I’m always looking for ways to share more motorcycles with you, and the best way to do that is to have more people contributing! So with that in mind, I’d like to introduce you to Chris Cope! I actually freelanced a few stories for Chris back when he was running RideApart. I’ve been a big fan of his for a while so it’s exciting to see that he’ll be adding some volume and diversity to the motorcycles featured here on Bike-urious. He’s already shared a whole bunch of finds here and I’ve Chris to introduce himself so you know what else to expect!
1. How did you get started with motorcycles – how did you learn, and what was your first bike?
I struggled a lot in school. Academic challenges sparked behavioral issues which created and fortified teacher biases. These days, they’d say I have ADHD. But in 1990s suburban Minnesota, I was just a troublemaker. In one assessment, a teacher declared: “He’s awful.”
In St. Paul, Minnesota.
So, I didn’t initially graduate high school. Which was pretty soul-destroying. Especially because mine was a high-achieving school (I was in the same class as Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin). While I was picturing a life of working at gas stations, my friends were packing their bags for MIT, Yale, Stanford, and so on. Around this time, I spotted a newspaper ad for a motorcycle training course. I can’t remember the exact wording but it was something along the lines of: “Learn to ride a motorcycle and get your license endorsement for just $90!”
Hitherto, I’d not been interested in motorcycles ─ I preferred pickup trucks ─ but this struck me as a way to earn a qualification, proof of having learned something. Not a high school diploma, true, but still an official piece of paper to say I had accomplished a thing.
The course was held in a YMCA parking lot, taught by an old boy who wore a wine-colored leather suit and seemingly nothing underneath. In the heat of summer, his jacket was unzipped to his belly button. We trained on old CB100s that the instructor started for us because the kickstarts were fussy. The test consisted of riding around cones and doing an emergency stop.
“You actually went the wrong way around the cones,” the instructor said after the test. “But you didn’t fall over, and it’s too hot to be standing around doing this again. So, we’ll say you passed.”
With a Triumph T100 Bonneville
The internet didn’t really exist in those days, so all life knowledge ─ about things like motorcycles or backpacking or keeping track of your finances ─ came from dudes you knew. Your dad, your uncle, your best friend’s dad or uncle…but I didn’t know any dudes who rode bikes. Equally I didn’t have the self-confidence to go into a shop and strike up a conversation. So, my license went unused until several years later, when I was living in the United Kingdom. I discovered Hell for Leather, a snarky (and short-lived) moto-focused website that did a good job of making motorcycles and motorcycling feel approachable to people from outside traditional motorcycling circles.
The first bike I owned was a 2005 Honda CBF600SA, a model that was never released in the US market because it was so intolerably boring. It was a parts bin special, driven by a CBR600 engine that had been neutered retuned to deliver a claimed 76 horsepower. In reality, its peak was closer to 67 hp, and you had to rev the nuts off it to get there.
Chris on his CBF600SA – here’s his review.
But it was reliable, nonthreatening, and relatively easy to work on. I took a number of road trips on that bike and it helped open the door to a version of myself that I hadn’t perceived before. It also made me realize how accessible Europe is.
2. What bikes do you currently own?
I’ve only ever had one bike at a time. So, the bike in my garage has to be an everything machine. As a result, I have a frustrating habit of leaning toward the practical and fixable over the interesting and characterful. At the moment, I have a 2012 Kawasaki Versys 1000 that I bought last December with 30,000 miles on the clock.
Photo from Kawasaki UK
It’s the first-generation model that looks like an enormous Lego brick. True to Kawasaki’s reputation for fit and finish quality, most of the fairing bolts are rusty. It’s stupidly huge. Its gearbox feels like it’s full of gravel. And you have to pull the damned tank just to change the air filter. But I love it. The bike is fun, reliable, and ─ despite the fuel tank thing ─ reasonably easy to work on. It strikes me as perfect for long-haul adventures, though I’ve not had a chance to take a multi-day road trip on it yet.
3. Assume for a moment that money is no object, and importation laws aren’t a problem. What’s the next bike you’d buy, and what would you do with it?
I’m such a boring person. I really wish I had a cool answer to this. There are all kinds of bikes that I’d love to experience, but if I’m doing the buying (and, more importantly, the owning and maintaining), then I’d still want something that isn’t going to be too much of a nightmare. This is such a basic b**ch answer, but I would love to own a Harley-Davidson Road Glide or Road King Special, or their Indian equivalents: Challenger or Springfield Dark Horse.
Chris on a 2017 Harley-Davidson Road Glide
Given the choice, I’d probably take the latter because I know from experience that I can handle it on dirt/farm roads. That would be important because if we’re playing the “money is no object” game, I would be using this bike to visit all 50 US states. Living in the United Kingdom for the past 18 years has made me appreciate America a lot more than I used to. I feel an almost desperate desire to explore every corner.
4. What’s the most memorable motorcycle trip you’ve ever taken?
I’ve had some great trips, but without a doubt, one of the best came when I took several days to ride the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive on a BMW K 1600 B. I wrote about the trip on my own blog, but the short version is this: back in 2017, I attended the K 1600 B press launch in Asheville, North Carolina. Afterward, BMW loaned me one of the bikes to ride up to their headquarters in New Jersey.
BMW K 1600 B in North Carolina.
Despite the bike’s power and excellent handling, I chose to make my way north at a snail’s pace, never clocking more than 100 miles in a day and stopping for pretty much every vista and point of interest. It was a week of barbecue and ice cream and walks through the woods and countless friendly conversations with strangers who looked at the Bavarian bagger and exclaimed: “What is THAT?!”
It was an amazing trip, one that also sparked a lasting desire to hike the Appalachian Trail. One day…
Hiking the South Downs Way with his wife Jean.
5. Do you listen to music while riding? If no, why not? If yes, what are some of your favorite tunes when you’re on your bike?
No. I can see how it might add to some people’s experience but for me, music cancels out one of the main benefits of riding: connection. There’s something beautiful/mindful about the unfiltered way in which you connect with the world around you on a motorcycle. If there are flowers, you smell them; if there’s cow poo, you smell that. If it’s raining, you’re wet; if it’s hot, you’re sweating. And so on. Adding music to that equation changes it.
That’s not to say I don’t love music. And maybe that’s why I don’t listen on a bike. I’m a (subpar) musician, so I like to be fully engaged when listening to or playing music.
With a Harley-Davidson Street Bob
6. What’s your favorite piece of gear?
Kriega bags. Their usefulness cannot be overstated.
7. You have $25,000 to spend on anything in the world of motorcycles – 1 new bike, several old bikes, track days, a trip, you name it. How do you spend it?
This is kind of a sad answer but, truthfully, I would use it to supplement my income and allow me to keep writing about motorcycles and motorcycling. I have never found another job as interesting or fulfilling. I especially love the stories, experiences, and people of motorcycling.
But, if we pretend that I have enough money in the bank that I’m able to sleep soundly at night, then maybe I’d use that $25,000 to buy a cheap but reliable bike ─ along the lines of a Suzuki V-Strom 1000 ─ and take a long, meandering trip along the Texas-Mexico border. There are a lot of interesting and unique stories there that I don’t feel are properly told. Too often, life in border communities is viewed from a distance and through a political lens. I’d like to meet and tell the stories of people who are just living their lives. One of my career goals is to be published in Texas Monthly; perhaps this is how I’d manage it.
Chris’ old Suzuki V-Strom 1000 in Switzerland
8. What do you expect from the future of motorcycling, good or bad?
Old boys need to get over their hang-ups about electric bikes. As noted above, I’m quite fond of gargantuan cruisers and tourers, but I assure you: electric bikes can be awesome.
Running contrary to the investment needed for that, however, is my belief that the industry is facing either a downturn or, at least, a paradigm shift, in the very near future. It’s arguably happening already. Blame the global cost of living crisis and the fact that bikes have reached a kind of plateau in terms of how much expensive tech riders want/need. I think the trend of smaller bikes will continue for a while and companies without them will suffer.
Also, gloomily, there is a very real possibility that China will seek to invade or seriously disrupt Taiwan before the end of the decade. That will mean all kinds of sanctions and insane supply chain issues. Now’s a good time to be stocking up on parts, y’all.
With his daughter Bertie.