I Will Never Doubt My Valkyrie Again

Last summer I finally deiced to buy a street bike. My only other experiences with motorcycles are 25+ years old and on a dirt bike track. More by luck than anything else I ended up buying a 1981 CB750 Custom (I drove it 60 miles in driving rain the first day I got it... my wife called me an idiot). It was in great shape and the old in-line 4 engine had a lot of power for such a small bike. It was a great learner (or re-learner in you will). At the end of the summer I knew I was a biker for life. But I also knew that the old 750 would have to be replaced.

My dilemma was what to replace it with. H.D.? Too expensive. And quite frankly v-twins did not impress me. I kicked the butt out of many an 1100 v-twin with the 750. I loved the power of the in line 4. This ruled out all but a very few bikes.

My first though was the V-max. Lots and lots and lots of power. But after reading a few reviews it seamed that Mighty Max suffered from a number of handling problems and many said the seat was not comfortable enough for any long trips. Not good. I was planning a number of long trips (most notable the 2003 Sturgis rally), and power with-out handling was no good ether.

Luckily, the same review also talked about how great the Valkyrie was in terms of both comfort and handling. That it was rated second in power only to the V-max (for current production cursers) was just one more bonus.

Now, I will have to confess that I had looked at Valkyries and thought them to be just too big. How anyone could straddle that big engine comfortably was beyond me. But after reading that review I decided to do some more research. The more I looked, the more I liked the idea of the Valk. The only negative press the Valk gets is by bozos who haven't ridden one, who laugh it off as impractical or too huge with-out giving it a test ride.

So in Feb., armed with these great reviews, I visited my local Honda dealer. He had two Valks. One used and one new, and with the financing options the payments would be identical (the new bike would be for a year longer, but we all have to make sacrifices). I sat on the Valk. I checked the peg and handle bar placement. I stood it up and wiggled it around. Okay, it's not a huge and ungainly as I thought. The mass still made me nervous, but I thought I could handle it. After much soul searching, and without really looking at any other bikes, I make the deal on my first Valkyrie (the new one of course).

I made tentative plans to pick it up about the 1st of April (If you know anything about North Dakota weather you'll understand just how tentative this was. In April we could still have two feet of snow on the ground with blizzard conditions). In fact on the first of April I drove the 80 miles to the dealer in 40 something degree weather with a winter storm warning for latter in the day in effect (My wife called me an idiot... again). But something happened on that slow cold ride home from the dealer. I forgot how big and heavy the bike was. It handled BETTER that the old 750! This was great! (I did, in fact, beat the storm home. The first flakes of snow were falling as I opened the garage door.)

My only regret in these 4500 miles was that I hadn't really given any other bikes a chance. I had verbally defended my choice with my non-Valk ridding buddies but in the back of my mind I always wondered if I had really made the right decision. I knew the bike was comfortable, powerful, a handled like a dream, but I kept wondering in the back of my mind if there wasn't something better out there.

I kept wondering until Sturgis 2003. On our third day there we decided to do some test rides. Victory, Triumph, and Yamaha all had their bikes cleaned up and ready to ride. Have you ever ridden one of your kids bicycles? Just to put it away in the garage, or move it across the yard? That's what these bikes all felt like! Toys! Even the vaunted Yamaha Warrior felt like a toy to me. They were too small, vibrated like mad, and handled like cra.... you know what I mean.