Sport-Touring.Net - The Ugly Duckling, or, My Life with an Old Goose

Sometimes a bike comes your way that takes you back to the beginning. Remember when you first thew your leg over a motorcycle? Maybe your dad, or your brother, or a friend showed you how to work the controls, how to turn the fuel on, how to work the choke, and sent you on your way? That initial terror and then that life-transforming joy as the motor picked up and you felt the thrust pulling your head back? The sound and the fury of that motor you were sitting on top of? The Goose has brought me back to that elemental moment. I will never forget when my brother lead me on the freeway for the first time, just maybe 1/4 of a mile on I5, from the base of Cap Hill to the 45th St exit on I5, and I looked at the speedo and I was doing 60 miles per hour, and I looked down at my foot and the pavement speeding by, and I let out a woop for joy that would have shaken Olympus. I was doing it! I was riding a motorcycle!

The Goose, my Moto Guzzi 850 T3, is that bike. I almost feel like I've never ridden a bike before, as if going around corners and laying on the throttle was some sort of innate knowledge waiting for expression, waiting for a moment to happen. I have a sense of mechanical wonder every time I ride it. What's that sound? Is that the valves tapping that I hear over the thrumble of the exhaust? When will I know they're getting too tight? Pulling up to a stop, get the the bike into second and do my best to find neutral before coming to a full stop. If I don't manage it keeping the throttle and the front brake going enough to keep the motor spinning. The satisfaction of the simple act of finding neutral and just sitting at the light, waiting for it to turn green so I can give the Goose the goose and thrumble off on my way.

I've never read a manual so avidly, never wanted spares so strongly, never wanted to know a machine so throroughly. This is a machine that inspires desire: desire for knowedge and know how, for competence. It inspires total involvement. Desire to ride and to know.

I've owned and ridden a lot of bikes in my short riding life. In all but a few cases they've given me that forehead through a locker door sense of headbanging joy, one way or another, but this bike gives me that and so much more. It's a measured mayhem. And I have to say, having ridden some of the finest sprung bikes of the last twenty fifteen or twenty years the suspension and frame on the Goose is an absolute wonder. Every time I take it out I'm gobsmacked when I remember that it was originally sold in 1976, when I was but four years old.

So this thread is about my life as an ugly duckling, a newby Guzzi rider. It's going to be ugly for a while, as I learn the ropes of daily life with a Goose, but as I learn maybe some useful information will filter through. So there you have it. Until next time.

Topic: The Ugly Duckling, or, My Life with an Old Goose (Read 6796 times)