Gamma Guru – Rick Lance

He has been putting on these Gamma meet and greet and rides (which also welcomes other two-strokers from the era – Yamaha RZ500/350 and Honda’s rare NS400) fairly regularly over the years, but circumstances have always prevented my attendance. This year, however, my excuses ran out and I found myself buying a plane ticket back east. Of course, a cheap round-trip airfare and the promise of an empty saddle for my butt didn’t hurt.

Alan and his Totally Trick, Gunmetal Gray Beauty

Rick lives in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, NC. And as you might guess, the roads are pretty spectacular. In fact they start just outside his front door and seem to go on endlessly. And while the famous/infamous “Dragon” is only a couple hours down the road, the local tarmac erases any desire to travel very far a field.

Yawn, not another Scenic Overlook

According to our host, this was one of the smaller gatherings in recent memory, but it didn’t lack for personality or riding skill. Attendees included folks from all over the country as well as Australia.

Dump the Clutch, Tom – an inside joke

We went on a couple rides each day to places named Marshall, Trust, Wolf Laurel, and we even made a brief foray into Tennessee.

Breakfast in Marshall at Zuma’s Coffee House – Rick dispensing advice

We sampled home-cooked breakfasts and lunches at a number of local establishments, but my personal favorites were the pie and sweet tea break in Hot Springs, and breakfast at the stunningly scenic Pisgah Inn on the Blue Ridge Parkway.

Breakfast at the Pisgah Inn – more advice

At the end of each ride, the debrief was always very lively and entertaining with everyone recounting their own unique perspective, and doing so with a reasonable amount of honesty.

Lots of Lively Conversation and Fish Stories post ride

Lots of folks brought cameras and a plethora of photos were taken and exchanged. The roads were in very good condition with only the occasional sand/gravel detrius to keep your attentions focused. Traffic in this rural area was almost non-existent. The weather was virtually perfect; cool, foggy mornings followed by bright, sunny and warm afternoons. Only one thunderstorm made it’s way through and it was an after-hours affair.

Last Day Group – Rick, author, Tom, Scott

A couple pleasant outcomes: no one crashed or received the extra attentions of the local constabulary (pretty amazing considering some of the speeds and antics on the rides). And none of the Gammas came up lame after some pretty serious spankings they were enduring. This was a bit of a surprise considering these machines are as much as 25 years old and many are heavily modified. Fortunately, Rick’s emphasis with these bikes is more on reliability and functionality rather than outright performance. You see, he likes to ride at least as much as wrench.

Fresh Pistons and ready for reassembly

Even if one of the bikes had broken, Rick has the means and parts to fix virtually any issue that might have arisen. He could have even done a complete engine swap within hours if necessary. His garage is a wonder to behold; with as many as 15 Gammas in various states of operation, replacement parts stacked and hanging from the rafters, fabrications in various stages of completion and the equivalent of a full machine shop; it’s gear-head heaven.

Didn’t die and go to heaven, so this must be the Rapture

His personal and for-sale stable consists of everything from lightly modified originals all the way to custom-painted, big-bore, tweaked-within-an-inch-of-their-life beasts. The bike I rode was a limited edition Walter Wolf replica that was as close to stock as one these machines gets these days.

Rhino ready to mount the Wolf

It performed flawlessly. The softer stock suspension and old-school brakes made the bike easy to ride, even fast. It didn’t wear me out like more modern, stiffer, more abrupt machinery.

But for me, the best part of the entire trip was having a chance to ride a truly unique motorcycle on roads that suit it strengths perfectly. In reality, this “antique” hasn’t lost a step to modern machinery. You might conclude that I’m living nostalgically in the past and not familiar with modern performance, but my 05’ GSXR 750 and ’06 R1 LE would beg to differ. The rider is always the limiting factor, even more so in this day and age. And the pace of a few of my fellow riders was as quick as I’ve ever seen on any bike.

Air Quality Alerts everywhere we went

The Gamma’s traits of super light weight, flickability and thrilling power delivery was a perfect match to the roads in this region. Ridden properly (which is quite difficult for those used to modern 4-strokes), only racetracks or long straights reveal the Gammas age and weaknesses. But in the real world of sub-triple digit speeds and required mid-corner corrections, the Gamma can still surprise and delight!

A Gaggle of Gammas

The company of a bunch of like-minded two-stroke lunatics made the whole experience an event in a way that just a bunch of rides never could. What a fine way to spend a long Spring weekend. Thanks, Rick!

Damn, time to leave

Hangin out in Culpeper

 I’ll have to preface all my observations with the caveat that I’ve never ridden a trike or a motorcycle with a sidecar, or even one of those ancient death-trap ATVs, so I have no point of comparison with this type of machine. But after reading several favorable reviews, I’ve wanted to sample one for myself. The actual opportunity didn’t present itself until recently when I looked-up a former acquaintance. We’ll call her “Roxy”.

Anyway, I played passenger first while she demonstrated the various methods and controls. I don’t like to hop on such an unusual machine without some kinda demo, since a lot of AFV $10,000 winners seem to fit into this category, especially when unfamiliarity and a motor is involved.

To quote the owner: “this thing kinda drives itself”; not far from wrong when compared to a traditional motorcycle. A long time ago, I predicted motorcycles would do away with the clutch/gearshift combo and one of the brake levers. Well, apparently we’ve arrived. The clutch and front brake levers are GONE and the gearshift is a plastic paddle to the side of the horn button. It downshifts automatically as you slow down, which is both cool and disconcerting as it “blips” the throttle automatically when going down through the box (weird, because you hear and feel it blip down without any accompanying motions on your part). It still requires you to upshift, although I’m not sure why? I found the smoothest upshifts were accomplished by holding the throttle steady and just stabbing the shift paddle. Rolling off at all seemed to add a bit of herky-jerky to the affair. You can downshift if you like, but what’s the point, except maybe to get some additional RPMs for a pass.

This thing has reverse, which it needs because of it’s weight and size. But it’s also just plain fun to back out of a parking space with your feet already up on the footrests You have to have to hold the shift paddle forward and push a special “R” button, but it only required a couple iterations to sink-in. After reversing, you have to double tap the shift paddle to get to first gear because neutral is at the bottom of the batting order, not between first and second. It only has 5 speeds, but that’s plenty. Also because of it’s heft, it has an emergency brake, which is probably a good idea when parking on even a slight slope. And failure to activate it results in lots of warning histrionics. Also, the start-up screen asks the you read the Owners Manual before you ride (before every ride? PLEASE? Lawyer scum!) but fortunately Bombardier incorporated an easy defeat to this message so you can get underway quickly.

The Rotax 60 deg V-twin displaces just under a liter (I’m guessing it the “old” Aprilia Mille engine) and has plenty of poke to pull this somewhat weighty rig around. And if you are willing to exercise the tach near it’s 12K redline, it’ll scoot!

There is a trunk under the “hood” that holds a good bit of stuff including your helmet. It was relatively comfortable, not much different from the riding position on a typical naked bike. It had decent wind protection but still has that ”out in the breeze” feel which most of us prefer. And this thing gets the “looks”, young/old, male/female, motorcyclist/not, Harley/sportbike, everyone wants a closer look. And you get a lot more waves from folks by the side of the road too.

My biggest complaint about riding this contraption was the fact that it felt real “busy” even when cruising in a straight line on a smooth road. The slightest camber in the road causes it to wander downhill, requiring constant correction, if not brute force to keep it tracking between the lines. I feel that either a geometry change or some kind of self centering mechanism would make this much less annoying. With 3 staggered wheels it almost impossible to avoid objects in your path, like road-kill. so you hit a lot more stuff than you would on a traditional motorcycle. Cornering seemed much more “forced” (like you have to fight it a bit) rather than “flowing”, which took away a lot of the feel I look for when riding. I don’t know if I just wasn’t doing something right, or if it would always be awkward (it seems cars corner better, maybe it’s the 3-wheels thing)

My traditional motorcycle reflexes gave Roxy the giggles on several occasions: like when I’d put my left foot down at all stops, when I’d toe-up the next gear where there is no lever and also when I’d reach for the front brake when slowing. It reminded me just how much we are creatures of habits

After only an hour or so on the machine, I was getting comfortable as an operator, and it seems like it wouldn’t take much time to convert over (kinda like getting used to the turn signals on a BMW). But I would NOT recommend having a traditional motorcycle and one of these at the same time, because it would be really hard to go back and forth.

Would I buy one? Potentially in the future, if I thought balance would be a problem. But for now I’ll stick to my single-tracker. But I was impressed enough with the technology, feel and integration to move it from the “never” category into the “possible” one.

But that’s just my opinion,

Rhino

The first blog site I belonged to, motorcyclebloggers.com, has gone belly-up due to apathy. We had a great run of about 5 years and as many as 5 or 6 contributors, but various real life events slowed down postings to a crawl (and we never had a big audience anyway). It was kind of an outlet for several of us who liked to ride and then talk about it. So after months of inactivity, our fearless leader, AngryBob, let the site lapse (I don’t blame him).

But I still have a desire to post various stories and thoughts (mostly about motorcycles) from time to time, so I’m setting up this location for my future thoughts and observations.

I’m going to try to recreate several of my previous posts from motorcyclebloggers.com in addition to creating new material.

Wish me luck (and motivation),

Rhino