By Michael Richmond
Death wobble will always make your stomach drop. It doesn’t matter how many times you experience it; the second it starts, you feel vulnerable and out of control. But if you get used to it, you know to loosen your grip on the throttle, hug your knees to the gas tank and accelerate out of the death zone.
The wobble is the resulting effect of unbalanced motorcycle geometry at high rates of speed. Usually it comes from the shocks being too loose or too tight, blown fork seals, bubbles in a tire, or uneven side weight distribution. When you’re 21 and you swap out the stock rear springs and coils for shorter ones in an attempt to re-engineer your motorcycle for a “meaner” stance, you’re guaranteed to risk dumping the bike. Luckily when I dumped mine, I wasn’t on a highway or back road—I was inches away from taking out a pack of hippie hikers ¾ of the way up a mountain on the Appalachian Trail.
You can’t really be sure if it makes you a better rider knowing how to speed up and out of something called “death wobble” but I think I learned a few important lessons that summer night; don’t tighten your grip on your bars and slam your brakes. When you do that during the chaos of your front tire gyrating uncontrollably, you only increase the force of each gyration. The other lesson: don’t take a 30-year-old beater motorcycle meant for the road up a hiking trail at 60 miles an hour.
What wrecking a motorcycle didn’t change, was my love for two-wheeled machines. But because I couldn’t afford a new motorcycle, I had to take my broken ego and busted motorcycle into the garage. I could barely afford my apartment so buying spare parts off of eBay was the only choice. I replaced some elements and took some off for good. Most of the electrical components stopped working after the fall and I couldn’t afford to replace both the fork tubes, electrical console, and wiring harness so I just took all of the electronics off the bike, save the starter, front light, and brake light. Who needs turn signals and a speedometer anyways? I definitely did not (still don’t) and for the rest of the summer after salvaging my bike, I pushed the limits of what this 700cc V-twin Japanese engine, frame, and transmission could do. I told my then-girlfriend now-wife to come say goodbye because I was strapping nothing more than a tent, fishing pole, and small backpack to my bike and I didn’t know when I was coming back—and then I was gone.
Being jobless riding from watering hole to watering hole and sleeping in random fields and campsites from the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania, through the Catskills, up to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, back through the Green Mountains of Vermont, across to the Adirondacks, and back home to Albany, NY was the trip of a lifetime. Not just because of the wild roads and late nights but because of what that beater bike could do.
I ended up making friends with some Harley and Honda mechanics and welders who built the tightest and lowest choppers from the ground up. Even though my bike wasn’t “cool,” I knew how to ride it and that got me in. You could probably confuse my red Honda Shadow with Pee Wee Herman’s red Schwinn cruiser but if you go back and look at the engineering of a 1986 Honda Shadow you might be surprised by its capabilities.
Whether you’re a Harley guy or not, you’ve probably heard of the infamous FXR. Despite its belated global fandom, it was and is the best handling motorcycle Harley Davidson has ever made. I’ve owned a few Harley’s over the years and none of them handle like the hard to find FXR. But I didn’t realize when I bought my Honda for $700 that it was engineered to copy-cat the performance and handling of Harley Davidson’s not-so-popular (at the time in the 80’s) FXR.
So with my poor man’s Harley, I raced from state to state on windy roads and endless summer nights with some of the fastest, well-respected, and most confident bike builders in the Northeast. When I told them about my attempt to be the first man to drunkenly blaze through the Appalachian Trail with a POS Japanese motorcycle, not only did they laugh but they told me I’d fit right in. Even though I was a young kid looking up to guys who put dinner on their tables by spending their waking lives wrenching away on motorcycles, I felt like an imposter—until things got real.
When you’re riding in the middle of a pack, shoulder-to-shoulder at speeds over 90 mph, you better have your “shit dialed in.” I definitely did not. Not only is it a risk for me but my abilities, inabilities, and decisions affect everyone in the group. When you are forced to perform or get left behind, pick the former. Relax, loosen your grip, and enjoy the ride.
