My plan for a long weekend road trip got kiboshed. I won’t go into detail because it really doesn’t matter. I did go for a little local ride through a couple of the coastal North shore towns: Salem, Swampscott and Marblehead. I took as many winding and turning roads and I could to get a good feel for how the Kawasaki Vulcan 900 Custom maneuvers them (not to mention a bunch of brick and cobblestone roads, which the suspension easily handled).
Since the Custom has such good throttle response, I did find myself getting a little daring with it. At stop lights I would pull up in the right hand lane next to other cars waiting at the light and just blow past them when the light turned green. I generally don’t do this on my Volusia because it just doesn’t have that kind of throttle response. I also noticed that more people tend to watch me ride down the street on this motorcycle and I think it’s because of the eye-catching paint color.
A kind of funny observation I had about the Custom is that the engine makes a whirring sound on acceleration that reminds me of a hovercraft from Star Wars. Which made me think of Star Trek and the obvious “Vulcan” reference. And the candy red color of the bike made me think of a lyric from Prince’s song “Little Red Corvette“-which made me giggle when I thought of Mr. Spock actually saying that line from the song:
“I’m gonna try to tame your little red love machine.“
Stream of consciousness while riding a motorcycle can be a funny thing sometimes!