Posted by Raed667 11 hours ago
- Dave Karlotski, "Season of the Bike"
At the end of the day, you can only control your own car, not the environment it's in.
Commuting to work in peak hour, zipping past all the gridlocked traffic on the motorway (filtering is/was legal) and then cresting over the Auckland harbour bridge on a sunny day... Absolute bliss.
Except after 15 years I'm less convinced I'll own another motorcycle. Maybe I'll settle for an electric scooter instead.
Former motorcycle commuter here. The risks while commuting in a motorcycle in urban traffic (at least in the US), are significantly higher than riding for pleasure. I found that untenable after a while and resorted to the bus/train, and saved motorcycling for the weekend.
Everyone's tolerance is different of course, but after a week of lane splitting commuting I didn't feel like riding the backroads. It took the joy out of it for me.
I don't know what it's like in your city, but when I was riding my commute would be 20 minutes door-to-door versus driving/public transport that would easily take over an hour for the same journey. As someone who's perpetually late, that sort of time saving also skews your judgement of risk.
I rode 100K on Friday, fueled entirely by Coca Cola and gummy bears. Zero direct fossil fuel consumption! It also took 5 hours.
https://www.hejlfoundation.org/from-gas-tanks-to-gummy-bears...
It's a moped-style bicycle that rides like a motorcycle and I HAVE NEVER OPERATED A MOTORCYCLE. Bicycle, yes. Motorcycle, no.
I'm going to have to find a large grassy area to practice riding on before this is useful. If I had it to do over, I'd pick something that's more bicycle than motorcycle. But I don't, so I just have to make do with what I did get.
Feel free to call me an idiot.
$2500 for a vehicle which could most likely top out around 200 mph probably wasn't the smartest purchasing decision I've ever made. The only smart thing I ever did was there was always something suitably wrong with it I never took it out into the desert to see what the real top speed was.
My Fiat 500 has the same size engine and keeps me out of trouble. And around the same MPG...