I’m trying to put as many miles as I can on the bike before I move up to PA. If I roll the next 1,100 miles before I leave then I can change the oil before I move up there this summer. I won tickets to a museum this morning so I decided to hop on the bike, skip lunch, and ride to Charlotte to get my tickets. While there I realized I was close to the comic shop, so it needed a look. I snaked my way around downtown Charlotte to avoid any real traffic problems.
Then I was on my way home. I was stopped at a stop light admiring the road construction all around me, when a bike crossed through the intersection in front of me. The rider looked like a bear on a motorcycle at the circus and it caught my attention. I suppose they are called ‘pocket-rockets’ or ‘pit bikes.’ I’ve seen clips of them racing in parking lots, and people playing in yards on them. This was the first time I watched one going down the road in front of cops and not get pulled over.
I had to no more.
I couldn’t turn right on the red because of the signage telling me not to and the string of cops that were seemingly everywhere that I looked. I had to wait.
The light turned green and I took an unexpected right hand turn without really thinking about it. I wanted to get a better look at that tiny little bike.
I cruised by the front of Johnson C. Smith University checking the parking lots and side streets thinking that perhaps it was a student at the college playing around. I finally spotted the little bike about two blocks ahead. I went to speed up, only to find myself stopped by a red light. I stopped and stayed legal, partly because I try not to run red lights, and partly because this intersection had a police car in it too!
I tried to keep my eye on the pocket rocket. He got ahead of me out of sight while I sat there. The light turned green and I resisted taking off to quickly, because of the cop staring at traffic going by.
The part of Charlotte that I’m in is full of cops constantly so I had to mind the 25 mile an hour speed limit (or at least stay reasonably close to it).
Another block or two down and there the pocket bike was in the distance! I couldn’t gun it and catch up. He cruised through a yellow light a block ahead at about the same time I came to stop behind a red light. More cops. I couldn’t catch a break.
I lost him for a while. I kept going straight as fast as I legally (or reasonably just there over) could go watching for him in parking lots and keeping an eye on the patrol cars going this way and that.
I would have missed him, he was in front of a car but I couldn’t see him overtop of it because the pocket rocket had him sitting so low to the ground, except he pulled over into a lane to turn left. As he was turning I whipped in behind a car behind him. I could see him over top of that car now, but I couldn’t get around. The car between us finally turned down another side street in the neighborhood that we had entered. I was about to gun it and come up beside of him when he signaled to make a right hand turn. I fell back a bit so that he wouldn’t get under my wheels as he pulled off onto the sidewalk. I followed him. He went off the side walk up a driveway. And so did I. The paved drive way led to a path down the side of the older home and he went down the path, and I just about did. I called out to him. He didn’t respond. He stopped to open a screen door so that he could pull into the house and spotted me over his shoulder. He looked shocked seeing me sitting in his driveway on the Valk tourer. He pulled out his iPod earphones.
I leaned up across the handle bars checking out his bike, which he was rocking back and forth to get lined up with his steps into the side door.
I smiled. “I just had to take a closer look, you came past me at an intersection about two miles ago and caught my eye.”
He looked at me funny. “You ain’t a cop are ya?”
“Nah.”
“Okay.”
“Are you runnin’ that bike like a moped?”
“I guess.”
“You don’t have a tag on it.”
“Nope.”
“How fast will it go?”
“Its gottsa governer on it to 35mph. It keeps up with traffic around here.”
“So you’re essentially using it like a small scooter, moped, or liquor-cycle.”
He shrugged. “I guess. You can take the governor off and it will do 85.” I found that hard to believe. But okay. I nodded politely. I have seen those raced on the internet in different areas so they will move, but I’m not quite sure it will do 85, but who am I to argue. It looked like a proper little sport bike with mirrors, speedo, tach, tail lights, head lights, turn signals, and a full body plastic package. On the side where Yamaha would have written ‘R6’ this one was painted with a ‘F6.’ The ‘F6’ made me laugh.
We talked another few minutes. He liked my bike, but was scared to do more than 35 mph on a bike. He thought big bikes were dangerous. I secretly thought that riding around on a bike that couldn’t be seen in front of an SUV was dangerous, but I refrained from saying anything.
As I was pulling off and trying to figure out how to get back to civilization from there it occurred to me as funny that because of traffic lights I had to run several blocks and follow this guy nearly to his house to get a chance to catch up and look at that pocket rocket on my Valk.
It looked something mopedish like this:
but with full lights and speedo.
