1st Feature Story
TRIPLE PLAY
2008 Triumph Speed Triple
Story by Neale Bayly
Photos by Riles & Nelson
Ray Lamontagne’s words are running through my head. His raw, visceral lyrics are like a wound exposed to the world, igniting the senses that bring me passion, romance and pain.  Beneath me, the willing engine is spinning hard through the gears accompanying the soundtrack playing in my mind with a primal roar that burns into the fabric of my soul.
Howling, ripping, and exploding through the cold, damp, white morning, I am the machine. Connected without thinking, changing direction with the next verse, accelerating to the rising drumbeat, before exploding into a new, mist-shrouded valley, every nerve receptor is firing at red line as we devour the early morning Tennessee tarmac.
Hot breath hits cold face shield and fingers feel the early morning chill, as tires search for grip on the road’s unpredictable surface. But these are nothing more than signals that tell me I’m alive. That tells me once more that I’ve chosen life. I’ve chosen motorcycles. I’ve chosen action, adventure and the thrill of a powerful motorcycle.
Today I’m riding the 2008 Triumph Speed Triple through the Smokey Mountains and I have found the answer to the question I get asked the most: “What motorcycle would you buy if you could only have one?”
For more on this story, pick up a current issue of FREE 2 WHEEL at your local dealer, or use the handy order form page found on our web site.
2nd Feature Story
MIDWEST MOTOMANIA
HOW INDIANAPOLIS THROWS A GP
Story and photos by Chris Coulter
Wanderlust is an amazing thing. It takes a sane person, and drives him, for unknown reasons, to just disappear.
Wanderlust has been responsible for many of our greatest discoveries. I truly believe that all of the greatest explorers were just people with wanderlust, and a great PR department that sold the rest of the world on what great discoveries they made. Case in point—Christopher Columbus, who we all know was actually looking for Asia, not the Caribbean.
In that spirit of wanderlust, my wife, Olga, and I have made an annual trek to see, at first, Superbike races and, a little later, the MotoGP races right here in California. We traveled with a small group of dear friends to Monterey and Laguna Seca to make a summer home.  From there, we would wander around Northern California on the saddles of our motorcycle and make it back to the track to enjoy some of the world’s finest motorcycle racing.
This year was different. We were still going to see racing, but our wanderlust would take us further, to the “International Capital” of motor sports, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Having spent the first part of our summer camping with the kids in the amazing redwoods forest just south of Oregon, we were ready for a grown-up get-away that combined our need to roam with the amazing display of speed that only MotoGP could offer.
For more on this story, pick up a current issue of FREE 2 WHEEL at your local dealer, or use the handy order form page found on our web site.
Ask the Sergeant:
I ride 15,000-plus miles a year on my bike and I am constantly finding myself getting cut off and just not seen while riding. I am considering installing a headlight modulator on my motorcycle to increase my visibility. Is it legal to have one in California? Are there other lights or devices that I can install as well without getting a ticket?
Keith Hansen, Monrovia
As motorcycle riders, we are always fighting a battle to be seen among other traffic. In nearly every auto-versus-motorcycle collision I have investigated, the driver of the car has said something to the effect of, “I never saw the motorcycle.” It is a reality that we must be aware of. We must make sure that we can be seen and that we stand out from the visual background.
Some people will read what I just wrote and use it as justification for having a loud exhaust system but that is not what I am talking about. Just review any automotive magazine and check out the interior sound levels of today’s cars. Throw in a screaming kid, put the air conditioning on, and add a mildly active cell phone conversation, and you could be riding an open-exhaust, top-fuel drag bike and they wouldn’t hear you coming. Drivers never hear me on my forward-facing-siren-equipped police motorcycle.
The idea is to be visible. People recognize objects that are threats, such as the tractor-trailer barreling down on them, the pit bull lurking in the shadows and the bill collector on caller ID. As a species, we have developed ways to recognize what can do us harm and we unconsciously make decisions to avoid that harm. Camouflage is nature’s way of hiding the threats that we would automatically avoid and we, as riders, oftentimes create our own camouflage that puts us out of visibility and into danger. We need to make sure that we are visible at all times.
The California Vehicle Code has already mandated that every motorcycle first registered on or after January 1, 1978, must be equipped with at least one, but not more than two, headlamps that come on and stay on whenever the engine of the motorcycle is running. Those details can be found in CVC Section 25650.5. It is illegal to disconnect this mandated feature, as many cruiser bike owners do, and a citation for doing so can be issued.
The California Vehicle Code, under Section 25251.2, does allow the installation of a modulating device on any motorcycle, and requires that it phases between the high and low beam, as opposed to low (or high) and off. The headlight must still be on at all times, it is simply allowed to phase between the two beams, and the CVC also states that the modulator must be turned off during hours of darkness. So yes, you can install your headlamp modulator. Just make sure you don’t use it after dark.
There are other legal things that you can also do to increase your visibility. Some of them are based on more lighting, while others are engineered into the bike or your riding gear.
Let’s start with the types of lights that you can install. First, remember that you can never install any lights facing forward that are blue or red (red in the rear is fine) since these will surely draw you the wrong type of attention. Just like on a car, a motorcycle owner can install auxiliary driving lights, spot lamps and fog lamps, but you may not have any more than four lamps on, including headlamps, at any one time. Some of these types of lamps are very effective at getting attention but studies have shown that too much lighting can actually be used to camouflage or change the perception of an object. And, of course, extra lighting is much more effective during darkness.
I would recommend placing the lights up as high as is legal to bring them into the sight lines of other drivers. In the case of driving and spot lamps, legal means no more than 42 inches high. For fog lamps, the maximum height is no more than 40 inches. Keep them aimed in such a manner that they are not focused into the eyes of drivers, but rather down towards a focus point approximately 300 feet down the road.
Have you ever noticed that nearly all police motorcycles have a broad, white fairing? It has been proven that brighter colors get recognized much faster than darker colors, so, when you select your next motorcycle or go shopping for riding gear, pick out solid, bright colors as they will make you more visible. Riding around on a black-over-black bike may look really cool, but it will not make you stand out from the visual background. The dark colors become lost in shadows and are much harder to spot by grandma in her solid steel 1970’s sedan. Buying a solid red helmet, as opposed to the latest Valentino Rossi Replica with its swirl patterns, will make you stand out in the traffic crowd and combining your red helmet with a matching color jacket will give you that much more presence in the visual background.
The idea here is to make as much as possible of what is facing forward on you and the motorcycle a solid, visible color to create an awareness of your presence to other traffic. You don’t want to go get tiger stripe patterns in blacks and grays because that is how you hide battleships in the open ocean, and you are but a small vehicle in a sea of fast-food restaurant signs, trees and shadows. Ride defensively and believe that no one can see you and then you are prepared for the worst.
Ride safe, keep smiling, and take care of yourselves and each other out there.
For more on this story, pick up a current issue of FREE 2 WHEEL at your local dealer, or use the handy order form page found on our web site.
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Scuttle Putt:
So. Cal. motorcyclist and Community College activist Pat Owens wants to get fellow motorcyclists all fired up about the November 4 election. No, he’s not taking a stand on the Presidential race; he’s taking a stand against a bond measure that seeks to raise $3.5 billion for L.A.’s Community Colleges.
Measure J on the November 4 ballot asks voters across a wide swath of greater Los Angeles to approve a $3.5 billion bond measure that, according to estimates published in one L.A. newspaper, could raise property taxes to L.A city residents by as much as $84 to $125 a year on an average San Fernando Valley home for 40 years.
The bond is being requested to “prepare students for high-demand jobs and careers,” plus other functions that include buying and improving real property, improving energy efficiency, and improving and repairing infrastructure. And the request comes just a few years after the Community College District got $2.2 billion from bond measures passed for similar purposes—$2.2 billion that was spent on construction-related functions that raised a firestorm of criticism that is still raging.
Way2go:
A PRECIOUS RIDE
ROLLING IN SILVER AND GOLD
Story and photos by Bob Kaufmann
On July 4th, 1919, in sweltering 110-degree, Toledo, Ohio heat, underdog Jack Dempsey stepped into the ring against heavyweight champion Jess Willard.
Six-foot six-inch Willard not only towered over Dempsey but outweighed him by almost 60 pounds. The disparity was so great that, at the weigh-in, Willard had cynically remarked to Dempsey’s manager, Doc Kearns, that he was concerned he might kill the smaller fighter.
But not long after the opening bell, it was clear that Willard’s “concern” was misplaced. The skinny-looking, but much quicker, Dempsey felt out Willard for about 30 seconds, and then began to throw aggressive combinations. At first, Willard was able to hold Dempsey at bay with his long arms but just about midway through that first round, Dempsey connected with a vicious left hook that put Willard on the canvas for the first time in his career.
Willard got up but  Dempsey continued attacking with a vengeance, knocking down the champion six more times. Saved by the bell at the end of the first round, Willard some-how hung in for three rounds but he was unable to answer the round-four bell.
Project Motorcycle :
SIGNIFICANT SIX
Story and photos by Reid Libby
Dreams do come true, especially if you are patient and have no fear of putting a large amount of time, money and yourself into a project.
Dave Tonkiss is that kind of guy and has had a passion for the flagship of Honda’s 1979 catalog, the audacious, six-cylinder CBX, since it first appeared, way back nigh on 30 years ago. For Tonkiss it was love at first sight, but the dream was going to take a while before it became reality.  To say that Tonkiss’ favorite machine grabs your attention is an understatement. Just one look tells you that the Honda CBX is a motorcycle of note. It might best be described as the ultimate seventies expression of Honda engineering. Or as radical an exercise in subtle outlandishness on two wheels as there ever will be.
This was the same reaction garnered by Honda’s 750 Four back in 1969, a decade before Tonkiss’ love came on the scene. The Four was a winner in both concept and execution that challenged other manufacturers to get out of the way or get run over. Ten years later, however, the others, most notably Kawasaki and Suzuki, were pounding on Honda’s door with very capable fours  of their own.
It was Honda’s turn to up the ante, and it was obvious that trumping the Kawi and Suzi liter bikes with a mere displacement increase wasn’t going to be enough. Something far more dramatic was needed and Honda had only to look to its past racing successes to find the answer. The resurrection in street guise of the company’s famous, in-line, six-cylinder configuration, used by its all-conquering gran prix bikes of the sixties, was deemed the perfect foil for the competition’s encroaching super bikes.
For more on this story, pick up a current issue of FREE 2 WHEEL at your local dealer, or use the handy order form page found on our web site.
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