Do you ride on the street anymore?

[w00tw00t]

So, reading through Chris (Sarbora's) resume on his brand new website :bigsmile: ... I'm wondering ..... who all have stopped riding on the street completely...... ??

[pscook]

Only fools and miscreants ride on the street. That shit is dangerous!

That being said I ride every workday from Shoreline to Renton. I would be considered one of the above, and I'm no miscreant.

[gazman]

i ride all the time. I never have any problems.

[SlowStad]

i've ridden on the street for 26 years and don't plan on stopping now. Nothing like a good road trip to clear the head either :D

[tophyr]

It's not even that promise that keeps me off the street now, that shit just plain skurrs me :wow: I took my old man's Harley out for a short ride when he got it and the whole time I was going "holy shit.. holy shit.. there are cars like three feet from me, i dunno when they're gonna brake or turn, holy shit.."

At the same time though it's kinda interesting to see how much riding on the street teaches you. I still in my truck constantly evaluate the pavement now, whereas before I started riding bikes I coulda cared less. Same for watching driving patterns, where a car is in the lane, and driver head movements. Came back within 5 minutes, despite not having street ridden in nearly two years.

The other part was I had to consciously remind myself to let off the gas when I hit 60mph, LOL

[MadManx]

I rode into work this morning. Driving is better. warmer,less hassle and you don't get a sore neck from the ridiculous riding posture from a crotch rocket.
Scary thing about riding in the dark (0330) is that there is crap all over the interstate. Numerous times I have had to swerve and avoid debris in my car, once actually hitting a full exhaust system. Its just too dark. A friend of mine a few years ago hit a roll of tar paper..

[Buick_65]

^^

Ditto on riding in the dark; I only do daylight hours now. Combine a little rain with O'dark thirty and I can't see a damn thing anymore....

[Yogi]

I don't think I would ride on the street if it meant a good part of it had to be slab(interstate). Real street riding is amazing fun. The main reason I ride track is to make me a better street rider.

[dakh]

I ride to work and back once in a while (520 seattle to redmond and back) and around town in the summer, clears my head pretty well and saves time. I actually like playing survivor with cars in traffic.

[timk]

I ride on the street all the time, but hardly ever on a sportbike any more. I seem to get speeding tickets on my sportbike even when I'm trying to be good. So now my main street ride is a DL650 with a trunk on the back. I basically use that instead of a car 90% of the time for normal errands and stuff.

And then there are the road trips -- I love motorcycle road trips. Riding to Laguna for MotoGP, or to Miller for WSBK, or just where ever for whatever. I just like to ride. After 10 years with WMRRA I think I'm pretty close to done with racing, but I can't imagine quitting road riding. I plan to buy myself a shiny new 2050 Goldwing for my 85th birthday. :thumbsup:

[R6Anton]

I ride my ninja 250 on the street just on one route up to mount st helens with friends but other than that the r6 is track only

[gazman]

I would say the best way to ride on the street is a sport bike. I can brake fast and speed up fast if need be. The skills I have learn on the track have saved my butt many times. Could not have done it on a cruiser.

[Allister Squid #121]

I ride on the street.

Cruiser, sportbikes whatever. Love em all.

[w00tw00t]

interesting - its looking like a 50/50 distribution right now! I was expecting a skew towards track only given we have only racers on this forum :) ... I still ride on the streets too - but I sometimes get frustrated with idiots on the road!

[skidmarx]

33 years on the street and counting. All the bikes, all the years...closing in on 400,000 miles.

[XB9Racer]

I commute on one of my bikes daily from Spanaway to Tukwila.

Weekend rides with the ADV riders to the hills on my Aprilia.

Group Harley rides for charity on my V-rod.

Solo rides to points unknown on either.

Track days with AF on my Buell.(and the V-rod this year)

"40 degrees and rain....perfect riding weather" -me.

It's all good.:bigok:

[jpaulsen]

Been riding on the street since I was 16 and probably more now than ever. I'm with Allister...2 wheels is all good!

[tjones23]

I "downsized" to a WR250X this year. Perfect for my 8 mile commute to downtown Seattle. I'm kind of a wuss anymore on the street, with the exception of an occasional "launch" downtown...

[theJrod]

I still ride on the street - supermoto though.

Less need to rail or go balls out, but the SM entices a whole different sort of hooliganism.

[Will]

^^

Ditto on riding in the dark; I only do daylight hours now. Combine a little rain with O'dark thirty and I can't see a damn thing anymore....

What I can't see don't scurr me none. :dancingchili:

Riding on the street is a lot of fun, still. I don't go as fast now, though. (insert you sure are slow on the track, too, comment HERE.)

[geddyt]

I stopped having as much fun on the street after the first time I crashed at the track, strangely. Suddenly I started actually noticing those things that before I would blow right by without a thought: "Huh, those guardrails outside of this turn I rail around every day would turn me to dog food were I to hit a patch of gravel here and lose it." Suddenly I started feeling lucky about all of the blind corners I'd entered with a knee just off the ground and blew right by a driveway where there happened to be no car entering the road in front of me that I wouldn't have been able to see.

I started rethinking the dangers of street riding. The risk of a crash may be low from a times crashing per miles ridden standpoint, it's just that the consequences of crashing are so much higher in almost any location on a public road. The same events that led to any of my on-track crashes could easily (if not more easily) happen on a public street. In one case, however, it would have almost certainly resulted in my death. That's gotta give one pause!

I used to commute to work from Bellingham to Anacortes down Chuckanut Drive every day of the summer. Now I won't even get near that road. It's a very simple equation: you crash there = you die. It's too tight, blind, and full of idiots for me to have fun on it anymore without worrying the whole time, so I avoid it.

Now when I want to have a fun time on a street ride I search for safer roads. They're out there: windy roads through farm fields with no fences, few driveways, and widely spaced utility poles. Have a getoff there and you'll plow a new row into the field, but likely live to ride another day.

There's also just the ridiculousness of riding a motorcycle on which you can get a ticket on the interstate in 1st gear! Most of the rides I started wanting to go on were two-up, longer distance rides that make any bike I've owned seem like a torture chamber. So it just started to seem like an oxy-moron. The logic became simple: Sport bikes are the most fun, but can only really be used safely and to even close to the fullest extent at the track. So in the future this will be my priority.

For now I've got one more bike to sell to pay down some debt and I'll be completely bikeless. In the future when I'm able to get back on the horse, it'll be a track bike as priority uno and when I can afford a street bike again it'll be a bike that does something completely different than what I can do at the track, something on which you can still have fun at "just" 60-70%--i.e. a supermoto or long range sport tourer or something like that. Hell, one of the most fun days I ever had on two wheels was two-up on a rented scooter tooling around New Orleans. You could wring that thing's neck to the fullest extent and still probably not get going fast enough to get yourself killed or get the law on your back!
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