hayabusa vs R1.wmv

sI wouldn't recommend that anyone go out and try this, but it does look like fun.

I have loved motorcycles since I was a teenager.  That was the Sixties, and it was a very exciting time in the motorcycle world.  Honda put radical new technologies on the racetrack, technologies that still rule the field.  Multiple cylinders and impossibly high-revving motors.  The bikes in this video are the huge, powerful descendants of those bikes.

The best thing about riding motorcycles is that experience takes over all four corners of your awareness.  You have no room left for worries or regrets.  100% attention is demanded, or else, you know, you get a flying lesson.  So it's relaxing, in a way.  Meditation of a sort.

The analog speedometer in the video reads 290 KPH at some points.  That translates to 174 MPH.  The digital speedo reads a little less at 270.  That's "only" 162 MPH.  Either way, these guys are booking.  The video also displays a phenomenon that I well recall.  When they reduce speed to 120 MPH or so (200 KPH) it looks like they're just lazing along, casual like.  I never went as fast as these guys, but I can tell you that if you've been rolling along at 100 MPH and then reduce speed to 80 MPH it feels very slow.  You almost feel like you could open a newspaper and read it off the handlebars.  It's interesting.