On the road back from San Isabel last year I was privileged
to live through something that every motorcyclist should experience, the
dreaded high-speed wobble. Now anyone who has been around motorbikes for a
while will probably not be surprised when I say that the bike I was riding at
the time was a 1975 Kawasaki Z1 900. These motorcycles have a reputation for
such antics. The Z1 formerly belonged to my neighbor across the street who was
more of a Harley/cruiser type. He had Harleyfied the bike with shorter rear
shocks, a sissy bar (for all you sissies out there who make a big deal about
flying off the back of rapidly accelerating motorcycles), tall handlebars, and
a color coordinated windscreen. The bike ran well with a 1050cc kit, oversized valves,
pod air cleaners, and an obvious lack of baffles in the stock mufflers. I say
obvious because it was loud. I was assured that the roar melts away behind you as
you speed down the road. However, after trying several times I concluded that
even though the bike was fast, it was not quite faster that the speed of sound.
I had been eyeing his Z1 for a couple of years. My street
ride at the time was a 1975 Norton 850 Commando in a box. So every time the
roar of that Z1 would fill the neighborhood I would look up from staring at my
box and run to the front corner of the house to spy on him and his bike. I’ve
always loved Z1’s. They are hairy chested bikes for real men. The motorcycle equivalent
of a Big Block Camaro. When Sheryl Crow sings about Steve McQueen and fast
machines she’s talking about Z1’s. So when my neighbor said it was time for him
to let the Kawasaki go, I was there like a puppy waiting for his treat.
I am by nature a mild modifier. I find wildly modified motorcycles
interesting but not really my style. I like bikes that maintain the original character
of the machine but with a few performance mods to bring out the true nature of
the beast. So I set about swapping the handle bars for a set of Superbike bars,
and removed the sissy bar and the faring to clean up the bug splattering aero
dynamics. On ebay I found a set of orange piggyback Marzzochi shocks. They were
in great shape and the correct length having come off the previous owners Z1. I
thought they aided the sporting nature of my new bike so I snapped them up.
When they arrived I realized they were the Exon Valdez edition as the box was soaked
in shock oil. Fortunately rebuild kits were still available at that time and
the shocks turned into some fairly decent equip. I’m not sure if they
contributed to the aforementioned high speed wobble. I doubt it as they seemed
firm and controlled enough. Actually they may have contributed to my living
through the high speed wobble in that they probably gave me enough control over
at least the back end of the bike that simply slowing down saved my bacon. Slowing
down is sometimes surprisingly good at saving your bacon.
Compared to my 1975 Norton 850 Commando in a box, the new Z1
Kawasaki was a dream. It ran better than my Commando in a box. It handled
better than my Commando in a box. It didn’t seem to get as good of gas mileage
though. However, when you’re trying to impress Steve McQueen and Sheryl Crow
you just can’t be worried about stuff like gas mileage. The best part though,
really, was that it started up and ran when I wanted it to. I love the idea
that I have a bike sitting in the garage ready and waiting for the next
adventure.
Then the cam chain broke. Fortunately the only damage to the
motor was a bent valve. The bad news was that in order to change the cam chain
the cases had to be split. As of yet, in my motorcycling life I had yet to do
the dreaded case split. I promptly set about to putting it off for most of the
summer. Finally it was obvious that if I didn’t get busy, the riding season was
going to be over and I then be the proud owner of a 1975 Kawasaki Z1 900 in a
box. Wrong direction. So I got out the credit card and I got on the internet
and started ordering parts. Fortunately the Z1 is a bike so popular around the
world that someone could probably just build a brand new bike by just ordering
new parts. It’d cost $120,000 but you could do it. Long story short, after much
trepidation, sweat, busted knuckles, and a couple stupid mistakes, I fired the
Z1 up and it ran, kind of.
What motivates the shade tree mechanic through those
projects is the moment when you climb on the bike and insert the key and she
roars into life like a tiger released from its wooden crate. The reality is
that the final phase is usually a drawn out process of debugging to get the
bike running like it should. But persistence is the mother of having stuff you
want, so I kept at it, completing the task with just enough time to take that
ride down to San Isabel.
Now if my Ducati 748s is a high speed precision cutting
tool, then the Z1 was a wood chipper. It was loud and liable to chew off your
hand if you didn’t pay attention. On the one end you would throw in chunks of
road and it would chew it up and spit it out the other end at deadly velocity.
It definitely earned its reputation as a road burner. From 30 to 80 mph it felt
right in it’s element. I have a little curvy mountain road I like to tear
through, not too far from my house. I call it the Mountain Loop. The Z1 just
ate that road up. I definitely could ride that loop faster on the Z1 than I can
on my 748s. The Ducati is a road course bike and isn’t really comfortable until
I’m not. Here’s the problem though, previous to my trip
to San Isabel I thought of my Z1 as an all around fast bike. Not an all around
fast bike up to, but not to exceed 80 mph. My riding partner that day was my
friend Steve who owns a Yamaha RZ500 V4 2 stroke which he drove to Canada to
buy since they never sold them here. His RZ was developed after Japan figured
out what makes Z1’s wobble. It has that classic two-stroke power band times
four and feels pretty comfortable going around high speed corners.
Our road trip took us from Colorado Springs down through
Penrose, Florence, and Wetmore, which is the dry part of Colorado. From Wetmore
(insert joke here) the road climbs up through the Wet Mountain Valley (joke pt.
2) to the lake and town of San Isabel. That’s where you have lunch and talk
about Bishops Castle which you ride past just before getting to San Isabel.
Bishops Castle is actually a castle which Jim Bishop just decided to build out
of cement and rocks on his property. The main tower is now around 160ft tall
and it includes such accessories as welding cables, broken glass, and chickens.
Climbing up to the top makes you think about doing things that are safer, like
riding motorcycles. The road, however, is why you ride from Wetmore to San
Isabel. It was a gift from the motorcycle gods. It curves and rises from one
gorgeous Colorado scene to the next like ribbon candy. It weaves its way
through tall Aspen trees, Ponderosa Pines and green willow lined meadows.
Yummy.
Steve and I had eaten our lunch and discussed why I’m not
going back up that tower again. We were back on the bikes and carving up the
road back through the valley and on to Wetmore. From Wetmore to Florence the
road travels through 11 miles of sagebrush flats. There are four gradual
corners. This allows you’re friend to build up speed out of shear boredom which
in turn invites you to illustrate to your friend that 87mph is nothing to your
Z1 and passing him is mere child’s play. The passing was not a problem. It was
the curve to the left, times the wind, times the bumpy road that put the Z1
into a head wagging fuss. If you haven’t guessed by now, it got my attention
more that climbing Bishops Castle and stepping on broken glass only to reach
out and realize that the railing is actually a welding cable at 160 feet above
the ground. I’ve watched enough Isle Of Man and Bonneville videos to know that
simply slowing down doesn’t always work, but it did in this case. I certainly
didn’t have to worry about getting any speeding tickets for the rest of the
trip.
After that episode of “new found respect” I discovered a new
road. I called it the Hanover loop. Colorado Springs sits on the edge of the
Great American Desert. To the west of the Springs are the Rocky Mountains, but
to the east of us are a lot of flat straight roads. The loop consists of a trip
down toward Fountain Colorado and on to the old Pueblo Highway. Once you just
about reach the road to PPIR you turn left on the Hanover road, which
eventually turns left on the Peyton Highway and then Highway 24 back to the
Springs. It was there about 5
miles past Hanover that I discovered the fine art of riding in a straight line.
When I was a kid growing up in Colorado there were a lot of
little two lane roads that meandered along from one point on the map to the
next. Along the way were all the elements of the American West. We would ride
along with the windows down, watching the landscape for hawks or antelope or
dead rattlesnakes on the side of the road. These were Sunday afternoon adventures
that I loved as a kid and long for as an adult. While the roads in eastern
Colorado are straight, they are also somewhat hilly. You bounce along on the
patched pavement till you reach the top of the rise, pull as far to the right
as possible and then sit up high in your seat to try to see what may be coming
over the rise toward you. As Colorado has become more populated the roads have
become improved and widened. Safer for John Q. Public, but the old mystique of
the Sunday afternoon adventure has been white washed. The Hanover loop and
probably plenty of other old roads out there in eastern Colorado are relics,
complete with patched pavement and dead rattlesnakes.
The art of riding in a straight line, I found, is performed
on these roads. The Z1 finally convinced me that we both were longing for the
same thing. Long flat patchy two lane roads out in the middle of nowhere, where
we could weave in and out of the road kill and have plenty of moments to scan
the horizon for Hawks soaring above the dry buttes. The hills in the road took
on a new role as reality checks giving us a distinct feeling of vulnerability.
But we’d slow down a little, move to the right, and do the Prairie Dog thing as
we looked for farm truck predators coming our way. At 75 mph the Z1 just
growled with delight. On one end I’d throw chunks of two-lane asphalt and it
would chew them up and spit them out the history end of the bike. There is a
certain Zen element to the art where you find your center during these moments
of rapid consumption. You speed things up just to slow things down.
I believe what made the Z1 ideal for the art was the
confluence of a number of motorcycling attributes. The first necessary element
is the fact that the Z1 was a proper combination of standard and power bike.
It’s stance and layout made it comfortable for some extended trips but at the
same time it had that brutish nature about it. Also, the Z1 vibrated through
the handlebars, pegs, and seat just enough to let you know serious things were
happening. Its abundance of torque gave you a command of the road. And lastly,
the road burner growl from those four pipes, which (with ear plugs) would melt
away behind you as you sped off down the road.
So, yes in the end my Z1 and I found our Zen. And yes I’ve
let the Z1 go. And, yes I have some regrets. Thus the river flows. I have since
taken the Hanover loop on my Ducati 748s and…. yeah, no Zen. The red bike does
not share this ideal with me. It does not understand. Rather than it meeting me
at a place of Zen, it is teaching me about its Zen. Not a place from my
childhood but rather in the theater of the gods; a place close to the sun. Moto
Icarus.
Come to think of it a Ducati Darmah SD900 would probably eat
that road up pretty well, minus the head wag.
