"If I tried one with my wife as passenger it would also increase blood
flow,
not the good kind either,"
Yeah, me too. One time, though, I had a buddy on the back of my
Interceptor. He rode a CBR900RR, so he knew all about wheelies. I had
never had much luck with them; still haven't, I think it's my conservative
nature and self-preservation instinct. I just can't bring myself to stay
in the throttle as I dump the clutch. Anyway, he says to me, "rip one up",
which was his speak for a wheelie. So I did, and it was noticably more
wheelie-friendly with him on the back.
As a follow-on story, I can tell you that the little Interceptor would
indeed do just as much wheelie as you wanted it to. Some time after that,
I took it to the dragstrip and did about 5 runs. Never been on a dragstrip
before, so my starts were not very good but improved in each run. I was
running in the low 14's; the magazines had the 500 Interceptor doing the
quarter in the mid 12's, so I was about 1.5 seconds over those times. It
seemed like the guys on faster street bikes were all running around a
second or so over the mag times. Anyway, I really wanted to see the first
two digits of my time be ''13", and on my last run I was ready to rock. At
the green, I dumped the clutch at about 11,000 rpm and up came the front
wheel - woo hoo! I don't really know how high, but it was enough to make
me pull in the clutch and let it out again, bringing the front end down
some and then back up again. The second time it felt managable to me and I
rode it through, to a time of 14.02 - or 14.002 (can't remember how many
digits)...aarrrhhhggg, so close. I suspect that the first wheelie wasn't
as massive as I thought and I probably could have ridden it through to a
time in the 13's, but hey, at least I didn't end up on my back with a bike
on me. I was there with the CBR900RR rider and some GSXR750 riders, who
were much more accustomed to wheelies and congratulated me on my air time
afterward.
Jeremy the wheelie maniac - hehehe
___________________________________________________________________________
(un)subscribe info, archive: http://archives.itg.uiuc.edu/virago/
