FIRST:
Ol’ Man Dorman sent me this clip of a Paul McCartney show in CDMX a couple days ago wherein Jack White and St Vincent join him and his band for the conclusion of THE END. It is delightful.
THEN:
TV on the Radio resurfaced for an absolutely barn-burner of a performance on Jimmy Fallon, heralding both a criminally short tour AND the 20th anniversary reissue of their debut album, which I’m trying to decide if I’m gonna go buy RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.
Two days ago this humble site had its 24th birthday; my first entry here was on the 20th of November in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand.
I had but 20 posts that year. I didn’t get super verbose until 2003, and if I’m honest it’s probably the creeping horror of the Bush administration that did it. You can look over to the right, under the Archives header, and see the productivity curve. Peak was 2007, with 1,147 posts.
There have been 28 this year. Only 44 last year. I haven’t hit 100 since 2016. Habits die, I reckon.
I do regret every long form post or reply I wrote for Facebook or Reddit or Metafilter now, which ought to be instructive. There’s no good reason to write and post anywhere that you don’t own.
Anyway, Heathen limps along. I have no plans to stop.
So, Triumph has a giant-ass bike called the Rocket 3. It’s an inline 3-cylinder engine with 2,458cc displacement. That’s legit a car-sized engine. Motorcycles are almost exclusively under 1,000 CC — you may recall people talking about having a “500” or a “750” in years past; those were displacement numbers in CCs (and, honestly, those were ENTIRELY ENOUGH in a world where the national speed limit was 55).
Today, top-end sport bikes — bikes capable of 200+ MPH — have 1,000 cc engines. These so-called “liter bikes” are rightly viewed as widowmakers because, well, if you get too happy with the throttle you’re gonna have a real, real bad day (and so are the people around you).
The big cruiser makers (e.g. Harley) have traditionally stuck with very traditional engine types, and so they were pretty much the only folks out there still using (and requiring) displacement to get power. The top-end Harley touring bikes are well over a liter in displacement, though obviously they mark their engines in cubic inches on account of Freedom. Even so, I think the biggest one available is still only about 1,800 cc. The power per unit of displacement with Harley is, though, notoriously poor. (Tradition!)
Anyway, the Rocket 3 exists. That almost 2.5L engine gives the bike 180 horsepower, and it comes with a similar torque figure. That’s CRAZYTOWN. Most leaned-over fairing-clad sport bikes don’t make that much power, and this is a bike with an upright riding position and zero wind protection. I mean, sure, it’s a big bike — 40% heavier than mine — but it’s nothing like the nearly half-ton tourers you see on the roads that it’ll compete with.
Of course, such absurdity comes at a cost: the base model Rocket 3 is about $25,000, which is HUGE money for a motorcycle (my first one cost less than $5k NEW). All this together means the Rocket 3 is what they call a “halo model” — high price, extraordinary levels of charisma, and low sales, like the Viper your local Dodge guy had for a while. A dealer gets a couple to showcase on the floor, but he doesn’t expect to sell many.
But Wait There’s More!
In my email this morning — I’m on the Triumph list — came the announcement of a special edition of the Rocket 3 in honor of that paragon of motorsports safety, Evel Knievel.
Gaze in wonder at this $30K variant of an already very, very silly motorcycle.