I Have A Dream

Sometimes I have a recurring dream where bikes from my past are still in the garage, all clean, tidy and ready to go. It’s always the same three, which is interesting because I’ve had so many. It’s never my XS650, despite it being my first big bike and the one I first took across the Channel on a somewhat manic ride across Germany, Austria and Hungary before the fall of the Berlin wall. Nor is it one of my BMW RTs, despite my having had a number from the early oilheads through to the current liquid cooled model. Nor the Deuvilles. Neither do my two British bikes feature – the BSA C15SS80 or the Ariel NH Red Hunter. No, it is just three and always the same three.

The Laverda 350 with its sharp handling and diminutive size. This was my first new bike. The Ariel had been stolen earlier that summer and with the insurance payout, I put a deposit down on one of the newly imported Laverdas. As it turned out, it wasn’t the most reliable choice, but by God, was it fun despite its relative lack of power. The XS650 that replaced it was a fine machine and much more reliable, but, well, bland, I suppose and the handling was never as sharp as the Laverda. In the dream, the Laverda appears as it did when I bought it, all shiny chrome and polished casings (we will ignore the orange peel paint and stick on stripes). And when I ride it, it is small and sure footed just as I remember it. If I could ride some of my old bikes again, this one would surely be one of them.

The second bike that recurs in this dream is my first BMW oilhead – the R1100RS in pearl white with a green seat (yes, but it worked oddly enough) with its forward crouch and likewise sharp handling and the first of my modern bikes after a long period of not buying new machines. As with the Laverda, it is in pristine condition and I ride it as if the years had never passed. That bike introduced me to the BMW marque and I never looked back. I have a photograph of it somewhere in the forests of Portugal. It was a fine looking bike and I loved it.

The third machine in this lineup is the TR1 that I kept for 24 years with perhaps less sharp handling than the other two – the suspension travel was long and soft with the  tendency to bottom out but that big V twin engine made up for its flaws. That bike took me across much of Europe with Mrs L, so it has a special place in my heart. I often promised myself that I would restore it when I had the time. Never did though. It spent the last ten years of my ownership quitely deteriorating in my garage as the BMWs became my regular rides and with its lacklustre handling became very much a second fiddle. I kept it out of a misplaced romanticism, and nostalgia, I suppose. When the move to France came, something had to give and the TR1 went to another home, but it still revisits me from time to time in my dreams. And, again, it is just as it was the day I first rode it out of the showroom.

The Indian FTR/S is tiny for this type and capacity of machine – a toy almost and it was this that made me think of that dream, because aspects of this bike take me back to those three machines from my past. I can flat foot it and it has phenomenal roadholding. It is compact and flickable like the Laverda. Indeed, that was the first thing that entered my head when I first sat on it. The forward crouch and slightly rear set footrests reminds me of the RS and that rumble of its two big hearts is the ghost of my TR1. This machine takes me back to the kind of bikes I used to ride when I would allow my heart to rule my head. As time passed, I needed weather protection through the winter months when commuting and as that would often involve travel across the country on freezing cold mornings, the RT was an obvious choice, just as it has been when two-up touring across Europe. Much as I like the big fully dressed touring bikes I’ve ridden for the past twenty years, my heart was always with the naked muscle bike and especially a V twin. Nothing sounds like them and nothing feels like them. It vibrates, reminding me that this thing is a motorcycle. It makes a lovely burbling noise. There is nothing anodyne about it. For all of the electronic gadgetry, it’s still a beast and each time I ride it, I am taken back to another place, another time, when bikes were simpler and I was younger. It’s a time machine.

As I said to a friend recently, if God sat down on the seventh day and designed a motorcycle…