DOES ANYONE STILL RIDE MOTORBIKES?
Are motorbikes now just an old timers fantasy, like knights in amour or horses and carts?
As a teenager I was obsessed with motorbikes, and as well as using them to get around I used to race motor-cross as well. Motorbikes were awesome.
But the New Zealand government decided that like marijuana, and cures for cancer, motorbikes needed to be outlawed out of existence.
They did it by making it so expensive to register a motorbike that nobody would be left who could afford to do it.
Cars are fairly economical in NZ, because we are a right hand drive country (like England and Australia) but we have no car industry that government needs to protect (unlike England and Australia) so we get all the second hand cars from right hand drive Japan shipped over here and sold nice and cheap.
Back in the old days, it used to be about the same cost for the annual registration on both motorbikes and cars. But in more recent years, motorbikes have gone up. A LOT! Now the annual registration for motorbikes is $586 (motorcyclists mostly just gave up and bought cars).
Yes, in NZ it costs more to register a motorbike each year than it does to buy a cheap Japanese car.
Like an intrepid African lion hunter, I have been exploring the streets in search of retro two wheeled iron horses – do any still exist?
A few still do, but we are not talking regular A to B transport here – anyone paying $586 a year for a number plate wants two wheeled exotica!
Here are 10 styling motorbikes that got tangled up with my camera:
MY MINIMALIST STEEMIT SIGNATURE
For more info, see MY WHOPPING BIG STEEMIT SIGNATURE
Although I'm quite liberterian, I agree with that:
Some weeks ago a 17 year old son of my collegue Heiko died by accident on a motorbike. The risk of beeing injured or killed is too high. Motorbikes are not secure. Even cars are not, but compared to motorbikes they are quite save.
Sorry to hear that - yes they certainly are dangerous - I started racing off road when I was 17 and developed a lot of riding skills, but I never felt comfortable riding them on the road. I did ride a bicycle every day though and had a few crashes doing that.
NZ used to have a big motorbike scene, but now there are very few, and over 3x as many cars as there were 30 years ago. When I was a baby my parents put a sidecar on their Triumph Tiger 650...
well sifty 666, i have to learn how to drive. A Harley maybe.
A Harley is certainly where it's at :)
is that your wife or you sifty 666?
Believe it or not there are forums for motorcycle transvestites (searching for trannies doesn't work because you end up looking at gear boxes) - finding this out is entirely because of you - you are a bad influence...