B3 For All to See

Here she is.  My third motorcycle in five years: B3! 

Please excuse the helmet head!

First the positives.  She’s beautiful and her paint is perfect. The black tank has subtle silver flames. There’s extra chrome on the fenders and Mike and Teresa at Hogtown even got me studded saddlebags to match the seat. She has all the power I wanted. She’s an 1100 compared to 750 CCs with B2.

Every bike takes some getting used to.  I remember thinking I’d never get comfortable on B2 but she was eventually like my favourite chair. The handlebars may need to come up a little bit because right now, I feel like I’m sitting on a wooden chair. It’s good for the spine but not so good for a long ride.

But there is one problem: the sound! She is SO loud. And it’s not a throaty rumble like a Harley.  It’s a brap-brap-brap tone that I equate with obnoxiousness. She does have special Long-Shot pipes so her previous owner apparently wanted that sound. I do not! But Vance and Hines have run into this before so they manufacture a set of baffles that claim to reduce the sound by 6 to 12 decibels. I will be getting them installed.

And here’s a little story about the folks at Hogtown Cycles.  The bike wasn’t quite warmed up when I left and I’m unfamiliar with the clutch so with everybody watching, I stalled it probably 4 or 5 times, including once in the middle of a road. It’s hard to explain – so don’t freak out – it was safer for me to stay where I was than try to duck-walk to the side of the road so I waved a couple of vehicles past me but one guy felt the need to honk and be a jerk. So I yelled a couple of unladylike things at him. Lucky for me, he either didn’t hear me or didn’t care! Anyway, I realized the choke should have been engaged so I did so and the bike stayed running just fine.  Off we went. We got a few miles up the road and who pulls up? Mike from Hogtown, in a pickup, pulling a trailer. He was worried that there was something wrong with the bike and if I wanted him to, he would trailer it right back to the shop and figure it out. What a guy!

So the motorcycling adventure continues, now with more get up and go and a really pretty bike. The rest of it will sort itself out. Bernice, my maternal Grandma and the B in B3, wouldn’t know what to make of it – or me riding it!