While slipping quickly and easily into a gap in the adjacent lane’s traffic, I smiled with satisfaction inside my helmet. The neck-snapping acceleration and precise handling of a modern big-bore motorcycle is a beautiful thing, indeed! Not only was I able to instantaneously achieve the velocity and position I desired, but it was all silky smooth and utterly effortless – a moment of graceful omnipotence, courtesy of my machine’s advanced engineering. I stuck my landing safely between the vehicles ahead and behind with zero drama; no twist and wait, only to eventually lunge and then brake hard to trim the tardy excess thrust. I reveled in the opposite of what vintage bike fans describe as “long-range planning,” a process required when applying antique drum brakes or coaxing a slow-revving powerplant up to highway speed. I simply envisioned where I wanted to be and I was there.

No disrespect to those who love their older machines! Relatively primitive technology has its own charm, in large part because it doesn’t respond instantly to the rider’s every whim. The resulting negotiations can yield a genuine sense of companionship. Such a motorcycle isn’t merely an extension of its pilot’s will, but a separate entity with palpable autonomy; its needs and preferences must be taken into account and, in many cases, studiously accommodated. This is what is commonly referred to as mechanical “character.” That’s not just a euphemism for being quirky and difficult. Rather, it highlights how a vintage motorcycle’s unique personality impinges upon the rider, makes itself known vividly and assertively, and insists on consideration, much like a human partner in a relationship featuring authenticity and mutuality. In such arrangements, the other party isn’t there merely as a selfless servant, ready to be used ruthlessly with no expectation of anything in return; there’s a requirement of respectful give and take. Hence, getting just what we want from a motorcycle performance-wise might leave us wanting in the relatedness department. There can be other drawbacks, as well.

We should be careful what we ask for – we just might get it!

Throughout much of my early tenure as a street bike enthusiast (after a decade in the dirt), I was thoroughly enamored of the latest, greatest sporting tech. Increasing mechanical sophistication promised an ever-more-perfect synchronization between rider intent and vehicular behavior. Engines accelerated faster and faster, brakes scrubbed off speed more and more rapidly, and radical chassis geometries facilitated directional changes defying the laws of physics. The goal was always hardware that would be increasingly responsive, until it could ultimately operate at the speed of (its rider’s) thought. Sounds great, right? I scrutinized new bike spec sheets to determine which listed the quickest quarter-mile times, the shortest stopping distances, and the steepest steering head angles. Never mind the fact I couldn’t exploit half the performance of the motorcycles I already owned. I believed the technological advances of the next model update would allow me to ride more competently, with or without any improvement in my own skills. Of course, I now view this very differently – pretty much the complete opposite of my earlier way of thinking.

Back then, however, I imagined the machinery was what made the difference between those who blitzed local backroads and those who lumbered along far behind. In my naïve and misguided pursuit of speed, I not only ignored the most critically important variable of skill development but also invested heavily in hardware which proved severely counterproductive, although I didn’t realize it at the time. For example, a bike with more responsive steering demands more deft control inputs from its rider, with tiny movements at the bars (especially stubby clip-ons) yielding big changes in trajectory. Unsurprisingly, I was no master of the cornering arts to begin with. I couldn’t get motorcycles to lean and turn as I wanted and thought this was because the machinery was reluctant to obey. In truth, I was both grossly ignorant of technique and deathly afraid of more precipitous lean angles, which felt like I was falling over and about to crash. Regardless of my intentions, I couldn’t overcome the inhibitory signals from my internal lean-o-meter (poorly calibrated from years of riding on nothing but flat, straight Florida roads before moving to the Appalachian Mountains). This had nothing to do with my motorcycle’s capabilities and everything to do with my own innate alarms and uneducated survival instincts.

Guess what effect quicker steering geometry had on my fearfulness! Instead of delighting in the increased cornering ease I desired, I got even more abruptly spooked by the hyper-reactive steering. Did I connect these dots? Of course not!! Subjectively, I experienced the bike as resisting my will, rather than realizing I was fighting with myself. I’d later come to understand this was quite literally the case, as I’d been unwittingly applying pressure with my outboard hand nearly equal to that of my (countersteering) inboard hand – an unconscious habit I then had to work hard to break. One hand was trying to make the bike turn while the other struggled to keep it upright. Once liberated from such self-defeating isometrics, I was amazed at how freely motorcycles could maneuver.

Looking back on all this now, it’s hard to believe I didn’t see it for what it was, but without an accurate conceptual framework, a person can’t problem-solve effectively. I had not yet received any rider training and was making sense of things the best I could from reading a multitude of magazine reviews, which were tightly focused on the equipment and took a lot for granted regarding riding technique. When journalists described a new bike as “quick steering,” they assumed readers could apply control inputs similar to those employed by the test rider – and would appreciate the resulting bike movements instead of locking up in terror. Ironically, I kept hoping that one day a manufacturer would release a motorcycle with steering quick enough (!) to let me corner the way I wanted, not realizing I was already on machinery way more responsive than I could handle.

As you’d expect, the same was true for acceleration and braking. While I found the rush of a cutting-edge sport bike’s prodigious horsepower exhilarating, launching out of corners at warp speed (no high-side worries at my meager lean angles!) only made it more difficult to set up for the next turn, especially when I’d get frightened of running wide and grab a handful of super-strong brakes until I could once again bank ever-so-tentatively into a shallow arc. I rode like I was on a bucking bronco, violently maxing out chassis pitch in both directions, all the while believing I was having a good time. I did find it thrilling, but mainly because I was constantly scaring myself silly; for me, motorcycling on pavement was like a harrowing amusement park ride. It’s a wonder I never wrecked, perhaps because my timidity really did keep me well within the limits of traction and control. These misadventures occurred long before the arrival of electronic rider aids, but I’m sure other well-engineered aspects of my bikes kept me out of worse trouble. My previous off-road experience probably helped some, too.

I should add a bit of context. For many years, I rode only solo. I had no riding buddies who might have pointed out my total lack of finesse and possibly helped me correct a few of my most egregious habits. Maybe they’d have taught me how my jerky, constricted inputs were negating the elegant dynamics designed into my bikes. That insight came further down the road, when I finally made some motorcycling friends and started attending riding schools. My point in making these confessions is this: Getting what we want isn’t necessarily the best thing for us. I’d have been vastly better off on much less responsive motorcycles that would have allowed me to focus on learning how to accelerate, brake and turn in a more controlled, effective and artful manner.

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Without being hurled toward the next corner at speeds far beyond my mental processing and physical response times, I might have been able to consider my position in the lane, how and where I held my body, the interplay between braking, suspension action and countersteering, etc. If I’d been on a bike with relatively slow, relaxed steering – one requiring substantial pressure at the bars to generate lean – I probably wouldn’t have felt like I was always about to flop onto the ground the moment I initiated a turn. And if I’d had merely adequate brakes instead of eye-popping ones, maybe I could have modulated them without putting the bike into a sudden nosedive. All the extreme responsiveness I craved was actually preventing me from operating the motorcycle correctly, and it made learning much, much harder – or even impossible, given my lack of guidance.

We’ve all heard the story of the first-time rider who bought a fire-breathing racer-replica, only to crash it spectacularly on his way home from the dealership. He couldn’t abide starting at the bottom and gradually working his way up the performance ladder. This can be a function of arrogance, impatience or ignorance. Other countries address such human foibles with a tiered licensing system; even if I have the cash for an M 1000 RR, I’d have to spend years on much tamer bikes, advancing one level at a time. This is a saner approach, and it seems to produce safer, more competent riders. There can be a huge difference between what we want and what we need. We naturally want to go straight to the top, and in terms of acquiring hardware here in the US, we’re only limited by our wallets. If we adopt a more enlightened perspective, however, we understand the one realistic way up is a gradual progression in which no steps are skipped. Such enlightenment is unlikely to emerge in a vacuum. We need more accomplished riders to teach us how to think wisely and help us chart a course from where we are to where we want to go. It’s too easy to choose a path which makes sense within our limited, distorted, idiosyncratic imaginings, but is nevertheless at odds with objective reality.

Paradoxically, a slower motorcycle can help us become a faster rider. We learn more, and we learn more quickly, when we’re pushing the bike instead of feeling pushed by it. Whether it’s an older machine or just a smaller, friendlier new one, neophytes are better off when it doesn’t do exactly what they ask for, right when they ask for it. Giving someone without understanding exactly what they want means giving them something they probably wouldn’t want if they had more knowledge. If I yank open the throttle, thinking I want my bike’s maximum acceleration but not really knowing what that will involve and require, it’d be best for the motorcycle to respond lazily to my urging. If I squeeze the brake with all my might in hopes of stopping ASAP, but without realizing I could easily lose traction at the front contact patch and immediately fall, I’m better off with weaker brakes (assuming the absence of ABS). The list of similar scenarios goes on and on. It’s in the process of contending with a motorcycle’s limitations that we learn what can and can’t be done, either because of physics or our skill level. The latter increases during this process, allowing us to then make better use of an expanded performance envelope on a subsequent model.

An unusually humble administrator I knew kept a picture on his wall of a businessman in a grimacing panic, pulling his hair and screaming at his secretary, “Oh no!! You did it just like I told you to!” A bike giving us exactly and immediately what we ask for is only beneficial if we know enough to ask for just the right thing at just the right moment. We can’t know such things early in our development as riders and only gradually learn them with good instruction and lots of practice. Without these two essential ingredients, we can keep asking for the wrong things at the wrong times indefinitely. Whether through the synthetic expertise of electronic restraints or simply the inherent limitations of our machinery, let’s hope we don’t get what we ask for when we’re not really ready for it.