I have never done formal track racing, and quite honestly by the time I am done with this new/old 1969 CB750 (in about a year or two) I probably will have about $5000+ in it, so I would not competitively race it, but I always will be a blur on the midnight back roads.... Also, this bike will be pretty far from stock when I am done, in ways that I am pretty sure would exempt me from vintage racing, but the mods would not be enough to seriously be competitive with similar modern sport bikes. It will have the heavily breathed on motor that I have been building for several years now. It is a 750 that has been punched out to 900cc (etc), and don’t think that would fly with the strict race circuit rules . So this one will most likely be my personal racer, light to light, café to café, and then out on the open road. I like driving low-slung café bikes long distances, and this one will be able to eat up the miles and the open road in ways that my little T350 can only dream about.
At the same time, I am afraid that the bigger bikes just are too fast for me on a track. I get really competitive, and I eventually would crash hard while the bike was maxed out. I guess that goes for the little bikes too. The difference is that when a little bike is doing a LOT less when it is maxed out it! If I were to race in some vintage class I would probably try to race small bikes like my T350, (or build a 2-stroke 250 – I think they fit the vintage classes a little better.)
Actually that is one of the reasons I got into the vintage bike thing. I have been riding bikes for about 25 years now... I eventually “graduated” to riding sport bikes but I didn’t have the discipline to slow my young arse down. Everywhere I went I was going WAY, WAY too fast. It was stupid. The souless modern plastic crotch rockets (and I don’t care what you think about them) are faster than almost anything imaginable. I thought long and hard about why I couldn’t slow down, and I realized that one of the reasons is that they don’t really start to feel like they’re moving or start to get exciting until you are creeping up on the ton, then they just blow past and all of a sudden I am doing 140+. Those speeds on the highway feel like doing 70 through a busy parking lot. It is just mega stupid..... Well, then I started to remember some of those old bikes that I used to drive and how much I loved them.
For me it started with the little
1971 175 Honda twin with the high pipes, the one that looked like new with its glorious orange metallic paint job and long, flat, hard old seat – the one my old neighbor gave me because he saw I was having a teenage love affair with motorcycles. Yeah, I loved that beautiful, crappy little old bike. Back then it was like I knew what it meant to feel good on a motorcycle. Back then there was a purity and simplicity and unassailable joy when I screwed down on the throttle and wound that little bugger up, maxing it out at mild highway speeds, then hammer the brakes, kicking the rear end out and sliding through the turns dirt-track style. For me, in the simpler days of my youth, this was the consummation of all things good. Oh! And if I were so lucky to get a cute girl back there, the very face of God was shining down upon me!
What happened? I though that newer, bigger, flashier was going to make me happier, and it took me almost a decade to figure out that I was wrong. I love my old bikes, and especially my little old bikes, because they feel exciting at 55mph. And on the back roads when I grab that last little bit of throttle it can be down right terrifying as I squint through my goggles with my checkered pudding bowl strapped down tight and the landscape sort of disappears into a forgotten blur of vibration and wind; leaning low on the tank, all my attention on the road and that damn wavering needle as it creeps around to a ton. Now that is a thrill. In those moments nothing else exists, nothing else mattes. There is only me, the road and the face of God once again shining down on me.
My old bikes have character, but the require a character to pilot them! The levers (compared to a new bike) are hard to pull, the brakes are touchy and difficult... and I don’t even want to talk about my front drum while at speed in the rain... They vibrate and complain, they foul plugs, buggar up carbs, and the points have to get adjusted all the time. I have to carry tools and a little flashlight because I actually get to use them! It is a endless up-hill battle of loyally fixing and improving. A battle of my will versus the hand of the gods of a bygone era.
You get tired on an old bike. To drive a few hundred miles at speed takes a will to do it and the confidence in yourself that you can and will defy the gods. Nevertheless I love the open road in the places between places on an old café bike. The open desert, the broad countryside, the winding lost mountain road. Places where courage and foolishness push the bike through unfamiliar turns one after another, dropping a knee and straining to see just what might be coming next – is that gravel or a patch of sunlight? And then it is gone... The places where the road reaches up and calls you its brother; where you might go hours and not see another soul. There is a silence there in the rushing wind and howl of a tuned exhaust note; there is a peace, and I am not sure if it comes from within me or if it is found there on the road, but it always is a welcome guest as it wrestles with this thing that pushes me and my old bike farther and harder and farther down the road.
Peace and grease... and be sure to stay away from them cars!
-fang
