MO Editor Highlights Of 2015

Motorcycle.com Staff
by Motorcycle.com Staff

Sharing some of the most fun you can have on two wheels

The vast majority of our time as MO editors is spent slumped over behind our computer screens, not behind a pair of handlebars. Corner us in a bar on an off night, and we might bend your ear whining about how little time we spend riding motorcycles.

But that’s just the spoiled brats in us who would whinge at the color of the gold rings we were given. After a day spent riding the latest and greatest motorcycles, the complaints we have recede into the distance. In fact, the editors of MO are blessed with the kinds of opportunities motorcyclists the world over would envy.

MO Editor Highlights of 2013

So, as the page to another year gets turned, it’s time for us to reflect on the experiences we’ve had over the past 12 months that give us staff MOrons the enthusiasm to keep pounding on our keyboards and bring you hundreds of more stories in 2016. Flip the pages and let us know which editor’s story you’re most envious of!

Evans Brasfield, Associate Editor
Grom Racing, MO-Style

The sun rose over the Grange Motor Circuit to reveal that Team MOron still maintained its massive lead with team captain Evans Brasfield dropping the track record, lap-after-lap…

You know, when it comes to choosing my favorite of anything – motorcycle, music, child (I just tell the one I’m talking to that she’s the most loved), places, favorite MO motorcycling moment of 2015 – I suck. It’s not that I’m commitment-phobic. I just want to spread the love. So, rather than weasel, like a few of my comrades did with their selection(s), I’m gonna make a new beginning, dive in, and commit to one thing. My favorite motorcycle moment of 2015 was racing our project Grom for 24 hours. Why? Because racing is an inherently foolish activity. Racing at night on a bike that should never have turned a wheel on a closed course ups the level of foolishness exponentially – to the level of stupid. And stupid is something I can commit to.

24 Hours Of Grom

Our first mistake was deciding to race the UMRA 24-Hour. After that, in the immortal words of Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinsky) in Aguirre, the Wrath of God, “It’s all downhill from here.” Only, in our case, without the beheadings and bloodshed. Second, we made the classic racing mistake: We went heavy on the bike modifications and light on the development time. What could go wrong?

However, once you get caught up in a current, it’s hard to fight your way out. I was no less a victim than the other members of our team. When cooler heads began to think that, perhaps, we should withdraw before our unstable machine threw one of us on our heads, I steadfastly refused to believe that we could even consider giving up. In fact – no, wait, facts be damned – I told my teammates that, if they wanted to have a reasonable discussion about the pros/cons of our current situation, they should do it while I was out on the track during my next stint.

Look at these guys! Not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they’re having a good time, God bless ’em.

That’s what racing does to me. I get to the track, and despite even the remotest possibility of my being able to win, I get so caught up in the moment that nothing will stand between me and the starting line. (Which goes a long way towards explaining the debt I had when I finally stopped club racing on a regular basis.) Perhaps it was the absence of my belligerence during the discussion about how to proceed for the remainder of the race that allowed for the good ideas that Ed Sorbo had to percolate to the surface. We’ll never know, but a decision was made. The race continued – with Team MOron included.

And you know what happened? The Grom’s handling started to improve with each trackside surgery. The lap times dropped. We started to have fun. Yeah, we would’ve liked to have been in contention for a podium position for more than the first lap, but so be it. Instead, we hunkered down committed to finishing and clawed back as many positions as we could before the checkered flag. For me, all of this made for a hell of a good weekend with a ton of great memories. Ultimately, it reinforced my belief that being a MOron is pretty dang cool.

I’m already looking forward to 2016. What kind of stupidity can we embroil ourselves in during the next 366 days? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Troy Siahaan, Features Editor
Yamaha YZF-R1 Launch In Australia

Uncorked, the 2015 Yamaha R1 and R1M (shown) are incredibly thrilling racetrack weapons.

At the end of 2014, I told the rest of the MO staff that I called dibs on the new Yamaha YZF-R1 intro. They could have all the other intros (of which there were some epic ones), but I wanted first crack at the R1. Lo and behold, I got my wish, and I couldn’t be happier with my decision. First, the location was the Sydney Motorsport Park (formerly Eastern Creek Raceway) in Sydney, Australia. Sure, Phillip Island would have been epic, but I’d never been to Australia before so I was just happy to be there (what a lovely place, btw).

More importantly, though, was the bike. A radical departure from the big and heavy R1 that preceded it, the new R1 felt light and slim from the saddle, and the amount of MotoGP tech Yamaha threw at it got me extra excited to ride. Sure enough, the R1 didn’t disappoint (once we were unleashed with the Track ECU). I simply felt invincible on the bike. Never had it been so easy for me to push my personal limits, knowing the machine I was on would be there to mask my mistakes. My Aha! moment came as I was cresting the small hill leading onto the front straight, my hand was to the stop, the front tire came a few inches off the ground, and then it gently reengaged the tarmac again, my hand never easing the entire time. At that point I was convinced Yamaha’s wheelie control was the real deal.

Hopping on the R1M, shod with slick tires, was an even cooler experience – partly because I almost got my elbow down (I could have done the job with a bit more bravery), but mostly because of the Y-TRAC app. After our sessions I could see data from my ride, compare them to others, and look at areas to improve. I could even make changes to the bike with a few button presses.

For me, the R1 represented a big leap in sportbike tech, and I was glad I got to be one of the first journalists in the world to experience it. Honorable mention for highlight of the year, in my book, goes to our Literbike Shootout, which revealed how awesome the current crop of flagship sportbikes really are, especially the Aprilia RSV4 RF. Ironically, my lowlight of 2015 comes at the controls of the Aprilia, as I was blindsided by another rider entering Laguna Seca’s Turn 11. That aside, 2015 was a stellar year.

Tom Roderick, Content Editor
Why choose just one?

Every year is a good year when you ride motorcycles for a living, and 2015 was no different. Right out of the gate, in January, I jetted off to Gran Canaria to test KTM’s newest big Twin, the 1290 Super Adventure. The event lacked an off-road component, but even without one I knew the bike was going to be a serious contender in the liter-plus ADV category. And no matter what my fellow MOrons say, it should have won our 2015 Ultimate Sport-Adventure Touring Shootout.

In March I traveled to Texas to sample Suzuki’s new GSX-S750, but in this case it wasn’t the bike that was the highlight, but rather the dinner at Kevin Schwantz’s house on the last night of the event. I swear, Mr. Schwantz, your mechanic gave me permission to sit on your bike.

For the month of June I was slated to attend the static launch of Honda’s RC213V-S. This wasn’t a riding event, but it was held in conjunction with the Catalunya GP, and it’s always a treat attending a Euro round of the Grand Prix series. A personal complication kept me from this event, so John Burns attended in my stead. Apparently, it worked to my advantage because three months later I was in Spain riding the expensive, exotic, MotoGP-for-the-street motorcycle around the twisty confines of the Valencia circuit.

Regardless your biases about performance, cost or any other facet of the Honda RC213V-S, no one’s going to pass up the opportunity to ride one (except for MO’s gracious Ed-in-Chief who could have gone himself). The RC213V-S press launch was once-in-a-lifetime experience akin to riding a Britten. There’s no RC213V-Ss in American Honda’s media pool, no loaner bikes for future shootouts pitting the RCV-S against other sportbikes. The press launch was a one-and-done event, and not just a highlight of 2015 but of my moto journalism career.

During our Ultimate Sports-Adventure-Touring Shootout we found the only dam in California with water remaining behind it. Evans caught me in action trying to correct this inconsistency.

Our Ultimate Sports-Adventure-Touring Shootout in September was a six-day, all-hands-on-deck ride of epicness up the California coastline and back again. Spending six consecutive days out of office riding motorcycles, bonding with my co-workers and drinking whiskey should be an annual highlight.

The year ended with a very, very long trip to South Africa to ride Honda’s Africa Twin. The much-anticipated ADV bike didn’t fail to impress and the safari to see lions, rhinos, wildebeests and zebras was exceptionally cool, but nothing beats swimming with great white sharks.

John Burns, Senior Editor
Spanish GPs, Sacramento Miles, Tough People and Fine Wine…

It’s nice on those rare occasions when a delectable press junket morsel rolls off the table into my bowl, like the Honda RC213V-S one held right before the Catalunya MotoGP, which I got to hang around for. Being in parc ferme at the end of that weekend, listening to the partisan crowd roar back and forth across that grand canyon of speed, was a religious experience. This was before the season turned sour; Marquez wasn’t able to get close enough to ram Rossi at this one, so maybe that was my peak MotoGP experience? I’m good with that.

Rolling up to the Sacramento Mile last summer was another prime experience, and parking the old Jaguar about 36 feet from Turn 1 in the grass infield (with big lake) made it really the antithesis of a MotoGP, more like a county fair than a motorcycle race. Heck, we contemplated doing a few laps in the car…

At Sacramento, those little orange flags are the only thing between you and this crazy 130-mph conga line.

None of that down-on-the-farm atmosphere can disguise the fact that this kind of racing is as furry and fierce as anything. Triumphs, Kawasakis, Harleys and Ducatis, husbands and wives, were all going at it hammer and tongs – and one of the tongees was Troy Bayliss. The good part was that I rolled up with my compadre Mark Cernicky, who’s raced quite a bit of flat track, and his five-year-old kid Maely. Mark was bumping along rock bottom and had been for a while, with two external fixators on not one but both legs (following a freak dirtbike landing) keeping him mostly off his feet, so it was good to get him out and into his milieu.

A few months ago, he finally got back on his cankles after three years (!) on the couch, which was when his former employer decided it would be a good time to fire him. So what, suddenly Cernicky is KTM’s new International PR Coordinator and packing his bags to move to Austria to learn the language and get back to work – not that his new job sounds much like work. Chins up, kids. It’s always darkest before the dawn. Way to go MC!

You’ve got to keep the faith, don’t you?

Kevin Duke, Editor-in-Chief
Racing For 200 mph

Accelerating a motorcycle to triple-digit speeds is simple, and getting a modern sportbike to 150 mph isn’t particularly challenging if given enough open space. But speeding to 200 mph on a production bike is nearly impossible since the manufacturer’s unofficial agreement to limit speeds to 186 mph. Achieving 200 mph in just a half mile from a standing start? Well, that stretches the bounds of what is mechanically feasible.

But that was the challenge in front of me at an airport in Oregon. I was aboard the only production bike in the world that might make it possible: Kawasaki’s H2R, the higher-performance version of the supercharged H2 I rode earlier in the year. The R version of the H2 doubles the MSRP to $50,000, vaults the claimed horsepower to around 300 at its crankshaft, replaces mirrors with a pair of wings, and disqualifies it from street-legal status.

The H2R packs enough power to breeze past 200 mph if given enough room, but the trick was to launch it hard enough to exceed the double-ton speed barrier by the 2640-foot mark. However, the H2R has so much grunt and a sportbike-like short wheelbase that getting to full throttle without flipping over backwards is exceedingly challenging.

The speedo registered 209 mph after the half-mile speed trap, but you’ll have to keep your browser tuned to Motorcycle.com to discover if the official timing system logged a 200-mph run at the trap.

Another challenge from the event was putting together a video without the benefit of a dedicated onsite video shooter (long story…), but our go-to video producer, Jay McNally, has been able to pull together a kick-ass video showing the challenges and the excitement of our quest to get to the double-ton. At this moment, all I’ll share is that it was one of the most exciting experiences on a motorcycle I’ve ever had. Stay tuned to MO to find out how it turned out!

Sean Alexander, Director of Powersports Editorial
Finding Nirvana

After lending a hand to MO for various new bike intros in Italy and the South of France, and enduring the successful execution of MO’s largest and longest-ever motorcycle Adventure-Touring Comparison, from the saddle, my #1 highlight of 2015 was incredibly easy to select, but it wasn’t any of those aforementioned treats. It was a set of about six laps on a special motorcycle at Laguna Seca.

These damned things just keep getting better. It’s a total cliche to claim “best ever” each year as planet earth’s talented motorcycle industry invests billions into furthering the art of motorcycle and relegating every other manufacturer to also-ran status. HEY WORLD: OURS IS BIGGER! Surprises are no longer surprising as new mechanical stars dazzle the collected journalists with their dynamic brilliance.

And yet, I was genuinely surprised by the dynamic mastery displayed by Aprilia’s new RF during MO’s 2015 Superbike Shootout at Laguna Seca. In the space of about six laps it gave me the best track experience I’ve ever had on a stock production motorcycle!

No stock production motorcycle has ever been as instantly comfortable for me to ride quickly than Aprilia’s 2016 RSV4 1000 RF, a fact discovered in Turn 11 at the beginning of the first hot lap on the amazing beast.

The MO crew began each session rolling around in a group for the cameras, but group shots are done at a moderate pace to keep everyone tightly bunched. During my rotation on the Aprilia, I decided to wick it up entering Turn 5, and it felt so good that I didn’t back off to re-group. Instead what followed was turn after turn of ever-increasing pace. The faster I allowed it to go, the happier the Aprilia seemed. Entering the front straight (six turns later) it was ON! The bike was off the leash and whispering heroic things in my ear, my Chi glowed brighter and leathers grew tighter…

Things began to scrape, the tires began to squirm and then slide, the front in particular responded beautifully, telling the glowing rider to trust it and press on. Press on we did, lap times dropped, other people started going backward quicker than usual, and the Aprilia just kept whispering in my ear while bellowing a most glorious magnum opus from its honking intake and clearly supralegal exhaust. Nothing spooky happened, at all.

Twelve years and seventy pounds! after my last club-racing championship, a fat, stiff and rusty old guy like me was ready to embezzle funds from the family checking account and buy that damned Aprilia right then and there and head for the closest sanctioned race I could find. It was just that good. Then Siahaan crashed the fucking thing.

If I had to pick a runner-up, it would a brief liaison with MV Agusta’s new Turismo Veloce in the south of France. Like an exotic Versys 650 on steroids and blessed with a howling triple-cylinder tenor engine note, this sexy Italian opera singer was comfortable, easy to ride, a quick hooligan, and able to relax when appropriate.
Motorcycle.com Staff
Motorcycle.com Staff

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  • Ken mcguire Ken mcguire on Jan 04, 2016

    Oh come on, Tom. You blokes get to ride the latest and greatest... and get to swim with White sharks. Bloody hell I need a new job.

  • Meaty Midrange Meaty Midrange on Jan 11, 2016

    I agree with Old Moron: the "24 Hueres de Grom" is the one I'd pick. The similar events in my life, where a close group of pals are pushing themselves and the equipment to the limit are my best memories, even though they were actually miserable at the time. Like a 36 hour sail to the Bahamas in a Northeaster that left every other boat, and even some ships, sitting in port. We broke the boat, I broke my arm, we hated each other halfway through, but none of us would trade the experience for the world.

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