Off-roading is for Wussies

The weather on Saturday was perfect. The only righteous way to spend such a day was in the saddle of a fast British motorcycle (or, perhaps, on a speedy little Italian scooter).

That's exactly what I did.

The day's destinations (a couple of music stores, a coffee shop, and a variety of previously unexplored twisty neighborhoods) kept Lady Luck, Baldy-Beard and your humble author mostly confined to surface streets.

Phoenix isn't known for it's well-maintained roads, particularly in the downtown areas. Construction on a light-rail system is also underway. The roads around that construction are decimated, to put it mildly.

Those areas are precisely where we spent most of the day riding.

A dual-sport or some other variety of adventure-bike could probably plow straight through the construction. The Triumph and Vespa, on the other hand, can not.

Imagine riding at thirty miles per hour down a single lane with construction markers threatening to lop off an arm if you get too close, deep canyons only inches past them waiting to suck in an unwary rider, and gigantic pot holes taking up most of the "safe" road in between.

I know what you're thinking: fun!

It was fun, too. Riding in conditions like that is like riding in a video game. There are obstacles every where, bad guys chasing me (how would you describe the SUV driving dipshits?), and plenty of fast action. It usually isn't appropriate to wildly flick my bike from side to side of my lane in traffic, but when the road is held together by duct tape and the unshakable will of AZDOT, riding "aggressively" is required.

So why go off-roading? With adventure like that available so close to home, riding off-road seems kind of quaint.