Well, I got into DFW about 10am today. Whew, what a ride! They say first impressions are what makes it. Not true. As I rode those many miles and pulled across the Texas line, I reflected on this new Blackbird. This bike rides like a Cadillac, handles like a Ferrari, has the horsepower of a Saturn V rocket....and looks good enough to have people pulling along side of it just for a longer look. I would stop for gas and people would walk up admiring the bike and asking about it. I even had one guy ask me "does it have a radio too?". I replied "not too much need for a radio at 200 miles per hour...". One guy asked "did you ride that all the way from Tennessee?", after seeing the license plate. I said "no, I carried it part of the way"...taken right out from Bill Engvall. I had one guy on a Suzuki GSXR1000 pull along side me on the highway and look the bike over. Seeing it packed up with shit hanging off both sides and up in my helmet with me, I guess he figured it was a beater or an old man's sport tourer. Well, it might be an old man's sport tourer, but this guy acted like he wanted to run. How did I know? Well, after he got enough of a look, he hit the throttle and sort of waved like as if to say "I don't have time for waiting on you, I have to go faster". I sat there right on his license plate as he went faster. We were kicking along about 110mph (according to my speedo). He didn't have mirrors, so he couldn't see me. Directly, after a minute or two of what he thought would be plenty of time to see a far distance of me, he turned to see how far he left me behind. When he turned, all he saw was my headlight in his visor. He then hit the hammer on that GSXR, and I thought he was about to snap the throttle cable as hard as he hit it. Well, I continued to match his speed with almost no effort from this Blackbird. We got up to right at 140mph and he turned to look again, and again he saw me. This time when I saw him about to look, I hammered on the Blackbird just a bit and pulled by him like he was sitting still and just bumped to 165mph leaving him about a 1/4 mile when I backed off and let him catch up. When he pulled back up to me, he didn't have so much motivation to show someone how fast he was on his Suzuki. It was pretty cool! Even bagged out, this Blackbird will fly! What does it feel like to go 165mph like that? It feels like having the keys to a special club everyone wants to go to, but only a select few are allowed. The only bad part of the trip was the tank bag. I've used this thing plenty on road trips with the Shadow. It worked well and gave me a place to put extra shit instead of deep packing in a saddlebag. With the Shadow, the tank sits low and it worked. With the Blackbird, the tank is so high that the tank bag when sitting on the tank will bang my chin guard on the helmet with every bump. On top of that, there was no room to move on this bike. I was just locked in place. Wasn't too bad for the first 10 miles or so, but the last 1390 or so SUCKED!!! There were about 1390 times I wanted to chunk it in the ditch of the side of the highway....not even slow down when I did it! For anyone on a sportbike thinking of one of these, they're cool for around town riding where you need to grab food or something, but a long trip isn't worth it.
