(Sorry folks, the background music will fade in and out in the vdo. YouTube had a copyright issue and I had to mute music in some sections)
Born Again Motorcyclist
I hope you liked that video of the Hero5 on my Street Scrambler. Had fun editing it on Quik, the GoPro app. If you subscribe to a GoPro Plus account, you get access to music to add in as well.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Let me start at the beginning of my motorcycle journey. I have always loved bikes, right from my college days when I had Zundapp Explorer. Sounds awesome doesn’t it ? The German company had a very short lived association in India with Royal Enfield and the bike was a 50cc.
Yes, you read that right. 50cc 🙂
Cut to my first job circa 1997and I made amends. My fav, the legendary Escorts Yamaha RX100 was not in production at that time – think there were emission norm changes taking place – its successor the RX135 was yet to hit the market. So the other ‘power’ bike of that era, the Bajaj Kawasaki KB125 was my go-to. If you are wondering why I am prefacing Indian names with marquee Japanese manufacturers, its because that is how Japanese brands entered the country.
If this bit of history interests you, do check out my favourite motorcycle writer Schumi’s (Shubabrata Marmar) article in Forbes India.
The Pause
Basically your average-joe corporate working life happened. Marriage happened. A son happened. And biking went out of the picture as responsibilities, working hours, family time took centre stage
Born Again Motorcyclist
Though my wife corrects me by calling it Mid-Life-Crises 🙂
The itch to own a bike for recreational riding peaked when I touched 40. So started looking out. Wanted something familiar, with upright ergonomics, a suspension that would not ruin my back on our terrible roads and the capability to hold highway speeds for the occasional breakfast run.
This was the bike I ended up buying – the Royal Enfield Bullet Classic 500. Waited 8 months for it ! And basked in reflected glory when Harry Potter rode it along with Hagrid when trying to fend of the death eaters !
It was authentic retro (RE has a 100 year history), sounded lovely with that push-rod single and a custom exhaust and had good low end grunt. That the suspension was plush on bad roads was another box ticked.
I enjoyed the bike in city rides and at near 100kms/hr cruising speeds on the highway. Happiness – reloaded.
Until my riding ability, which was not great shakes btw, started to catch up with the classic bike’s capability. As I started getting better at cornering, I noticed that I was not able to lean much into corners; the brakes were not ABS and despite the 500cc, the bike could not sustain high speed cruising.
Something that was brought home to me when I went for a ride with biker buddies on Ninja and Duke 250’s. So the quest started for a relatively affordable bike that could do it all – highway runs, city commutes and a bit of safety kit like ABS. I found the Ninja250 too expensive so the obvious choice was Honda’s CBR250 ABS.
The baby CBR was very different from my Classic500. The calmness with which it would cruise at highway speeds, the refinement of the engine , the sorted cornering capability…it introduced me to the world of modern sports touring. There was a terrific facebook owners group as well where i got great advice on mods and maintenance.
I did lots of breakfast rides – day trips on sundays where we used to group ride to scenic spots on the outskirts of Bangalore. The pic below is from one such group ride to the amazing Shettihalli Rosary Church in Hassan district. The Church had got submerged when a dam was constructed and used to rise up like a haunted Hogwarts structure when the waters receded in the summer.
One of the longest rides I did on the baby CBR was to Goa for the India Bike Week. Rode along with guys riding Triumphs, that classy British brand. The ride gave me plenty of time to see these machines in action – there were Classics (Bonneville’s), SuperSports (Daytona) and the most popular of them all in India, the Tiger (Adventure). I was truly smitten and was determined to own a Triumph one day.
The Tiger 900 XRX was hands down my favourite Triumph of the lot. It looked perfect for Indian conditions and the kind of usage I had in mind. City commutes and the odd weekend run. The Triple engine loved revvs, was incredibly flexible and the bike could could corner as well.
The day came when I even booked the bike and took a test ride sample on a long city commute. That is when I realised that it was not really a good city commuter. The engine got too hot, the turning circle was ponderous, the clutch was hard and the bike was a handful in traffic. I wanted a Triumph, sure, but something I could use as a commuter as well. Not just a weekend plaything.
Enter the Triumph Street Scrambler 900. Retro classic Bonneville family. But a few bits to make it offroad / bad road friendly : dual purpose metzeler tyres, longer travel suspension and those lovely twin pipes snaking along the right side 🙂
Everyone, I mean everyone, asks me about those pipes ! Especially when they see my right leg snuggled up smack against it at traffic lights. Short answer – yes, it does get warm, not hot. You can’t ride this in shorts. But is it a deal breaker for city commutes – no way!
You don’t get heat when on the move anyways. When you come to halt at say, a traffic light or when in crawling traffic, there is only one rule :
Keep that right leg up !
The Scrambler has helped me add one more skill to my biking repertoire – offroading. Took it with a bunch of friends for a day’s training at Big Rock Dirt Park on the outskirts of Bangalore. There were hard core dirt bikes on rent there but I decided to stick to mine. Tell you what, the Scrambler did just fine – it handled the sandy bits, the rocky bits and the trails. Will post some pics and vdo’s from that ride in another post.
The icing on the cake for me on the Scrambler is its colour – a lovely matt green. Which brings me to the end of this post.
Wonder where my biking journey will take me next – thanks for reading this rather long post and don’t forget to hit the ‘share’ buttons if you liked it !
