One man’s meat is another man’s poison

One man’s meat is another man’s poison.

One of the guys at work was looking at buying a bike recently.

He’s had bikes before but like a lot of us, has had some time off them while getting busy with family and other distractions.

I love my bikes. I’ve always been a sports bike man myself. Something fast, sharp, focused and revy suits me.

I’m not really in to just pottering around. I like to go out, get my adrenaline flowing and feel alive.

This guy at work has been tempted with a small chopper style bike. Something to cruise around on in comfort. I’d rather stick pins in my eyes.

The bike he was considering is a Virago 535. That’s 535cc’s……oh dear.

This bike to me represents pretty much everything I dislike about bikes. It’s slow, doesn’t handle, looks stupid, is a parody of a Harley which I also hate and is almost utterly pointless. Only a trike would be worse.

The Virago 535 was a feminine little V-twin which only had 46bhp when it was new…..which was a long time ago. I wouldn’t let my 7 year old daughter ride one.

It got us talking about what we would ride though. Obviously sports bikes were top of the list.

Budget had a lot to do with it so we started low.

We found you can get your leg over an early GSXR600 for as little as £1k. I’d be very happy with that. The GSXR has always been called the hooligan bike. I had a 750 and loved it.

Pay a little more, say £3k and you could snag yourself a Honda SP1. That was a serious bike when new, a cutting edge race bred homologation special for the road.

Spend a bit more and you get the picture. Newer, faster, hornier bikes that put out ever increasing amounts of horsepower and carry less and less weight. Awesome.

I had to confess a dark little secret to them though. It was burning inside me and I couldn’t bottle it up any more, it had to come out no matter how sordid and degraded.

The dirty truth is…….i actually like some choppers too.

Maybe it’s an age thing, I don’t know?

In my defence, I still don’t like your run of the mill Harley type bikes and the associated clones.  Lazy engineering, heavy, antiquated suspension, inadequate brakes, need I go on? How they get so little horsepower out of engines that big is ironically impressive.

But underneath the main stream Harley type bikes is a world of specials. Chopped down, bastardised, mutilated custom bikes bleeding attitude and originality. Café racers.

These bikes are created by artists with vision, passion and devotion.

These artisans, these creators, take unlikely old bikes and do crazy things with them. I really get it. I would definitely ride one.

The debate could have gone on all evening but we all had places to go.

It just goes to show that one man’s meat is another man’s poison.