The five of us decided to take a trip into Saint Tropez. It was suggested that I ride Karen's Honda rather than my SMC-R, then Izzy asked if i'd mind taking her passenger.
Talk about Baptism of fire. I'd never ridden a bike larger than 1000cc, never ridden a cruiser, never ridden an automatic.
The first 50 yards were on the deep gravel drive, Then Izzy got on the back and the next 200 meters were on a deteriorated track!! A few miles of lovely sweeping bends, then straight into thick traffic. I was actually pretty pleased with my efforts, picking through the traffic fairly well and not having to 'paddle' too often.
It was only when we parked up by the yachts in Saint Tropez was it pointed that I'd been given the bike in "sport" mode, which went some way to explain why I found the throttle to be like and on off switch ! Apart from that, my only real issue was that it didn't matter how many times I reached for it, there wasn't a clutch lever
Having found the regular mode, the ride home was smoother, though I also liked being able to manually change gear with the buttons on the handlebars and change to sport mode while riding, which was dead handy when we came back through the sweeping bends.
All in, I don't think cruisers are for me (yet) but I was suitably impressed by the automatic, if you get a chance to try one, you probably should.
, desire to have a go on one of these. Preferably on a longish trip across Europe or something like that.
