The other night I went to an event about 30 minutes from home along semi-suburban highways. I was riding the Triumph. On the way home on Loop 360, which is a 4-lane divided highway with stop lights here and there, some doofus in a Mustang decided he wanted to drag race me, multiple times. In fact, it was each stop light for about 3 miles where he revved the motor at the stop light and then tore off like a bat out of hell once it turned green.
I was not really interested. I was freezing my hands off since it was about 38 degrees out and I was halfway home. I was just focused on getting home while I could still feel my fingers. The stop lights were a mixed blessing, where the wind chill stopped long enough for me to begin to warm my fingers, and since I was not moving I could put my hands around the big 900cc's cylinder fins on each side and try to heat them up (this didn't work, BTW, even though I thought it was a genius idea when I thought of doing it). So you know, the dude was barking up the wrong tree.
The Mustang was fast. If I rode it right and could manage the 1-2 shift quickly enough I think I might have been able to keep the car's tail lights within 100 yards of the Triumph's front wheel before getting to the next red light, but I'm pretty sure a new Mustang GT is quicker than my warmed-over Bonneville. Way quicker than a GS500.
I guess in the dark maybe the Mustang driver thought the noisy Triumph might have been a Ducati or a Buell or KTM or some other 100+hp twin. And he obviously mistook me for a squid. Must not know that guys with hi-viz helmets are the grandpas of motorcyclists.
good read! I'm with you on that. Sometimes on the gsxr people ride up and 'challenge' me but typically I only ride to work and the next butt load of stopped cars (fun HOuston traffic) is 300 yards ahead. One dude was going to show me how fast his mustang was and zoomed off then slammed on the brakes to keep from rear ending the stopped car ahead. genius,...
In the cold rain a few weeks back I was on gsxr and freezing, wet, no rain gear, when a srt Cherokee comes up reving next to me. 'It's fookin raining retard!' I'm thinking. He rev'd and took off cause he was going to show me how bada@@ he was. :dunno_black:
Had one gal MAYBE 5ft tall thought one of my gs was a duc. Even tho it clearly said suzuki. Ahe asked to sit on it. Got to find that picture.
Aaron
I have yet to have this happen to me on a motorcycle but my only motorcycles have been dirt bikes, dual sports, and the GS. But I did have a 75 Pontiac Ventura in highschool that I thought was very cool. I bought it cheap and it was primer black with carb problems. But I drove it till I had money to fix it up. Anyways it had a Chevy 305 v8 with a faulty 2 barrel Rochester carb and it had a little guys off the line in first but then fell on it's face around 40 mph.
The exhaust was pretty rotted so I welded some straight pipes on from the headers back. It was still slow but loud and blacked out and I would have people try to race me all the time. Usually older Honda's and Nissan's but all sorts would try haha and I would just wave and let then go. It really was most comfortable as a comfy cruising car going 55 mph.
I did eventually get a friend in Auto body classes in a nearby texh school to take it as a project and got a decent paint job, dropped a rebuilt junkyard 350 in, put in shorter rear axle gears from a Camaro, went through through the front suspension and had a pretty fun decently fast car that I for some reason sold for school haha but such is life. I never really got a chance to challenge those beater Honda's with a proper race
I found an old pic of when I bought it. Forgot to mention new wheels added later. I'll have to get another old rwd car again some day.
People used to do this to me all the time when I was driving my Miata, but it had numbers on it for crying out loud. And back then not every mom-mobile and commuter car had 400+ hp like they do now. I mean, sheesh, even electric cars are fast now.
These days it seems like the stoplight grand prix is kind of meaningless. Nearly all new cars are very quick, way more than what you can use on public streets even on a Saturday night on a semi-abandoned highway at 11 pm like I was the other night. There's still deer out there folks. To beat me to the next stop light, if I was trying, that Mustang would have had to hit probably 90mph before slowing down and that's quite a mess when a 300 lb white-tail deer jumps out.
I still think my Bonneville will probably hit 60mph in 4 seconds flat and may turn 12s in a quarter mile but those are not impressive numbers these days.
People trying to race me hasn't really happened to me on my bike, but its happened a couple times in my car. The FR-S is a car that looks a lot faster than it is (in a straight line anyway) so I guess its not that weird to get "challenged" by fartcan Civics and the like.