Happy trails.

If you happen to also be a novice at this magnificent game, you should read this post. It's a point of view that I would have found pretty helpful when I was fretting about my choice of first bikes. To wit:

Let's start with the picture above. That's William, or rather was. He died last spring, part of my annus horribilis. This blog is secretly dedicated to him. I loved that horse. He was my second, but he should have been my first. Where his predecessor was flighty and nervous and tended to amplify my own anxiety, old Bill was always calm and circumspect. He never freaked out or overreacted to an input, yet it took very little to get him to do what you wanted. He could run like the wind, but he needed to be sure that's what you had in mind before he put the hammer down. And when he did, his canter unfolded in easy, joyful waves that made you feel like a real cowboy. Had I been even a little talented as an equestrian, I might have eventually looked for a more challenging mount. But I wasn't. William just made me feel that way, and that kept me riding.

And that is the Suzuki S40.

You may recall that I recently bought a Honda CBR250R to toot around the city. Every review of this bike characterizes it as willing and capable, but easygoing and difficult to get into trouble with. The state of the art for starter bikes. Which is fair enough; it kind of is those things. But compared to the larger displacement S40, it has an almost twitchy throttle (at least at first), tends to lurch when you roll off, and it lets you know if your downshifts are less than perfect. That's great for learning (I do really like the CBR), but you don't get quite as many 'hey, look at me!' moments out of the gate as the old Zook gives you. The latter's lazy throttle and broad, flat torque curve mean that you just have to have a grasp of the general principles and you can get down the road in dignity almost from the first try. I can see wanting more, soon, but it's hard to imagine a bike more encouraging to start on. The fact that it's a 650cc only makes it all the more so. As with William (who stood well north of 16 hands), the bigger engine may make for bragging rights, but it doesn't make the ride one bit more challenging.

Just my .02, but if you see a nice one in the classifieds, I wouldn't dismiss it. The right first horse can make all the difference.

Sprung.

You can interpret the title of this post as a reference to spring (as in having sprung), or to the immortal Springsteen lyric (as from cages out on highway 9). The season is probably the safer bet; I'm still a few tanks of gas away from being worthy of the Jersey bard's poetry.

In any case, winter is gone at last, and there is news to share.

My standoff with the steep dirt road from our house to the nearest pavement continues. Currently, the problem is actually mud, not loose gravel. I've been bombing around the dirt roads around our house a little, just to get back into the groove. The Suzuki is proving easygoing and companionable, and I even seem to be mastering the clutchless shift on the old bird, but discretion remains the better part of valor where steep grade + greasy mud + a sharp curve are concerned. In other words, I still haven't made it to pavement. Conditions seem to be pointing to an opportunity to try tomorrow morning, so we'll see how that goes. But this getting silly. I'm going to need another place to park this thing, or the nerve to cast common sense aside and go for it, praying I don't end up tangled up in barbed wire in the ditch at the bottom.

In the meantime, staggering around in a fog of wounded male pride, I did the only sensible thing. I bought another bike.

A bit of explanation: We spend part of our time in the city for work, and we have an apartment there. When I first got it in my head to get a motorcycle, I swore I'd never ride in the city. Too many jerks, I thought, and too little situational awareness. It would be dangerous. But a couple of weeks ago, out for a walk, I started to notice the sheer number of motorized two-wheeled vehicles on the road. Hipsters on Vespas. Grim looking heavy people on e-bikes. Newly licensed kids on Ninjas. Grey-bearded hedge fund managers on Harleys. I can't possibly, I thought, be the stupidest person ever to survive riding a motorcycle in the big city. And besides, I was a cyclist there for years and years. A motorbike can't be more dangerous than that, right? There's more noise, more protective clothing, less speed differential, lights, a horn... hell, it ought to be safer than falling off a bar stool.

Right about then, I saw an ad for discounts on non-current CBR250Rs. I know, I know, I'm not a sport bike guy, and the CBR at least looks like a sport bike. But $3700 plus the dealer's vig for a brand new, fuel injected bike with ABS? At a certain point, even with motorcycles, vanity has to take the pillion. It's exactly like the one at the top of this post. I pick it up on Tuesday. My trial by fire will be the 15km ride back to the apartment on choppy suburban four-lane.

All that remained was to get a parking spot. The super at our building said, yes, there were underground spots available for rent. But I did know that these things get stolen down there all the time, right? Right. Sigh...