I like motorcycles it’s a known fact, everyone of the 10-odd people who read this and my friends as well as Facebook associates know this. I like them so much I bought my first one in 2011, a Triumph Bonneville 2011 A2. I just love classic motorcycle design for it’s timelessness and beauty. Not many things in the world evoke feelings of joy, naughtyness, badassery, fun, passion and yearning so deep like a really well sorted motorcycle.

One of the benefits of being human is that everything is jaded no matter how level headed you think you are. I think my bike was fantastic and very good to look at and OK to ride and kind of fast (I am certain that I am a god of acceleration and power and speed… ehh that was an over-share).

So here she is:

Inevitably there comes a time when we grow up a bit more and we experience a bit more and we are never quite the same for it. I blame myself for warping my own perspective by straddling a very aggressive Ducati Diavel shaped steed and changing everything I knew about motorcycling. Let me explain, my Bonnie was air-cooled and largely unchanged from the older original Triumphs (save for fuel injection), it ran hot in summer and changed it’s temperament the longer you rode it. Your right hand would become dead due to the vibration after approx 20 mins but I loved it all the same because when I walked to it in the morning and the evening it still looked like it did… very good and that was all that mattered. I didn’t have reliability issues or problems starting it (well… not really anyway) and every trip was a great one because it did everything it said on the package and then people who didn’t know much about bikes would look at it and coo about how great it looked and how they used to see them rambling around back in the day. This was a great bike and this is my tribute to it.

Back to the story at hand I have handed the keys to my trusty mount and put in for a trade to something different and yet kind of similar. If you know bikes then you already have 2 in mind for what I swapped for, let me make that just 1 because this new bike has more capacity than the Bonnie… yes, it’s the Speed Triple.

It is a bit dime a dozen I know, it looks like an extra from a spy/sci-fi movie is actually what you’re thinking because an older sister of this one was in Mission Impossible 2 and then The Matrix, Michael Fassbender has one you know?

That in itself isn’t why I want this bike, I had the opportunity to try one out recently and what it felt like was, well in a word “veryfreekingmazingholyheckInearlysoiledmypants”. It was good, very good and so smooth and quick to get going, I don’t remember ever being an awe so much as I did riding that bike on that hallowed afternoon. Where the Ducati Diavel was like taming a full-size dragon, fun but you are getting yourself in for some crazy-scary times. The Speed Triple was like the scene out of Kick-Ass where Dave is helping near naked Katie with tanning lotion, dangerous and forbidden, crisis inducing. It is proper quick and agile, I am no knee-dragger but I was having the time of my life and when you settle down to low revs it isn’t providing you the shakes to say “Hi, I noticed you’re a bit limp-wristed, please give it the beans or step off the bike thank- wait forget it byyyyyyyyyyyye”.

I will be taking delivery on Friday of the Lyndsy Fonseca, probably going to ride all weekend if the weather holds up, please if you wouldn’t mind, pray for my soul – and pass the tanning lotion would you?