"It was a beast, any excessive throttle and the front went up, super fast. What a ride."
In 1971 the quickest bikes around were the CB750, Norton twin carb, and the H1 500 twin. The H1 would smoke (literally) all of them with a good rider who knew how to handle the insane power spike.
Then the H2 came out. Supposed to be easier to control than the H1.
A friend sold his Norton and bought one as soon as dealers got them. He had it for about a week when the inevitable happened, a tricked out Norton pulled up by him at a red light. I was behind on my feeble CB77.
They both revved up as the light was about to change... Norton took off pretty well, the Kawi had the typical 2-stroke lack of low end torque and fell a few lengths behind. He had it at WOT in 1st when it came on the pipe and horsepower went from maybe 30 to 75 or so in an instant.
First time I'd seen a bike do a back flip.
Nothing destroyed except an ego, some levers and various dents and scrapes, plus a jacket and a cracked helmet. Some road rash of course.
The H2 was just plain crazy. Now we have crazier bikes but I let the squids enjoy them, my bones don't heal as fast as they used to.
Then there's the friend who let a buddy ride his '69 H1. That guy learned the hard way that it would go mighty fast in a short time, but the drum brakes were not so good at slowing it down. He had to fix the bike and replace the garage door across the T junction he went straight through.
I'm OK with being a 4 stroke person.
One of my friends (when I had my shop) had an H2 with expansion chambers on it. He has an amazing riders: one day I was driving up the interstate in my 350 HP 402 CID El Camino when I heard a Roadrunner-like "beep-beep" next to me, and there he was, riding up the left lane on the rear wheel! He waved and rolled on ahead, passing a dozen other cars at 80+ MPH and smokin' out all of us!
About 2 weeks later I was sitting on my 750 at the local Dairy Queen, cooling off in the parking lot with my girl. Here he comes up the street and road-runners me with his horn, then stands it up on the rear wheel, does a 180 turn on that wheel, and rides back up the street! My jaw just dropped! A couple minutes later he comes riding back into the 'Queen and pulls up to say 'Hi' and I said, "Bruce, the other day you came to my parts counter and snatched a fly that was sitting on the desk, then let it go, unhurt. I just watched you pirouette that monster out on Main street and not hit any cars in the traffic. Where the [blazes] did you get those kind of reflexes?".
Bruce sort of smiled and looked down and said, "Well, I was just lucky. I didn't know it was going to do that when I nipped the throttle..."
Still, he was the best rider I ever saw who had to push a ported-and-piped H2 at every stop sign, replacing the clutch 3 times every summer...and he NEVER got mosquito bites when riding, either.
