Dave Brown

Two bikes

Well, I’ve finally gotten a chance to actually ride bikes as part of the unlimited-license course. The initial session was a sort of psychological evaluation, to see what sort of a driver you might turn out to be.

That was fun, actually. Nearly everyone else in the group was a young kid going for their car license, and so they were all very scared because they thought the test was relevant to anything. They were very carefully weighing their answers, the way I did the first time I took the test. This time, though, since I knew exactly how much weight it would hold as regards getting the license, I didn’t take it seriously at all—and answered honestly, instead of trying to answer correctly.

One of the questions was, “If there’s an empty road and it’s a nice day, what will you do?” It was multiple choice—the choices were, “slow down in case something unexpected happens,” “drive carefully at the speed limit,” and “open ’er up!” You can probably guess which answer I picked.

Anyway, when I got to the school this morning, they’d put the evaluation of how safe a driver I might be. It was ranked on an alphabetical scale, from A to E, with A being the safest. I scored a D. I showed this to the guys at the school, laughing, and saying, “I guess this means I’m a dangerous driver, doesn’t it?” They sort of protested, and then I pulled the Saitama-ken Safe Driver card out of my wallet—what you get awarded with after a solid year of no accidents and no tickets. “See, look, I’m dangerous!” Then they finally saw the humor in the situation and joined in the laughter.

Various instructors recognized me and greeted me with delighted hellos. More than one person said, “Hey, you said you wanted to get a big scooter—is that Aprilia yours?” One of them even said, “Wow, your bike is beautiful—that’s the first time I’ve ever seen an Aprilia.” I felt very welcome.

Paperwork out of the way, I finally put on the ridiculous profusion of equipment to protect me against both the elements and my own foolishness—warm jacket, rain gear on top of it, boots, knee and elbow guards, front and back armour plates, armoured gloves (those were my own—the school provides knitted gloves that are rudimentary at best) and helmet (also my own—mine’s a full-face, and the school helmets are open-face) and headed out to check out the bikes.

As it turned out, my instructor had never seen me before—I guess he must be a reasonably new hire. He saw my white face and, well, turned white himself. “This is a foreigner—how can I deal with him?” Another instructor who knew me said, “Oh, that’s Dave, we know him. He can speak Japanese perfectly well. Don’t worry, he’ll understand whatever you’re talking about.”

There were two bikes I had to choose from—the ubiquitous Honda CB750, the standard motorcycle used for unlimited license tests, and the Harley Davidson Sportster 883 that I mentioned previously. I sort of wanted to ride the Harley right off the bat, but the instructor pointed out that the Honda was actually quite a bit bigger than the Honda in stance (even if not so big otherwise), so that was his recommendation to me.

Before actually getting onto the bike, there was something of an extended briefing, during which the instructor explained to me that since the school started their large-bike program just a couple of months previously, they’d already had one rider killed on his brand new bike. Well, then. I promised to be careful.

Since Teacher Knows Best, I chose the Honda. Even though it’s been more than a year since I rode the CB400, it was like coming home. Even the sound of the engine was the same—sort of a nuclear-powered sewing-machine. It was, however, noticeably bigger and heavier than the CB400.

The instructor knew that I already had a normal restricted license, so he hopped onto a Harley and rode ahead of me. It seems that the school’s complement of large bikes is two Harleys and the CB750. It only took a moment for me to get used to the controls—everything was exactly where I expected it to be, after all. He took me around all the elements of the initial course one-by-one: the emergency stop (I stopped well in advance of where I was supposed to, and he gently chided me for that), the crank course featuring two very sharp turns in extremely narrow conditions, the hill start, the figure eight, and the dreaded ipponbashi—the narrow balance beam that you have to go across in at least ten seconds.

Oh, and the slalom. The first time I essayed the slalom on the CB750, I went into one of the turns too hot and, to avoid hitting the obstacle, I elected instead to bail. That was the first time I’ve ever fallen off a bike in driving school! It certainly did a nice job of readjusting my confidence level. But on the other hand, I like to think that by bailing instead of plowing through the obstacle, I had the right instincts. Also, I got to learn what it was like to right a dropped CB750. The instructor was more solicitous than I’d expected, helpfully putting out the side stand (I’d dropped the bike on the right) so that when I got it right, it would settle down properly. I fully expected him to merely tell me to put the side stand out when righting the bike.

The instructor was riding ahead of me throughout all of this, to show me where to go. At one point going into the figure-8, I went roaring in behind him—only to have to make an impromptu emergency stop, because he’d managed to stall the Harley he was riding on. We had a good laugh about that after that during the break, but that was foreshadowing for how the Harley would ride.

Basically, the problems I had with the CB750 were purely to do with my lack of skill at riding such a machine. So during the break (which seemed to come about ten minutes after I’d hopped onto the bike), I asked if, during the next hour, it might be possible for me to ride the Harley instead. Because, well, I wanted to at least say that I’ve ridden a Harley, and I wanted to make sure that the instructor’s choice was the correct one.

So I hopped onto the Harley. The Harley is considerably less powerful than the CB750—55hp compared to the CB750’s 75hp. I figured that maybe that would make it a more forgiving bike, in general. It has a much lower seating stance, which I figured would make it much more comfortable to ride.

The other thing it has is, which prompted the instructor to give me quite a long briefing beforehand, quite different controls for normal things. A normal bike has a turn indicator which is a switch next to your left thumb—push it to the left for a left turn, to the right for a right turn, and push it in to cancel the turn signal. The Harley, on the other hand, has the left turn signal where the horn button usually lives, the right turn signal where the starter button usually lives, and the horn and starter button in completely different places as a result. Okay then. Also, instead of pushing the turn signal button in to cancel the turn signal, it has a sensor to detect when you’ve made a turn.

As a bonus, the Harley has an exhaust pipe that goes right by the rider’s right leg, which means that you have to take extra care not to brush that exhaust pipe while you’re riding it. The instructor demonstrated by pointing out a bit of burned-on pant that some unfortunate rider had left behind as a sort of keepsake of his experience riding a Harley.

So all that having been explained to me, I pushed the Harley out to the start of the course. I couldn’t help noticing that it was significantly heavier than the CB750—and since I’d actually gone to the trouble of picking up a dropped CB750, I was acutely aware of the weight of the bikes. I eventually figured out where the starter button lived, and got the engine going. And then stalled trying to actually get going. It seems that Harley-Davidson’s first gear ratio is quite a lot higher than Honda’s. As it turns out, this holds true for second gear too.

I actually got going, and did a couple of runs around the outside ring of the course by way of warming up, and familiarizing myself with the bike. One of the things that I noticed about it was that my hands were really really far apart. The CB750’s handlebars are pretty minimal—they actually felt kind of uncomfortable on account of their minimalism. The Harley’s handlebars felt approximately twice as wide as the CB750’s.

Then I went to hit the elements of the course. The first element I hit was the balance beam. Apparently I went over it a little on the fast side—I don’t consider that a bad thing. One of the things I’ve learned taking riding school is to be forgiving of errors the first time I try something. That having been dealt with, I then had the ordeal of navigating the thing out of the balance-beam area back onto the main course.

One of the thing that became immediately apparent to me was that the Harley has a much bigger turning radius than the CB750. I nearly hit the curb exiting the balance beam area, and then stalled it going back onto the main course. How embarassing. Then I discovered that the turn signals’ auto-canceller don’t work nearly as well as advertised—turning left to head over to the traffic light, the turn signal failed to cancel, so I had to cancel it myself, only to turn it on again anyway.

When it came to the crank course, the bike stalled out. It seems that while Harleys are built to go slowly, the Harley definition of “slowly” involves considerably more speed than Japanese test courses are designed for. Also, since the thing has the turning radius of an oil tanker, I had to put my foot down while going through the crank course, otherwise I would have fallen over sideways.

Afterwards was the figure-8. It took me a few goes around that before I realized that the only way I could do it on the Harley—you have to go through it in second gear, after all—was with half clutch. Otherwise it would go through way too hot and end up riding on the grass.

When it came to the slalom, fortunately I didn’t fall off the bike. I did, however, manage to stall it—yet AGAIN—which prompted the instructor to ride up to me on the CB750 and ask if maybe I would prefer riding a proper bike instead. I offered that I would try hard to make it through the entire session.

Fortunately, the hill start and the emergency stop were both easy elements for the Harley to deal with. The hill start being just a bit of a dance on the controls, and the emergency stop easily dispatched by the twin disc brakes on the front wheel. (Actually, the really challenging part of the emergency-stop test is getting up to at least 40km/h before the cones delineating the emergency stop area. The Harley managed that in first.)

I’ll give the Harley this: the engine certainly has some power. When driving in a straight line, you can’t beat a Harley-Davidson. At one point, on a longish straightaway, I was enjoying riding it so much that when I hit the curve at the end of it, I was sufficiently-surprised that I shifted down from fourth directly to second to make it through. The instructor chided me for that, and, well, I did deserve the telling-off.

However, since the Harley couldn’t corner worth a damn, when I did the U-turn directly after the emergency-stop element, every time I had to do a giant bulbous turn which was, to be honest, quite embarassing.

All of which led me to conclude that all of the talk about “Hardly-Ablesons” is quite true—they really aren’t very good bikes. On the CB750, I never felt that the bike was hindering me: the biggest hindrance was my lack of skill on larger motorcycles. On the Harley, on the other hand, I felt that the bike itself was making things difficult for me.

All of which is leaving me kind of conflicted. On the one hand, riding the CB750 is entirely dependent on the skill of the rider, which means that anything that goes wrong is wholly the fault of the person working the machine. But on the other hand, the Harley fights me every step of the way. I can’t help thinking that I might end up being more skilled as a result of learning to ride a truculent, uncooperative, generally bad bike than by learning to ride a bike that is so cooperative that its only impression on me was that my skills are wanting.

Next time is another session on the CB750. There’s also a session on a scooter with an overpowered-engine—I fully expect that to be an absolute doddle. My everyday ride is an overpowered scooter, and the bike school folks know that.