#crashing

As a kid, I remember my folks would take their shoes to the local shoe repair shop. I take it for granted now since I’ve been working from home long before it was cool, but there was a time when people not only had to go into an office, they also had to wear nice clothes, too! And the bit of that wardrobe that got the most punishment were the shoes. Those business shoes never looked comfortable, with their hard soles and weird patterns on the leather. But they lasted a long time, and if the soles ever wore out – which they did regularly with my folks – the local repair shop (I guess they were called cobblers even further back in time) could just put a new sole on and breathe new life into what would have been (re)tired shoes.

All riders know that motorcycles are inherently less stable than automobiles. So, when we ride our shiny new bike away from the dealership, we begin the life-long task of attempting to keep our motorcycle from achieving its natural position. What is a motorcycle’s natural position, you ask? Why, that would be lying on its side. Our motorcycles depend on us to stay upright. It is our sacred task.

I’ve been testing factory-supplied motorcycles for more than 20 years, and I’m proud to say only a few of the 700-odd press bikes I’ve sampled have ever been placed improperly on the ground, i.e. crashed.

While all of us at MO clearly like to wrangle the latest and greatest motorcycles, you might be surprised to learn that a larger percentage of our time is spent in a chair (or standing desk in my case), staring intently at a computer screen, typing away as quickly as our little fingers will go. It’s not glamorous, nor is it nearly as much fun as riding, but hey, the site doesn’t run itself.

Opinions about electronic aids to riding motorcycles are like belly buttons, every rider has one. Cruise to any of the motorcycle forums that my employer owns (there are a bunch of ‘em), and you’re likely to find a thread debating the evils of ABS and/or traction control because they insert themselves between the rider’s input and the motorcycle’s reactions. Just about a year ago, Teakettle editor, John Burns, gave us his take on traction control, summing it up thusly: “I think TC is the greatest moto invention since the rubber tire.”