For a long time, I was a moto-snob: If it wasn't on two-wheels then it wasn't a "real" bike.
This included trykes, the Can-Ams, sidecars, and and any other vehicle that didn't fit the traditional motorcycle mold.
Yeah. I know. Not only was a I snob, but I was a misdirected and misinformed snob. The worst kind!
But even the most hopeless snob can mend her ways. Over the miles, I've met a lot of great people on less-than-tradition motorcycles. Riders who, due to illness or injury or age, no longer felt comfortable trying to keep a large, and very heavy, machine, upright at stop lights. Or in case of a fast stop. Or in tight spots in parking lots. Especially when there is a passenger on the back.
Without the stability and aid the third wheel or sidecar provides, these life-long riders would have had to hang up their leathers and retire their bikes.
The guy on the tryke isn't any less of a rider. He is a true motorcyclist. Doing whatever he (or she) must to stay out on the open roads. What rider doesn't support that?
Long live the three-wheeled machine!
And enter the sidecar.
Mother is the necessity of invention and need can make for some strange bedfellows. Who knew that a Soviet-era motorcycle and sidecar manufacturer, the storied Russian Ural motorcycle, would find a second life and commercial success in the capital for commercialism among the most voracious consumers around?
Its true.
The gas mileage is far better than a car. The bike is well-balanced. You can put the beloved dog or the groceries or even the golf clubs in the sidecar.
But only if the wife doesn't want to go out for a ride in the comfort of her own cockpit instead of riding fender fodder with a fabulous view of the back of your motorcycle helmet.
The cool retro styling has caught the attention of the hipper crowd as well. Its not just the seniors riding the Ural around town and cross-country, but a younger generation looking for a cool alternative to the common cage, er, I mean, car.
And now Ural, once the sole purveyor of motorcycles to the Soviet Red Army, exports 60-percent of its bikes to the United States. In fact, the company only sold 20 units in Russia last year.
