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Things Ain't Like They Used to Be
By PeteG
Yamaha XV535 Virago
I once saw a poster for a bike club that had an odd name,
it was something like Cool Cruisers Motorcycle Club and at the bottom of
the poster in large letters it announced that the said club was for
‘Cruiser Style Bikes only" and "Non Plastic Bikes." I took this to mean
bikes without fairings. It then went on to list several bikes that members
owned including Harleys, Shadows and Virago’s of various sizes. A little
selective I pondered but all hard heavy metal for hard heavy lads. And
lasses too. It got me thinking about times past and some of the old bikes
I had owned and one particular bike came surfing back on a giant wave of
nostalgia. A 1956 ‘sprung hub’ Triumph Thunderbird. It was a great bike
and had been mildly customised to the point where the Cool Cruisers MCC
would have welcomed me with open arms. I recalled riding down the sea
front through Prestatyn showing off to the young girls and sticking two
fingers up to the world in general. My mate Phil on his T110 chopper so
busy waving to three little darlings that he didn’t see me stop to let two
other bikes out of a side street and he ran into the back of me, totally
destroying my straight-through tulip exhaust with his foot peg. Ah, such
days, when bikers were a general nuisance and never pretended to be
anything else.
Fifteen hundred miles in four days, sat on an ironing board
for a seat, no tent and just £25 to spend. Eighty flat out, seventy five
miles to the gallon, beer so cheap it was almost free and the innocence of
youth to keep me smiling. I loved that old bike, I was sorry to see it go
but times change and so did I and now it is probably owned by a collector
who has rebuilt it as it was when it was first built and I would cry if I
saw it now. But as I said I changed and my riding style changed along with
my view of what a bike should look like and do. Nevertheless, now and
again little reminders of what life was like come forward and leave a lump
in the throat.
Cruisers aren't my favourite bikes I admit. Even the name
gets up my nose. Cruisers are Royal Navy warships, slightly larger than
Destroyers and have nothing to do with motorcycles. It isn’t that
so-called cruisers don’t appeal to me because they do but what has caused
me to turn my back on them are bikes like the Virago. You see, in my book
that type of bike used to be called choppers, they were bikes for
individualists, not made as stock bikes by the big companies just to cash
in on a growing market. They had all the bits that weren’t needed taken
off.
They were bikes built by petrol heads with too much passion
in their hearts for their bikes, putting years of love and attention into
a one-off work of art. And that’s why I don’t like so called cruisers. Now
anyone can go to a bike showroom and pay thousands of pounds and ride off
on a cruiser thinking they look cool. Well to me you don’t. You look like
someone with too much money and no artistic skill of your own, on a bike
that looks like it’s been fed with steroids to fatten it up for Christmas.
What you buy from the showroom is a stock bike and that’s what it will
always be, even if you fit tassels, studded soft luggage, have someone
paint it real nice and call yourself ‘Wolf’ or some such name, it is still
'Everybike'. I can’t help it, that’s what I see, someone who wasn’t sure
what sort of bike to have and paid crazy cash for a bike bigger than a car
and the cornering capabilities of a supertanker.
Then one day Satan decided to play a little trick on me.
The girlfriend decided she wanted to buy a bike and get back to riding
after a lay off. "Oh." I said. "What bike are you thinking
of?" "Not sure yet but it will have to be something I can
reach the floor easily on." My first thought was a minimoto but even she
is a little tall for that, then I thought of the RF Suzuki, I had ridden
one recently and they were quite low. But no, she had to pick something I
didn’t want to ride. "I’ve seen a nice little Virago 535." she said
on the phone. I was so shocked I had to go to the pub to recover.
When the day arrived for her to fetch it I agreed to ride
it back from Lincoln and she would drive the car. No one knew me in
Lincoln so I would be fairly safe. The geeza selling it had used it as his
second bike for round town, he had a 600 Gixer for his proper riding but
he said he had enjoyed riding the Virago. Well, I gave it a try on the way
home but the first job was to sort out the angle of the handlebars and the
brake and clutch levers. I may ride sportsbikes now but I damn well know
where everything should be on a chop.
The 535 is certainly low, as I set off I was amazed how
close the road seemed but in the slow traffic this felt fine. The bike was
easy to steer and manoeuvre through traffic and the brakes seemed
adequate. It took me a few miles to get used to where my feet should go
but once I was out onto the main roads I found the bike reasonably
comfortable. The vee twin engine was flexible and reminded me of days of
old again having a very nostalgic feel about it, the only thing missing
was sound. A nice vee like this should be making a wonderful throbbing
noise not the ‘Phhhhmmmph’ that this was making. Cornering was
surprisingly good as I expected it to be like some of the other lumbering
beasts out there but the Virago was sure footed and easy to get low down.
The ground clearance was good too though if you were to cane it into tight
corners I feel sure sparks would fly. In a straight line it is as stable
as expected but speed is not in abundance and the engine soon feels
‘taxed’. All-in-all I quite enjoyed the journey back, it became a pain
only when I got fed up of following slower vehicles and tried to pass, I
had to take two handfuls of throttle. The damn twist grip must turn three
times before you are flat out.
I parked up at home and waited for ‘her with new bike’ to
return and had a quick look around the bike before she arrived. Laugh? I
thought I would have to empty my colostomy bag. Everything is fake. What
at first look like chrome exhausts are actually tin covers with that
special spray on Japanese chrome and under that is the tiny steel exhaust
running from a collector box. No wonder it sounds shyte. Most of the
‘chrome’ parts are plastic and the rear mudguard moulding covers poor
finish on the tops of the shocks. The Cool Cruisers MCC came back into my
mind. "No Plastic Bikes." The only place I have seen more plastic than
this is on Paris Hilton. In truth, the part which ought to have been
plastic were steel, the mudguards and they were so thin they were already
bubbling up with the ravages of five English summers.
Once I got over the shock of having a Virago parked at the
side of the Gixer and the ZZR in the garage I began to use it on odd
occasions and eventually rode the bike quite a lot, I enjoyed riding it
too. A pootle down the country lanes, a quick blat down the local hostelry
and as long as you are not in a hurry or have to keep up with your mates
it’s not a bad bike. Build quality and finish is even worse than Yamaha
avarage and ride it in the rain and the alloy ends up with more fur than
my teddy bear. On the plus side this bike is probably the best of the
class that I have riden, it has no strange foibles or idiosyncracies and
handles as well as any budget roadster. The engine is tough and as
flexible as they come but anything over the national speed limit feels
laboured and vibratory. Once I did thrash the nuts of it. I entered a
roundabout behind three other bikes. There were two Diversions with a chap
on a R6 following them. The two on the Divvy’s looked as if they were
fairly new to biking and so I tagged on behind. Then I realised that I had
a chance of overtaking them, that was until they saw me gaining. It was
one hell of a strain to keep up, especially on the corners but I think
that the R6 rider must have ridden a 535 at some stage before as when I
finally signalled to turn off into my drive, he looked back and gave one
of those ‘respect’ waves. Mmm, that felt good, but then I had to explain
to the girlfriend why her bike was glowing around the header pipes and why
there was a strong smell of Ferodo.
Copyright of the author. © 2007 Tricky Imp
Productions
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