Joy Dutta’s blog

A shiny spotless like new red Honda VFR with abs and 4k miles. We both liked it, despite our limited knowledge on VFRs except that they are Honda’s legendary sport bikes with touring capabilities. Besides, owning a V-4 bike I know the beauty of a motor in that configuration, delivering smooth power all the way till redline. A VFR is for SPORT-touring whereas my ST1300 is made for sport-TOURING, and the difference in seating is night and day between them.

To avoid the nasty bay area traffic, we started late for Clayton CA, around 8:30, for the 60 mile drive. Took us over an hour, and we passed through some rainy patches which almost made us include a nightstay at a motel in the plan. After the deal, I did some quick drill to get to know the bike enough to take it down the street. We hunted for a cheap motel but two attempts got us atleast $70 rooms, and by that time we could see the sky clear up. We just hit the freeway and to our surprise it was already dry and clean. Had to stop twice to make some temporary earbuds out of tissue papers as the wind noise bothered me a lot. I forgot to bring mine from home, and it was a big mistake. I would have enjoyed the ride more if I had them.

The motor is absolutely a beast. Acceleration in lower gears is something I never experienced before. It gains speed like a rocketship, and pulls like a frieght train. I thought I would be rather slow on this new-to-me-bike but before I knew I was zipping at 70-90mph. At speed the wind tends to lift up the upper body and the hands feel less pressure. Nice, but still the body posture is a lot closer to sport riding and could only be good for moderate distance riding.

Now my only worry is how much control Piyush can learn and in how much time. Just one wrong wrist action can do a lot of damage, not only to him, but to me too. Seeing anything happen to a friend while riding is disastrous enough, let alone a roomie.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 20th, 2007 at 4:40 am and is filed under motorcycling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.