I was a regular contributor on Usenet back in the 90’s. Usenet, for the uninitiated, was an early online forum which predated the World Wide Web by a good decade. Google maintains an archive of Usenet posts going back to the 80’s that I have been rereading to get a better feel for my younger self. As a result, I am going to try to do something that has never been attempted in a COAL before: Instead of trying to describe this ride using my modern biased recollections, I’m going to use my own words that I wrote and posted on Usenet 20+ years ago.
Behold the oldest Usenet post of mine that I could find using Google Groups. It is certainly not my oldest post (I started posting in the late 80’s), but it is the oldest one I could still find in Google’s incomplete index.
Even though it is almost 25-years old, I would say my advice is still sound today. One should run native apps on your Mac, and not emulated Windows versions.
As my last several COALs indicate, in the mid 90’s I was developing an ever increasing appetite for speed. No longer content with either Integra (the 91 GS or the 94 GS-R), and unable to afford vehicles with significantly greater performance, I did what many people do when looking for cheap speed: I turned to motorcycles.
Several coworkers of mine rode, and after listening to them continually sing the praises of riding, I decided to take the plunge myself. They took me dirt bike riding a couple of times just to get the hand of the clutch and transmission, and I considered myself good enough for the street. (No MSF course for me!) In the Summer of 1994 I got my first bike: A well worn 1987 Honda CBR600F “Hurricane” very similar to the one pictured below.
It wasn’t my dream bike – in fact, I cared so little for it that I didn’t even bother taking pictures of it (and I take pictures of everything), hence the representative photo above. In 80’s sport bike fashion it was blocky and chunky, with massive fairings and a front fender that was too large. It already looked dated by the early 90’s when I got it. The fairings had road rash from previously being laid down. It didn’t bother me, because I figured I would probably do the same thing, and I wouldn’t feel so bad about messing up the body when I did.
I just didn’t realize how soon that event would occur: The day I bought it, on my way home, I low sided it on my first significant left-hand curve. Well, I’ll let my 1995 self take it from here, in a post I made to rec.motorcycles in March of 1995:
After that incident, I rode several thousand miles the rest of that summer incident free, so I decided I was ready to graduate from the training wheels. of So in the winter of 1995, I sold the Hurricane (for close to what I purchased it for, as I recall) and rewarded myself with what I really wanted, a 1992 CBR600F2 (pictured below).
Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you, the colors are indeed black, blue, and yes, pink. The pink didn’t bother me in the slightest. I in fact thought it was a sharp color combination, especially with the white wheels (which were impossible to keep clean, BTW).
Back to Usenet, and my 22 year younger self: Here I am in 1995 (almost to the day, eerily), answering a question about the 600F vs. 600F2 in rec.motorcylces, a subject I felt uniquely qualified to comment on having owned one of each. Note the coloquial nickname “goof2,” since the “6” in 600 kind of looks like the letter “G.”
As I was quick to point out in 1995, the 600F2 was a little faster than the 600F, but not enough so. I immediately went to work on everything I could do to eek a little more speed out of it: I jetted the carbs, reduced the gear ratio with a smaller front sprocket, and installed a slip-on exhaust. Other than the tank bra, I left the appearance largely stock. Just like my cars, I dislike spoiling my vehicles with stickers and add-on accessories.
Professionally, a lot was changing in my life around this time as well. I had advanced about as far as I could at a tiny company like Telefast, so when a former schoolmate of mine suggested I join him up in Detroit contracting for Ford, I jumped at the opportunity.
I would be doing C++ programming, which at the time I had no experience with (Although I had done some C programming at Telefast), working as a contractor in the world headquarters building (aka the Glass House) in Dearborn. I would also be billing for the then astronomical rate of $45/hour (albeit as a 1099 and not W2), but still far more than I was making at Telefast.
Photo of the “Glass House” taken by me in 1996.
So I gathered up the GS-R and the bike, and headed off to Dearborn, Michigan. I don’t recall trailering either vehicle, so I must have made two trips.
After spending the better part of a decade working in a small company, and before that growing up in a small family business, I developed what is sometimes referred to as the Midwestern work ethic. You show up, do your job, and do it to the best of your ability. Going to work at the second largest company in the world was an eye-opener, to say the least. I was not prepared for the amount of political infighting and corporate backstabbing that I would witness. I couldn’t believe the amount of wasted effort that was applied to these and other non-productive tasks. It was literally like working in a real life Dilbert cartoon (before Dilbert was even a thing).
Here is basically the recipe that our project followed:
- Pick any random manager to implement the project.
- Give them a bucket of cash.
- Let the manager decide on the platform based on personal prejudices rather than than what is actually deployed in the field.
- Allow for unlimited use of contractors with oversight of contractors by other contractors, and no accountability.
- Have them start coding.
- Throw around FoMoCo’s muscle to get vendors to provide the latest development tools that are in Beta or Alpha testing, even if they don’t work.
- Come up with a design.
- Fire all contractors and hire new ones.
- Repeat steps 5 thru 8
- Repeat steps 5 thru 8
- Have a last minute crunch to get a workable solution.
- Cancel the project when you finally a mostly usable system.
- Write $13MM off the books.
While Ford may have been hemorrhaging cash, I was doing all right for myself. We’ll see where that leads me on my next COAL.
Occasionally (like every two years or so) we get someone who brings a CBR600F1 (Hurricane) into the shop for service. Or, if we’re really lucky, we get the big brother, the CBR1000RR. I always loved the full enveloping bodywork of those bikes, which were a dead end in sport bike development, having been started with the Ducati 750 and 906 Paso (I owned one of the latter, one of the rare ones in blue and white livery), and finally the 907ie.
Of course, they’re rare. 99.9% of them were trashed to death within three generation of squid-owners.
F2’s are just about as rare, just not as noticeable today because their styling was totally within the mainstream of sport bike development. And that color wasn’t all that odd, it was just the first step towards the Smokin’ Joe racing livery on the F3’s. Just the same, the Hurricane and F2 were the first bikes to put a screeching halt to Kawasaki’s domination of the sport bike market with their Ninjas.
I only owned one supersport class bike (a ’96 Kawasaki ZX-6R) in my life, and it didn’t last all that long. In the summer of ’98 I was rear ended while waiting at a traffic light and knocked unconscious (still have absolutely no memories of a six hour period for that day), so the bike was promptly stripped down and turned into a custom street fighter. A concept that was huge in England at that time, but completely unknown and not terribly well liked in the US. When I sold it off, I found it impossible to trade in because I’d cut off the mounting points making it impossible to put the fairing back on.
Back then, it was all about “the fairing”, to put it mildly.
Tom, that’s an interesting approach to motorcycling, much different to mine. You came from cars to bikes I went from bikes to cars. I had my first major road rash riding my mom’s bicycle which was way to large fro me. I was able to ride it because it had a step through frame. The seat was pointing directly to my C1 and C 2 vertebrae but only a split second at a time, because when I pedaled I had to rock the bike side to side in order to cope with the lengthy crank arms. The handle bar was way over my head. I kind of looked like an Easy Rider, just not as cool as Peter Fonda later did. Anyway, my right foot slipped of the pedal and I scraped along a brick fence. I was scraped bloody on my forehead, nose, chin, chest, knees, elbows and hands.- Stop laughing already!- By the time I was on motorized wheels I had that leaning into curves figured out quite well.
Later I had a girlfriend who tried the tom-boy thing. She bought a Kawasaki 400. I once followed her in a car. she was following a car way to close and when that car had to stop she turned the handlebar left without leaning in and fell. I suggested to her to either practice a lot or to give up riding. It’s a fact that cornering with a bike takes extra space and time. To make a left turn you have to steer initially to the right, that causes the bike to lean left , then you steer left in order to catch it, bring it into balance. To straighten up you steer even more to the left which brings the contact patch of the tires under your center of gravity. It’s natural though. You do the same thing when running, but you do it unconsciously.
I found your experience with the inner workings of Ford quite interesting too.
I’ve been riding off and on for 45 years. About a year ago, the idea of countersteering came into my sphere through a video on YouTube. I was eager to try it out. Every time I attempted using it in a curve, my bike wanted to fall over. Couldn’t figure out why until I brought it up to a friend. He laughed, “That’s because you’re already doing it!”
He was right. I’d been countersteering from the start. Trying to do it “on purpose” (at public road speeds) causes you to overdo, the contact patch to moves too far back and up onto the side of the tire, and the balance goes with it. Maybe first time you fall over your reaction the second time is to countersteer. You don’t call it anything, you just naturally push down on the inside bar until you find stasis. Pushing the bar down doesn’t come before the lean. It’s simultaneous. When the act was dissected into “do this, then that” is when I got into trouble trying to follow the instruction, because that would give the same result your girlfriend got.
Ha! This is why I wrote: ” It’s natural though. You do the same thing when running, but you do it unconsciously. ”
You can even observe that when a dog is taking a corner, let’s say running straight at you, then changing direction. He will be throwing the front paws to one side to initiate the turn in the other direction.
I just leaned, and leaning or steering seemed natural when I rode cruisers and dirtbikes…until my Ninja EX250F. I’d heard about countersteering shortly before and I cautiously tried it and used it thereafter. No MSF course for me, either. My beloved XL-75 was a good teacher and I learned pretty well. I put on 10,000 miles in the two years I rode her.
I am trying to fix my spelling errors and I get the message “You don’t have permission to edit this comment”. That’s quite annoying.
Wow. Love how this covers the car industry through the venturi of the software development they were directing engineers to futz around with so incoherently
I look forward to reading future installments. My interest never leaned toward outright street speed, so it feels voyeuristic to follow someone’s younger self whose did. Anyway, it’s cool to read locomotive histories of any stripe.
I wouldn’t wonder that trolling was rarer in a time when the net was still mostly the realm of enthusiasts?
Usenet and motorcycles in the mid-1990s — they bring back memories for me too. The learning process that led me to the BMW R65 that I profiled here a couple of years ago (and more BMWs since then) was during that time and heavily internet-based, and Usenet was part of it. I cannot recall posting, and I believe that I was a reader and consumer of information instead, much like the majority of the readership here, some of which ends up contributing eventually. It is quite possible that I saw some of your posts back then while I considered and ruled out the possibility of a sportbike.
I hadn’t had Internet access yet back then so my friends and I were still messing with BBSes.
A few years later, I did take the University of Illinois motorcycle program. To this day it’s probably the best $20 I ever spent.
As for the 600’s paint job, those color combos are coming back in a big way for the younger folks I see around here.
Oh, and Tom- noticed you said you had a Mac IIfx in your Usenet post. That was an absolute beast of a machine back then!
Cool article. Love the Usenet and old motorcycle mix of ideas. The sun’s out in Seattle. Time to disconnect from the grid and warm up my CB500F. Motorcycles ftw.
Good article ! .
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My Son bought a brandy new 600RR, got some special deal in San Fransisco and drove up with his bud who also purchased one .
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He’s still riding Sport Bikes, I’m more a nekkid standard typ of rider .
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Motos, if your balls don’t over run your brains, make for good economical transportation and plenty of fun and life lessons .
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Riding my 1937 Harley-Davidson KnuckleHead 61″ all through Guatemala in the mid 1970’s taught me a _lot_ about riding and gave me a lifetime of stories .
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-Nate
This article brings to mind a sad thought. There is no Honda CBR600RR anymore. The high technology 600cc supersport class bikes have become a complete failure in the market, due to high cost (for a couple of hundred more you can buy a CBR1000RR), insanely high insurance (thank you all those 20 year old idiots who spent good money on the bike, matching leathers and helmet, but never bothered to take any kind of classes to teach you how to ride the damned thing), and the market finally realizing that a sport bike without all that plastic is a lot more practical in day to day use. To start with, you’re not out a grand if it falls over.
Something the Brits (and I) figured out twenty years ago. Back then they called them “streetfighters” when you had to build your own. Nowadays they’re called “motorcycles” and Yamaha is going great guns on the really nice line of twins and triples. Having copied Triumph on the latter.
600cc supersports are now totally dependent on the how seriously the factory is taking racing. Honda has dropped out of World Supersport, Yamaha is totally ruling MotoAmerica Supersport, with only Suzuki putting up serious competition.
Just the same, the characteristics of the 600 four cylinder (insane horsepower, damned little torque, plan on running that six speed gearbox a lot) is what gave me a great deal of appreciation for Ducati sportbikes.
My last bike was a 1994 VFR750F. When I sold it to move out of the US for retirement I had over 122,000 miles on it. A truly great bike.
I’ve been getting more and more interested in motorcycles over the last couple of months or so. So, this was a pretty nice read this morning. I can easily understand getting interested in motorcycles if out and out performance is what you’re interested in. You get the most bang for your buck, even if the risks are greater.
A sportbike wouldn’t really be my thing, I think the power and skill needed to keep yourself from becoming a greasy stain on the tarmac would be more than I could handle. Not to mention, the hunched over riding position required makes my back hurt just looking at it. I can certainly respect what they do, but if I wanted something of that nature, I would look at a Honda VFR800 Interceptor or a comparable sport tourer than I would a thoroughbred sportbike.
Although, I kind of miss when the Japanese manufacturers weren’t afraid of releasing their sportbike models in crazy and out there color schemes. It just made them seem fun and whimsical, plus, if you can’t shatter everyone’s eardrums with ungodly loud pipes to make people acknowledge your presence while riding, a crazy color scheme can certainly be a great substitute.
I think the 90s just seemed like the best and most interesting time for sportbikes. That’s not the case anymore. I think once Suzuki brought out the Hayabusa, sportbikes (at least on the Japanese side) just ceased to provide the same sense of awe.
Good read, and creative use of those old posts.
Yes, the bureaucracy of big corporations is mind-boggling, and Ford had a particularly bad rep for nasty politics and fiefdoms. They weren’t really whipped into shape until Alan Mulally showed up.
Had to laugh. Also on my way home, I rode my first bike into a ditch the day I bought it. Nothing that snazzy though.It was a Harley Aeromacchi. Paul massaged my draft and it turned into something about Harleys Hoglet on this site. Predated the Japanese sports bike just a bit. Old and clunky but it deserved better than being ridden into a ditch by a newby. This was a really entertaining article. Hope to see more.
Hello Tom, I know this post is six years old, but do you still happen to have the 600 F2? I’ve been looking for this bike for many years in excellent condition. Thanks for posting