BIKES: Motus In Motion

Motorcycling Destinations

BIKES: Motus In Motion

Neale Bayly heads west on the Motus MST.

Neale Bayly | Posted September 12, 2011 Charlotte, NC

Neale on the Motus.

"The only ones for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…"

- Jack Kerouac

Out in the Nevada desert, the black night wraps around us like a cool blanket after the heat of the day. Somewhere west of Reno there are few man made lights to break up the darkness my world reducing to the strip of white light in front of me and the soft glow of the controls inside the fairing. Running hard and fast for many hours I’m at one with my machine and, tipping into another high-speed sweeper, roll the throttle on just to feel the magical pull of the big, powerful engine, as it blasts us through the night.

Distant memories of hitchhiking through here some twenty-five years ago come flooding back as I see a tell tale glow on the horizon that I had mistaken for dawn on that first trip. Growing brighter and brighter, it explodes into a sea of dazzling, shimmering light, as we pass colorful high-rise buildings, flashing signs and billboards enticing us to lose our money in style. With the tachometer reading 4,000 rpm and the speedometer working close to eighty miles per hour, my locomotive stays solidly on track and within minutes is thundering back into the cool, dark night, as I find myself alone with my thoughts once more.

Laguna Seca is a sacred place during MotoGP weekend, so with an invite to join the Motus crew at the track, followed by the chance to ride both of the prototypes as they make their way to Denver, I packed my bags and headed west. Four months have passed since I rode the bikes in Daytona, and a lot has happened in that time. Much testing, revising, and upgrading have taken place, so I was excited to see how the bikes were developing. I had left Daytona extremely impressed with a machine that had started life as a clean sheet of paper, especially as they had only rolled a handful of miles since birth and already felt so similar to a production motorcycle, minor issues notwithstanding.

Daytona was the first time the world had seen the Motus MST and MST-R in person, in action, or even at all, so it was amazing to compare the different dynamic at Laguna. Where in Daytona we met with a lot of the world’s media, and a lot of “what is it?” questions from people we ran into, here in California nearly everyone who interacted with the American V-fours knew what they were. They also knew about the company, and the journey Brian Case and Lee Conn have been on touring America in the previous weeks. It gave me a lot of faith in our industry to realize how much people are reading magazines and online motorcycle sites, and how knowledgeable they are. And, as the days flew by with the adrenaline pounding excitement of watching Moto GP machines defying the laws of physics as the backdrop, a strong theme started developing.

There is only one person who is interested in the Motus machines. They don’t belong to one tribe where you need chaps and fringes and a closed minded attitude to other forms of two-wheeled transport. He or she doesn’t come as a walking billboard for their brand of choice. They are aficionados of the sport and attend racing events like the Moto GP. They might be visiting with their buddies at a multi-line dealer, or riding long distance up into the cool, pine scented air on twisting mountain roads for dinner with other kindred souls who embrace the call of the road, and the wider encompassing passion that is motorcycling. They are simply one and the same person, they are motorcyclists.

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