Cycle News

P124 BY STEVE BAUER CN III FRIENDLY FIRE N othing makes me feel more alive than riding a motorcycle. This is a fact that I have pretty much known my entire life, but kind of forgot about until a couple of years ago. That's when I realized that riding a bike in the street is better than not riding one at all. Most of you reading this probably own street bikes and always have, so you knew this already. I never owned a street bike and actually still don't, but I do own a dual- sport. Growing up riding dirt bikes, then racing pro motocross for over a decade, you would think I would have bought a road bike somewhere along the line. I tested motocross bikes for Cycle World magazine for years and had access to all of the test bikes they had in shop, but I resisted the temptation. I could have borrowed the latest crotch rocket any time I wanted to, but I didn't. I did get a Suzuki Cavalcade touring bike from Joe Colombero at Suzuki for a month one time, and that was pretty cool. At least on a touring bike, I'm not tempted to back it into a turn, or do one- handed wheelies to show off for my friends. I was comfort- able with always pushing bikes to their limits and that's fine on the racetrack, but not in our public thoroughfares. Flesh and blood is no match for cold steel and asphalt and I knew that, given my wide-open mo- tocross mindset, the odds of me becoming an inkblot would grow exponentially if I were to do much riding on the street. So, I didn't. After my racing years were over with, I didn't even have a bike in my garage for years, other than my dad's 1969 Yamaha CT-1 175 Enduro, which I still have. On the rare occasions that I wanted to ride, I would usually borrow a magazine test bike, or hit up one of my friends that were still racing, for one of their practice bikes. I would ride a couple of times a year and it seemed to satisfy my riding jones. I know—pathetic. So years went by, and then a couple of things happened that changed my way of think- ing. One of them was in 2009, when I took my old friend Larry Langley up on an offer to ride a Suzuki DR350 in a dual- sport charity event, put on by his club, the Orange County Dualies. On this particular ride, I was lucky enough to ride with a pair of legends, Malcolm Smith and Mike Bell; one a for- WHAT TO DO? "GIVEN MY WIDE-OPEN MOTOCROSS MINDSET, THE ODDS OF ME BECOMING AN INKBLOT WOULD GROW EXPONENTIALLY IF I WERE TO DO MUCH RIDING ON THE STREET."

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