's a tough SOB so it doesn't break all the time if it falls over!

I didn’t want to imply in any way that the SD was inferior to a full on superbike, on the contrary as most here would agree in most road situations it’s superior in many ways. My post was more about the visceral gut wrenching excitement and sheer thrill of seeing something hard and risky being done to the full and well. Also I think it was about leaving something behind with grace. I don’t know that I captured that feeling in what I wrote but what I saw was close to poetry in motion. For me it’s more even than watching real masters on the race track as a road contains uncontrollable variables and to do this in that arena implies a willingness to smile back when the fates smile at you.

Somebody in replying mentioned that it was a rare sight and it is, very! I’m not talking about some young, dumb and full of come triumph of exuberance over skill. This was a true road warrior, out there where the margins are small, where you exist in a bubble of calm concentration that excludes the experience of any external observer.

From the outside it’s an explosion of speed and power, even the scream seems compressed as the bike smashes its way through the atmosphere coming at you and then stretches out as the pressure wave passes into a mournful wail as it trails out behind. As most on this forum will know the riders experience is quite different, when you are really on it you exist in a bubble of calm , nothing happens fast or is rushed, illusion or not you are the master of the thousands of variables and nothing exists outside except for the tarmac ribbon unrolling beneath you and the machine you are forcing to do your bidding.

This bike literally exploded into view and the experience was like one of those fast / slow video sequences loved by action movies and car programmes. No warning, it was just there recovering from max lean, about half way across the lane and drifting towards the centre. I had an involuntary reaction, my stomach muscles tightened and a huge grin appeared on my face which lasted well after the bike had gone. The guy judged it to perfection, everything was right, positioning, throttle control, body position, everything. He absolutely nailed the corner and was back on it without compromise or hesitation.

I can still see it now and I suspect it will be one of those images that never quite goes away. I wonder if anybody out in the world has an image of me in the same mode burnt into their memory. I hope so, of course many non bikers will have been scared or appalled but I hope just occasionally an observer will have been a bit inspired as well.

I will never know who was on that bike but in a way it doesn’t matter, in a way it was me. Perhaps thats why I got such a strong sense of nostalgia, “this was you, you survived and are doing something else now but for a while this is what people saw when you played hard” I’m done with that now but I’m happy that there are still a few out there looking over the edge and laughing.

Hey shadowman I think you need to lay off the crack!
Or start writting articals for a motorcycle mag.

Nice post shadowman , felt the same about 5 months ago so i bought an S1000RR , I am looking around for a set of leathers with the arrows already on them!!! Its only a matter of time
Will be getting an SDR again in the summer though , I personally don't think you can beat a decent litre bike for those moments

thx for your thoughts

Just curious Shadowman, how old were you when you hoped off the Gixer for the last time?

I'm 46 now and swapped out the gixer for the SD last year. The gixer was the last in a long long line of large fast IL4 toys and, nostalgia aside, also the best (K5). I have written too much on this I know but for some reason I was moved to share. Quick tweak of my medication and I'm sure I will be back to two line posts in no time!