Lauren, Bill and I headed over to Bike Week today to see what new there was to be seen, and to do a demo ride or two. Lauren and Bill were already there when I got there, so I signed up for the same ride window Lauren did, both of us riding the Z1000. Our turn was at 2pm. We hung out there for a bit, chatted with the Kawasaki people and generally had a fabulous time. I joined ROK a week or so ago, and was able to sit in the ROK tent and enjoy the goodies. We took an hour or so to walk around and check out the other manufacturers and vendor tents, then came back and waited for our turn to ride. We noticed that they were announcing a few free bikes with every group, as all the slots hadn’t been taken. Why not bump up and get in an earlier ride? We both managed to get a Z1000 at 12:30, which was 5 minutes from when we signed up, so we got our gear and headed over to the canopies where the riders meeting would take place.
In the riders meeting, they went over the same things they always do, no passing, obey all traffic laws, the sportbikes have front brakes that actually work so please be careful (directed at the people who usually ride cruisers), etc, etc. Then they told us to go and choose our bikes. Lauren made a bee-line for the Z directly behind the ride leader, and of course I want to be near her. But an older gentleman made it to the bike behind her before I did, and his friend behind him. I really want to ride next to Lauren, and there was no passing allowed, so I asked the gentleman if he would mind letting me have that bike as I wanted to ride by my friend. To my complete surprise, he got a bit of an attitude with me and said “I guess so!” and started to walk away. Then he turned back to me, frowning, and said… “I hope you ride fast.”
At this point I need to stop and let you know that I was raised to never be rude or disrespectful to my elders, almost without exception. Someone older than me really has to cross the line before I will let them have it verbally. This was not one of those times, so I did not say the first thing that popped into my mind, which was “Yes, I think I can ride fast enough FOR A FIVE MILE DEMO RIDE AT BIKE WEEK”, dripping in sarcasm.
Instead I bit my tongue and muttered, “Yeah, I think I will be all right”.
Plus, you never really know about old-timers. Many of them can ride the snot out of any bike, especially if they are so bold as to question you about your riding ability, so the last thing I wanted to do was smart off to some ex-racer and end up having my ass handed to me on a demo ride.
Whatever, I forgot about it soon enough. Just the thought of being able to ride the Z again, even on a five mile demo ride at bike week, was making me giddy as a school girl. My God I love this bike! We got on the road a moment later, and the ride leader being on a ZX10, I was hoping for a nice run. She did what she could, but there was quite a bit of traffic, and we couldn’t really get moving for longer than 30 seconds or so at a time. But Lauren and I still had fun, hitting enough curves to be able to get off the bike a tiny bit. Apparently Lauren intimidated the ride leader a little, but I’ll save that story for another post.
After we pulled back up to the Kawasaki tent, and turned our machines off, I went to talk to Lauren to see how she liked the bike. The next thing I knew, the two older gentlemen were walking over to us. I looked at them, thinking, oh boy… what did I do wrong now? Were they on my tail the entire time, was I holding them up? I didn’t remember seeing anyone in my mirrors most of the time. But they surprised me again by saying “We are sorry, we didn’t realize… you ladies can ride”.
I told them what we both ride, and that we are trackday riders, then we chatted about the Z1000 briefly before going our own ways. At first I was kind of annoyed by this exchange, but the longer I thought about it, the more funny it became. Another one of those things you wish you had on video.
