Misty watercolour memories.

Somehow, I imagine that if anyone is reading this at all, they're probably new to motorcycling or maybe even just thinking about it. In that spirit, I thought maybe a novice rider's review of the Scrambler might be a nice contribution to the canon. I've put about 4,000 km on this thing since getting it in June. I'd read a lot about how to get a first bike (which this wasn't, technically, but I did get it during my first season), and was duly warned against getting something so big and so powerful. Indeed, this redheaded stepchild of the Bonneville family is intimidating to sit on if you're new to this. It's tall, it's got a biggish motor at 865cc, and it's heavy at 500lbs wet.

The big lesson, for me, turned out to be that these measures don't mean much on the road. The truth about Scrammy was deeper into the numbers. Specifically, I'm talking about torque. How much, and where it is on the tach. In Scrammy's case, there's plenty of it at 50 ft/lbs, and the majority of it is available below 3,000 rpm, after which the curve flattens out nicely. What this means is that there is absolutely no incentive to rev the crap out of it only to hit an arm-stretching peak in the power band. You can choose to be mellow, and it will cheerfully do whatever you ask without surprising you or making you feel like you're abusing it. Between that and the fact that it turns out motorcycles don't want to fall down, I was confident as soon as I was rolling. I wouldn't want to have to pick the thing up off the ground, mind you, but this bike isn't going to unduly challenge a new rider, that's for sure, as long as he/she is tall enough to keep it upright at a stop.

You'll find some carping about the shocks by professional reviewers of this bike, and they're right, in my opinion. The bike is oversprung and underdamped at both ends, which can make potholes and pavement irregularities a bit too exciting. Hagon makes some well regarded and surprisingly affordable shocks and springs for this bike, so I upgraded both in the fall. I can't honestly say they changed the ride quality much, but they absolutely improved the damping. The bike is much less unsettling on sudden bumps and through corners. Speaking of which, and from no basis of expertise, I'd say it's a decent handler over all. Less responsive than my little CBR, but much more so than the ponderous S40. On the twisty roads around here, I'd say mellow is the word again... it just does what you ask, and always leaves you feeling there's some margin of error if you need it.

I've caught the farkling disease, for sure, but in surprising moderation compared to what I've done with some of the cars in my past. You can see in the photo that it has the Arrow 2-into-1 exhaust, which sounds glorious and old-school badass (once the fuel map was properly revised). The leather saddle was an e-Bay find, a casualty of an abandoned custom project. It gets a lot of complimentary attention. I added the headlight screen and skid plate for that desert sled look, and the Hagons, of course. I'm thinking dresser bars might be in my future, too, but past that the bike doesn't seem to want for much.

The real risk to my credit card seems to be stuff to wear. Can you have too many jackets? I don't think so. Because if you ride one of these, you'd better expect to be social. Not looking like a testosterone-addled kid on a sport bike or a gangster on a cruiser definitely lowers some barriers. And Scrammy's retro looks seem to invite misty reminiscing by strangers of all kinds about the Triumphs in their lives that got away. You owe it to them to look like you belong on one. If you're going to trade on the history of a brand like that, consider it your karmic duty.

The road home.

How often in life does something potentially great turn out to be just as great as you'd hoped? If you're honest, probably not that often. Love, if you're lucky. The occasional recipe. That time in New York. The exceptions are memorable, and we frame them in our minds to hang in a prominent spot at the edge of our worldview so we're constantly reminded that it can happen.

That's what this last six months has been like for me and Scrammy. Granted, being of a certain age and of modest sportiness, I didn't go into this new adventure expecting the moon. But still, every mile has been a grin-inducing party. Every mile, including the freezing cold trip to the dealer this morning, a crystalline late fall dawn with frost on the ground and a view that went forever. And now it's over. The Triumph got its annual service today, which included preparing it for storage. At least at the farm, we're done for the season.

I wasn't prepared to be so sentimental about it, but it's ended up feeling almost like some kind of rehearsal for mortality. The lady at the gas station actually offered condolences, without a trace of irony, when I explained why I was topping off the tank. The months ahead seem to stretch indefinitely, a little like the road I turned off this morning to get home, instead of rolling on the throttle like every fiber of my being wanted me to do. As with everything in life, intensity has a price, if you want to survive it.

I still have to clean Scrammy up and install a battery tender before the cover goes on for the last time. My magazine subscriptions are updated, and I'm going to start thinking about projects and goals for next year right now, just like I did last fall. We'll make next year even better, if fate will allow me to be a little greedy this time around. In the meantime, just in case those nondualists are right, I thanked him before closing the garage door. You never know.

Valar morghulis.

A hawk? This is how I die? An effing bird of prey?!

I didn't, of course. Heading west out of town on County Road 9 - a delicious 15km stretch of twisty, fresh pavement - I rounded a curve to see the raptor dive bombing something by the roadside. He, being better at his job than I am at mine, pulled up as I was 20 feet away and closing. Disaster averted, I swallowed hard and rode on.

This kind of thing happens a lot. There are times when riding a motorcycle is like living in Australia: everything wants to kill you. Deer, off-leash dogs, wind-blown trash, texting drivers, gusty crosswinds, mid-curve sand on the road, on and on. But they warned me about this. They - the people who teach the motorcycle safety course - warned me about a lot of things, in fact. And every single one of those warnings was true. Every. Single. One.

That thing about motorists turning left in front of you, said to cause more than 40% of multi-vehicle motorcycle accidents? True. That thing about not sitting in a car's blind spot? True. Always being in the right gear as you approach a stop, and watching your six? True. About not riding when you're not feeling your best? True. That thing about assuming another vehicle near you will always do the worst possible thing, so be ready for that thing? Mostly true. True, true, true. In fact, I have to say that not one moment of that weekend last year standing in the pouring rain while those perky people rabbited on about what can happen on a motorcycle was wasted. It has all happened, something on almost every ride.

What's funny is, stuff that would make me apoplectic if someone did it to me while I was driving a car, I brush off on the bike. It's like when you're suited up to ride, you inhabit an alternate version of yourself, someone unflappable and, well, superior. The most people get from me is a shake of the head, which tends to seem doubly reproachful when you're wearing a helmet. Though I don't bother with wildlife, of course.

But I think the main thing I want to say here is this: if you're thinking of taking this up, take the course and pay attention. It will turn out that not a single word they say to you is frivolous.

Somewhere west of Laramie.

So this happened.

Stopped for fuel, I returned to my bike to find a woman of uncertain age (old enough to know better, which bears on this tale) in a summer frock inspecting the Triumph at close quarters.

Me: "Careful. That pipe is hot." On account of the aforementioned frock.

Her, brightly: "Oh, thanks... I guess it would be. So, where are you headed?"

Because a guy on a bike, bug splattered and riding alone must surely be "headed" somewhere. Fleeing the law, perhaps. Or a jealous lover. Or maybe just because of his vagabond soul. Anyway, the point is, this is not the kind of question a strange woman asks someone driving a Yaris.

Me: "I've been where I'm headed, I guess. Going home now."

Her, faintly crestfallen: "Oh... too bad. Well, ride safe."

I realize now I should have made up a more mysterious answer. Because you're never really riding alone, right? It turns out the escape fantasies of countless fellow humans are riding pillion. You can't step out of character for a second.

Every ride a lesson. 

What you pay for.

Pretty much everything they tell you - or warn you - about motorcycling turns out to be true (more on this, and why the safety course is a brilliant investment, in a future post). But some things, you don't find out until you've read between the lines of a hundred magazine articles, or discovered them for yourself. One such topic: helmets.

Most of what you read about helmets focuses obsessively on fit, and on making sure you have the right certification. These things matter, and they mostly determined my first helmet purchase, a Zoan. Not the prettiest lid, but it fit my oddly shaped head more or less (just one little pressure point),  had the all important ECE 22.05 blessing, and was a pretty good deal. It never occurred to me for a second there would be any more to it than that.

A second bike necessitated a second helmet (the bikes, you'll recall, are in separate places), and by pure chance I found myself in the middle of a seasonal clearance sale wherein I scored the helmet above, an Arai Signet Q, for less than half of its stratospheric regular price. It fit like mother's love, as if it had been made for me (Arai's oval headform is kind of a thing among North American riders in the know, this being the market Arai created it for). I figured I'd scored a bit of extra comfort, and the status illusion that I was a guy who spent $700 on a helmet.

Then I rode with it, and here was the revelation: it's quiet. Noise, it turns out, is a big deal in helmet selection. I hadn't realized it, but the racket inside that Zoan was amping my anxiety at speed, which made me more tense and the bike therefore more squirrelly. The Arai allows barely a whisper of wind, even with the vents open. All I can really hear is the drivetrain and exhaust of the machine under me. I have mixed feelings about the Snell certification, but otherwise I can say, hand on heart, that this lid improved my riding.

Who knew.

Do you hear a truck?

It has not been entirely surprising that motorcycling is a regressive behavior, although they don't prepare you for the fact that you will actually feel like a kid when you're riding. More than this, they also don't prepare you for how comprehensive the regression will be. You will sneak looks at your bike as you're walking away from it. You'll find excuses to skulk out to the garage to see if it's really there. You'll read motorcycle magazines with an ardor not seen since you bought Playboy as a teenager (along with a get well card for your 'sick friend'...). And you will order things from the internet and wait breathlessly by the front door for the sound of the UPS truck crunching up the driveway. You will be 16.

I have done this a lot. Kevlar jeans. A brake lock alarm for the Honda. Armor. Boots. But nothing - nothing - comes close to the anticipation I'm feeling for the imminent arrival of my new jacket.

I found it online, at a place called Union Garage, in Brooklyn, NY. It's kind of a spiritual home for the urban hipster retro bike scene, and everything they sell is awesome. Awesome. I visited them this past spring (the store is the size of a walk-in closet), and they were as friendly and knowledgeable and passionate and and cool as you would hope. I like the world better knowing that Union Garage is in it. We will do a lot of business.

But first, this jacket. Check it out, and tell me you wouldn't buy a motorcycle just so you could have one too. Seriously.

Mr. McQueen, your bike is ready.

Much to tell.

First of all, let's deal with the long silence: I've been out riding. I mean, that's pretty much the explanation. It's been busy at work, yes, and I've been trying to avoid screens in my down time, but basically - in my head, at least - I'm riding. Doing it, reading about it, buying stuff for it. Riding. It all started with an ultimatum.

One fine day in May, I decided that the gravel hill that was haunting my nightmares like some white whale wasn't going to change its position on the matter, so I had to, or this experiment was over. And down I went (the hill, I mean, without incident). Things moved pretty quickly after that. I rode every chance I got, flogging the little Suzuki hither, thither and yon, and knocking off every nervous-making road within 50 km one by one. Not elegantly, or quickly, but convincingly enough that it was only a matter of weeks before I knew I was going to outgrow the little thumper sooner than later. Then my 'dude economics' gene kicked in. If I'm going to sell it, better I should do it in the spring than in the fall, I intoned to my long-suffering wife.

The rest is a bit of a blur. Somehow, the week of my birthday, the beast in the picture above landed in my driveway. 500 lbs and 865 cc of Brit-bike hipster cred, not at all the Bonnie I thought I wanted, but infinitely more suited to its bucolic new home. In my defense, it was a great deal, a 2013 demo (the year I would have preferred anyway, because of the chrome wheels), well below list and with an $1100 rumbly exhaust system bolted on to ice the cake. I've put 1000 km on it already. More on that later.

In short order, the S40 found a new home. A nurse at a local hospital, probably about my age, rolled up the driveway in her minivan, took one look, and said, "I think I want this." She was tired of being a passenger in life, she told me, had had about enough of mom duty and of waiting for her husband to make good on his intention to buy a bike so they could get their second puppyhood started. So she was taking matters into her own hands. Cash deal. With the ink barely dry on her M2, she rode the little Zook home on a pretty busy road, grinning like a fool. She was pretty cool.

Now, Scrammy has the barn all to himself. A custom vintage leather seat is on the way, after which I think I'll leave it alone for a while. Mind you, if you've been reading this blog, you already know my promises are about as reliable as a house cat's.