Way back when I was in college, I had a 1971 Honda 750 (I’ll you about that bike when I do the \u00bfQuantos Pistones?<\/em> blog on the fours).\u00a0 One of my ROTC buddies, Keith Hediger, had a 1969 Kawasaki Mach III.\u00a0 It was a real oddball:\u00a0 A 500cc, two-stroke triple that could stay with a Honda Four in a drag race (which was kind of amazing, considering the Honda’s 50% displacement advantage). Keith and I had this great idea that it would be a real adventure to ride from New Jersey to Quebec, Canada, and we set off to do just that.<\/p>\n New Jersey to Canada on two naked street bikes with no plan, no luggage, and no rain gear was not a great idea.\u00a0 That point was driven home when it started to rain somewhere in Vermont.\u00a0 It kept raining all the way up into Canada, and when we hit Montreal, we decided we had experienced enough adventure riding for one trip.\u00a0 But it was my first international motorcycle ride, and I had a chance to ride Keith’s Mach III when we switched bikes for a while.<\/p>\n My short ride on the Mach III convinced me of three things:<\/p>\n I didn’t ride the Mach III long enough or on the right kind of roads to assess its rumored widow-making handling, but the bike felt twitchy and unstable compared to my Honda.\u00a0 And that was it for me and triples for the next 2o or 30 years.<\/p>\n My decades-earlier short ride on the Mach II notwithstanding, I changed my mind about triples.\u00a0 I wanted a Triumph.\u00a0 It started at a Cycle World<\/em> event (or maybe was it Cycle<\/em>; I always get the two pubs mixed up) in Los Angeles.\u00a0 I was there on my ’92 Softail when it happened:\u00a0 I heard a Trimph Speed Triple enter the parking lot.\u00a0 It was a magnificent thing, kind of a pearlescent candy pink (which sounds weird as I type this), but wow, it hit all the buttons for me.\u00a0 The color (I would call it bubble gum pearl) just flat worked for me, and that exhaust note…it was just wonderful. It was kind of a mix between a small block Chevy with a big cam and a jungle cat’s snarl.\u00a0 Fierce, yet refined.\u00a0 Loud, but not obnoxious.\u00a0 Big power, but controlled.\u00a0 I knew that someday soon I would own a Triumph triple.<\/p>\n 2006 Triumph Tiger<\/strong><\/p>\n That someday soon arrived when I stopped at Doug Douglas Motorcycles in San Bernardino.\u00a0 In those days some 20 years ago now, Doug Douglas was an old school motorcycle shop.\u00a0 \u00a0San Bernardino is regarded by many in southern California as the armpit of the state, and I guess I was of that opinion, too.\u00a0 At least until one of my riding buddies corrected me:\u00a0 “It’s more like the crotch,” he said.\u00a0 I think he was right.<\/p>\n Anyway, I was riding through San Bernardino on my Harley when I stopped at Doug Douglas Motorcycles.\u00a0 Doug was an old guy even then, and he was famous, I guess, as a former motorcycle racer.\u00a0 He was a crusty, cagey old guy who picked up on my reaction when I saw the candy blue, tiger-striped Tiger you see above.\u00a0 He knew I was a goner before he ever said a word.\u00a0 Doug told me what it would be, out the door, and my fate was sealed.\u00a0 Folks, I’ve never paid the asking price for anything, and folks who know me, know I’m as tight was a turtle’s butthole (and that’s watertight).\u00a0 I looked at the Tiger and then Doug and I simply said, “Okay.”<\/p>\n I don’t remember exactly, but I think the Tiger was about $9,000.\u00a0 \u00a0Sue hit the roof when I came home and told her what I had just done.\u00a0 Then I told her I needed a ride back to Doug Douglas so I could bring the bike home.\u00a0 \u00a0 She fumed for about half the trip until she finally asked me where the money was coming from.\u00a0 I told her I had some money left from selling my Suzuki TL1000S.\u00a0 “What did you do with the rest of that money?” she asked.<\/p>\n “That mother of pearl and black onyx bracelet I bought for your birthday,” I said.\u00a0 I hadn’t known it when I said it, but it turned out that was the perfect answer.\u00a0 Sue was sweet as a kitten for the rest of the ride.\u00a0 \u00a0When we reached Doug Douglas’s place, I introduced her to Doug.<\/p>\n “You must be the world’s greatest motorcycle salesman,” Sue said.\u00a0 “My husband told me he said yes to your first offer, and that never happens.”<\/p>\n Old Doug scratched his chin and told her, “It’s true I’m a good motorcycle salesman, but I’m really much better at selling new living room and bedroom furniture.”\u00a0 Sue and I were perplexed at that one, until Doug added, “lots of guys who come home with new motorcycles end up buying new furniture within a few days of their buying a motorcycle from me…”<\/p>\n The Tiger was a wonderful motorcycle and I covered a lot of miles with it. The Tiger was Triumph’s “me, too” ADV machine, but it was god-awful off road.\u00a0 I was terrified on it every time I turned onto a dirt road in Baja, which was exactly twice.\u00a0 In soft sand it would scare the bejesus out of a former paratrooper (something I can speak to with authority).\u00a0 \u00a0The Tiger was essentially a high-performance street bike with ADV styling.\u00a0 It excelled on mountain roads.\u00a0 It was tall and top heavy, but it was fast, it sounded wonderful, and I loved it.<\/p>\n 2007 Triumph Speed Triple<\/strong><\/p>\n The Tiger scratched a lot of my itches, but I still remembered that candy bubble gum Speed Triple, I fancied myself a hooligan, and I still had the urge to own a Speed Triple.<\/p>\n About a year after I bought the Tiger from Doug Douglas, I was in his dealership again and I saw the Speed Triple you see above.\u00a0 I didn’t buy it on that visit, but I thought about it a lot in the days that followed.\u00a0 \u00a0I drove out there on a lunch break (I was still working then), made an offer, and it was mine.<\/p>\n I opted for a few doodads, including gold-anodized bits and pieces, the little flyscreen, and a set of Jardine carbon fiber mufflers.\u00a0 The result was what was unquestionably the most beautiful motorcycle I’ve ever owned.\u00a0 I remember I was getting a haircut one time downtown and a cop came into the barbershop.\u00a0 He asked if the Speed Triple was mine.\u00a0 I got an adrenaline rush thinking I had done something wrong, but nope, he just wanted to tell me it was a beautiful motorcycle.<\/p>\n The Speed Triple was beautiful and it photographed well, but it was buzzie and uncomfortable, and with its short wheelbase it was a little bit twitchy.\u00a0 I owned four or five motorcycles in those days, and the S3 was the one I rode the least.\u00a0 I sure liked looking at it, though.<\/p>\n One morning, I was headed to the University early in the morning for an 8:00 class.\u00a0 That was November 9, 2009.\u00a0 I exited the freeway and turned left, and I remember seeing a guy at a stop sign in a Camaro.\u00a0 We established eye contact.\u00a0 The next thing I knew I was being loaded into a helicopter, in great pain, with the blades’ downwash sweeping over me, thinking either I was having a really bad dream or I was being medevaced in Vietnam (which is kind of interesting, as I’ve never been in Vietnam).<\/p>\n It wasn’t the Camaro guy at the stop sign, and it wasn’t even at that intersection.\u00a0 My S3\/automobile altercation had occurred a block further west, which I learned 6 weeks later while I was still in the hospital.\u00a0 I have no memory of the crash (event amnesia, the doctor called it), but as crashes go, it was a relatively bad one.\u00a0 I had a concussion, two crushed vertebra, and two big fractures of my left femur.\u00a0 The femur was the big deal.\u00a0 One surgery while I was still in the hospital put a big metal plate down there to hold everything together while the fractures healed, and when that broke a year later, I had revision surgery to remove the now-broken plate and install a femoral rod so that the lower fracture (which had not healed) could do so.\u00a0 \u00a0(Trust me on this:\u00a0 The words “revision” and “surgery” should never be used together.)\u00a0 I went on to ride other motorcycles throughout the western US, Mexico, Colombia, and China, so I guess the accident didn’t screw me over too badly.\u00a0 But it made an impression, and I’ll never use a motorcycle to commute to work again.\u00a0 The streets have a different personality during commuting hours, one best suited for a big car, or maybe an armored vehicle.<\/p>\n So that’s my story on the triples.\u00a0 Although the idea of a three-cylinder motorcycle may feel weird (and from an engineering perspective, maybe a little unbalanced or asymmetric), I believe a three-cylinder motorcycle makes a lot of sense.\u00a0 I think a triple has it all:\u00a0 Power, balance, handling, and (at least for Triumphs) the right ExhaustNotes.<\/p>\n Missed our stories on the Singles and the Twins?\u00a0 Hey, no problemo!\u00a0 Here they are:<\/p>\n \u00bfQuantos Pistones? 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\n\u00bfQuantos Pistones? (The Singles)<\/a><\/p>\n
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