I am a motorcycle lover! I currently have two of them, in fact. Sometimes two is not even enough, as many superbike fans would attest. I have wanted to get a brand new (or new to me, at least) motorcycle for quite some time. However, none of the latest offerings have really sparked any joy for me in that “I’ve got to have it” way. The fact that none of the current superbike offerings excite me as much as the first bikes I owned has drawn me to think about how much I love those older but amazing and stylish machines, and how much I love motorcycling in general.
I ride a 2004 CBR600RR and, occasionally, a 2003 Ducati Monster 800. The Ducati was my first bike – what joy I had the first time I laid eyes on it. I was infatuated with that bike; the styling included a mix of classic retro styling and new street bike styling. The bike sounded amazing too – it had every bit of that low down growl that anything with the name “monster” should have. Once I decided I wanted to get into motorcycles, the Ducati M800 was the bike I knew I had to have. The styling and sound was something from another world to me, and I still remember that feeling to this day.
After having (mostly) mastered that bike, I look back and think I was crazy or ignorant to start off on an 800cc bike. Oh well, I enjoyed every bit of it! The power was daunting and instantaneous. The bike, if it had a brain at all, wouldn’t comprehend the concept of speed limits. I felt like a total force of speed and proficiency on that bike.
Concerning my early first days of riding, I don’t ever remember riding and feeling anxious about anything in my life. Sure, I had anxieties when I first started riding – anxiety about work, where I wanted to live, and what I wanted to do. But when I put my leg over that beast, turned the key, and heard the fuel injection sound, the anxieties faded into a sea of excitement – an ocean of pure joy. The sea turned into a tsunami of anticipation when I hit the read button on the right handle bar and heard the twin engine turn over and the GPR exhaust spit pure noise out.
The world faded, and all that was left was me, the road, and a feeling of excitement, thrill, and pure confidence at the fact that my competence with an actual motorcycle was growing.
The Ducati was, in every way, my dream bike and for that reason, I cannot bring myself to get rid of it or even modify it significantly to alter its basic original look. Not long after procuring the Ducati, I fell in love with a sport called MotoGP. This was mostly from watching copious amounts of YouTube. The bikes in MotoGP also sparked a great joy for me. I thought the sound of my Ducati was amazing – the sound of the MotoGP bikes was even more visceral and raw. To anyone who loves the sound of amazing horsepower machines, these bikes will put chills in you. Concerning anyone who says the sound of a bike does not matter, it would seem that person has not let their ear feel the pleasureful noise of a GP bike.
The sound of a bike, much like the sound of many predatory animals in nature, communicates early on that the thing is not messing around. The styling of these bikes too, screamed performance and characterized the bikes as forces to be reckoned with. The opposite of showmanship and flashy, they were angled and styled so as to look aggressive and serious. They were all made to come in first place.
In a way, a MotoGP bike is something that I wanted to be in my innermost being, someone who would and could come in first (but still play by the rules of fair treatment) and was loud, not flashy, and spoke truth from my mind without regard of people-pleasing. I never once have wanted to get rid of my Ducati, but I got hooked on the MotoGP bike model and have wanted one ever since. I decided not long after getting into motorcycles generally that I had to have a MotoGP bike.
Well, anyone who knows anything about MotoGP or sporting motorcycles knows there is a problem for your average Joe who wants a real GP bike. That problem is that they are all prototypes made just for race teams and cost somewhere in the two (2) million dollar range per bike. So, a GP bike is off the table.
I bought my second bike not long after the Ducati. I procured a used CBR600RR. I fell in love with this bike just the same as the Ducati. I loved the aggressive styling and the forward leaning position. I felt like a racer every time I was on it. I have been riding almost four (4) years now and I still love riding that CBR600RR.
These two bikes have been my “dream bikes” for quite some time. If I were pressed to come up with a dream bike that is more exotic and such, it would no doubt be the Ducati D16RR – a real GP replica for the street. I would buy one in a heartbeat if I had 70K lying around that I could just spend freely. To be honest, the CBR600RR is pretty close to a GP bike for an average guy. The styling is derived from MotoGP and (for crying out loud) they used modified 600RR engines in the Moto2 class.
Well, the thrill of motorcycling being new to me has faded. For the first year or two, the excitement took away my anger and anxiety over various things that elicited those emotions. Whenever I would get mad at anything, I could go for a ride and the anger would mostly fade. Lately, that relaxing and joyous feeling has been illusive. I am pretty sure this fits with the law of diminishing returns and is overall to be expected with anything that at first brings you joy in a significant way. It is illusive sometimes, but not gone. As someone engaged to be married, it seems half of pre-marital counseling is preparing for the stage when the butterflies fade and you have to start putting in more effort into the love you have. I am not dissuaded by this phenomenon at all, but, to end where I started the bliss of motorcycling does not need to be attached to having the latest and greatest machine. It ultimately does not need vanity, nor does any real object of joy need novelty. Joy is more than novelty, and it can stay with us – under the right circumstances – forever. This is what learning to ride, four (4) years ago, has ultimately helped me to see.
