In light of my recent purchase and the fact that my Aprilia Futura is sitting in Motodisiac’s garage awaiting 10K mile maintenance I have been consistently riding the Dakar on a daily basis. It was some hundred miles shy from 18K when I had purchased it. Now at almost 19K and freshly serviced it was ready to take on the toughest challenge of them all - daily commuting on the 405 freeway :).

My first few street rides on it felt awkward. The bike is tall with a high center of gravity. It’s 650cc single felt really underpowered comparing to the Futura. The handle bars seemed to be way too wide for lane splitting. The suspension was way too soft, hard braking would make me dip forward all the time. One of the good things however was the seat comfort. Also the riding posture was reminiscent of the Hypermotard which I thoroughly enjoyed demoing some time ago. With that thought in mind I went into the day 3 of street riding my Dakar.

I no longer remembered that the bike was underpowered, that the handlebars were too wide, the center of gravity was too high. Leaning forward pressing on the handlebars made me an aggressor. I felt like a total hooligan except without the ability to do wheelies and stoppies (yet). The Dakar was happy to oblige as I was zipping through dense traffic. The more I rode it more I realized how convenient of a daily commuter this bike really is. The handle bars are actually at prefect height as they go way above the car mirrors and below the tall truck mirrors. Yes the engine is slightly underpowered especially going uphill. But that also gives a chance to redline it pretty much in all gears and still stay within the speed limit. The seat is comfortable enough, although not as comfortable as the Futura’s. ABS helped me a time or two when I had to abruptly stop. I was finally getting the feel of why Supermoto bikes are that fun to ride. Of course it won’t hurt to replace knobbies with sport tires, to add more power to the bike. But for right now the Dakar will do just fine. I can and will have my fun with it.

And while I am writing this I just stumbled upon this article on one of my favorite blogs - Autoblog. They got a new toy in their garage - Aprilia SXV550. The article is well written and goes into details of why Supermoto bikes are fun. Of course Aprilia SXV is no Dakar. I am sure one can have way more fun with it. And you can not overlook the fact that it is just beautiful. May be now that I got that familiar with the way you ride these machines I’d revisit some of the Ducati dealers in the area to have a second look at the Hypermotard. You just never know :).

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 2:01 pm and is filed under Motorcycles, Street, Offroad, 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.