Friday, October 9, 2009

From Slate: a near-poem about vintage Honda motorcycles

I'm just back from a very quick trip to Indianapolis. I flew there and drove back. My family in Indy, my niece and her husband, had a spare car....and gave it to us. So we have a white Acura SUV out in the parking lot. We plan to use it sparingly but we enjoy having it. Tamar has never owned a car and I haven't had one for years and years. We're in the lap of luxury now, huh?

This link will take you to a fine article from Slate about a man's love affair with Japanese motorbikes of the late '60s and '70s. Worth reading even if you could care less about Japanese motorbikes of the late '60s and '70s. See if I'm not right.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I dunno, I think these things are a lot like vintage steel road bicycles. The ride may be (and probably is, based on the one's I've ridden) just fine but the other bits, especially the brakes are lacking. One can outfit a vintage bicycle with modern componentry and get modern stopping and shifting with that great ride--but with an old Honda you're pretty much stuck with what you have. I learned this first-hand with an old '76 CB400, a wonderful bike in its day (and I owned it in its day) but after riding bikes of a decade later with double disc brakes and higher quality suspension the ol' CB400 was just something nice to look at. same with the CB350's and the older ones as well.

Sjb said...

You wrote:
"So we have a white Acura SUV out in the parking lot."

Good Lord, if this isn't proof that the Apocalypse is near, I don't know what is.
Next it will be a hands-free cell phone, then a GPS unit, and can satellite radio be far behind?

Hope you're well, at least you'll stay dry this winter.

Steve
Tucson

Anonymous said...

SUV? As in "shopping-utilty-vehicle"? PLEASE say you'll be donating the evironmental insult-mobile to a worthy charity or at least purchasing carbon offsets to greenwash your use of this ghastly contraption.