I'm sure that nobody has calculated this and it's rather sad that I have.
I purchased an ex-police ST1100 4 years ago exactly, last week. Shortly after doing so I experienced what other riders on white ST's have experienced - which I like to call
macro perception.
This is where a great number of the population take a cursory glance at the bike and mistakenly think the bike is still on active duty.
Apart from the waves from other police vehicles a great number of the general population move over to let me pass, give way when they don't need to and change their minds about changing lanes in front of me. Of course there are the ones that slow down to a ridiculous speed and hold you up, but as a general rule they are few and far between. The bulk of my fellow commuters fall into the first category.
I commute to work every day, about 50kms one way, along a fairly congested freeway in Brisbane. One particular impressive morning I counted 25 cars that moved over to let me pass. So this got me thinking; For the following month I teamed up with another rider who lives close to me and works in the same building as myself and we timed our rides to and from work each day. He rides a grey Yamaha TMD900.
Consistently I arrived at work or back home by at least 5 minutes sooner than him. The only day he beat me was the day I had a puncture. Now you might say that different riders ride at a different pace and I know I can push the bike hard at times, however there are also days when I ride along and smell the daisies, as it were. I don't believe I was competitive during that month which would have skewed the results and that wasn't the purpose of the exercise. And yes the traffic was particularly heavy that month which appears to be an ever increasing trend.
So now to the point of this post;
If I have saved 10 minutes each day by riding a white ST1100, then in the last four years I have saved 10 days of my life to spend on better things. Only thing is, that those 10 days have probably been spent riding my bike - but not in a sea of cars.
Ask yourself this - what value you would put on ten days of your life?
A.
