The time has come. The visual inspection of this bike that Motodisiac and I had some time ago can not do the justice. I had to demo the Hypermotard. I had to see for myself if my interest in this piece of Italian motorcycle engineering really died down.

The demo bike they had was the more expensive S version featuring the termi slip-ons - nice note. I got on the bike and cautiously started moving. The riding posture was foreign to me as I’d never seriously ridden a supermoto style bike before. As I got on the street I tried to gun it. The bike gladly complied and I got scared. Actually the proper word would be weirded out. The riding posture was such that it felt like I was pretty much riding the front wheel or rather I was riding a one wheeled bike. You look down and you see the road in front of you and not your gas tank. Really strange. It took me a couple of minutes to get used to it.

The demo ride itinerary offered by the dealership was approximately 5 miles and had a little bit of everything - some street riding, some canyon roads (ok, not canyon roads, some turns) and a bit of a freeway ride as well. I became confident only once I got past a few blocks of street riding. The one wheeled feeling was no longer strange. I felt like being a bit of a hooligan. Definitely fun to ride.

Some side notes - the brakes felt really good, some what Tuono-ish, the seat was not all that uncomfortable, the riding posture was pretty aggressive and still somewhat foreign, although I am sure I could get used to that.

I think I’d have to try riding more supermoto like bikes to understand if this type of bike is good for me in general. And if it is then the Hypermotard is a very worthy prospect. The Hypermotard hysteria lives on.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Motorcycles, Street, Riding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.