wjb
Nitrous
- Joined
- Dec 16, 2019
- Messages
- 1,269
- Location
- California No Longer!
- Ride
- 2008 Rocket III Touring 2002 Bonneville America
A new member introduced himself describing his sidecar rig and that made me think back to the sidecar my Dad had. I don't want to take away from @IRS4 tread so I'll start this one.
Back in the late '70s / early '80s my Mom, for some reason became afraid of riding pillion with Dad. Not sure what happened but Dad wasn't going to give up riding and he certainly wasn't going to give up Mom so he proposed the idea of a sidecar. Mom agreed and Dad began the search for the side car he liked best. He settled on a rig called "Equalean" and had it fitted to his Gold Wing. It was not the usual kind of sidecar. It was mounted on vertical rails that allowed it to lean with the bike in corners.
One day my Dad invited my to ride with him up to Alice's Restaurant in the Santa Cruz mountains. It's a popular biker destination for food, hanging out and spirited riding on the beautiful mountain roads. So he on his GW and me on my Yamaha XS 1100 Special rode up there and had a great breakfast and visited with people with the shared interest of bikes, his sidecar rig garnered a lot of attention.
So as we prepare to leave he asks me if I'd like to switch bikes for the ride home, I agree and off we go.
WOW!!!!! I have never in my life ridden anything so dang hard to lean into a corner! And lucky me, my first experience is on a twisty mountain road filled with tight turns, cliffs and rocky mountain faces!
I did manage to get that monstrosity home muscling and manhandling it, white knuckled all the way!
@IRS4 's comment about how his bike handles "like a cow in wet cement" made my mind bring up that experience and I started sweating just at the remembrance. It was one of those experiences in life that you cannot forget even if you tried.
Back in the late '70s / early '80s my Mom, for some reason became afraid of riding pillion with Dad. Not sure what happened but Dad wasn't going to give up riding and he certainly wasn't going to give up Mom so he proposed the idea of a sidecar. Mom agreed and Dad began the search for the side car he liked best. He settled on a rig called "Equalean" and had it fitted to his Gold Wing. It was not the usual kind of sidecar. It was mounted on vertical rails that allowed it to lean with the bike in corners.
One day my Dad invited my to ride with him up to Alice's Restaurant in the Santa Cruz mountains. It's a popular biker destination for food, hanging out and spirited riding on the beautiful mountain roads. So he on his GW and me on my Yamaha XS 1100 Special rode up there and had a great breakfast and visited with people with the shared interest of bikes, his sidecar rig garnered a lot of attention.
So as we prepare to leave he asks me if I'd like to switch bikes for the ride home, I agree and off we go.
WOW!!!!! I have never in my life ridden anything so dang hard to lean into a corner! And lucky me, my first experience is on a twisty mountain road filled with tight turns, cliffs and rocky mountain faces!
I did manage to get that monstrosity home muscling and manhandling it, white knuckled all the way!
@IRS4 's comment about how his bike handles "like a cow in wet cement" made my mind bring up that experience and I started sweating just at the remembrance. It was one of those experiences in life that you cannot forget even if you tried.
