The Ural Chronicles

I have been thinking about a sidecar rig for a couple of years now and signed up for sidecar training (you have to have a special endorsement in Washington state). I thought it would be neat to take  each one of my grandkids on a moto-adventure when they reach age 13, and I know full well their mothers would never allow them on the back of a two-wheel moto! Plus I thought it might be a sort of a two-birds, one-stone kind of thing to have a bike with which I could commute AND take off road. So I started looking around and had pretty much decided on a Ural, recommended by a buddy of mine who has one and loves it.

 

A Ural is a Russian made sidecar rig which is a knock-off of a 1939 German BMW R71.  There are various versions of the story, but basically Stalin wanted a durable motorcycle for his troops, so he either negotiated a deal with the Germans or flat stole the bike and had it reverse engineered.  The original BMW R71 was built as a simple and sturdy machine so that, as one writer put it, “the German farm boys could work on them in the field.”  According to the Ural website, “Harley-Davidson also copied the BMW design and delivered about 1000 Harley-Davidson XA (Experimental Army) flat-twin shaft drive motorcycles to the US Army during World War II.” 

So I started pricing out the Ural, deciding what amenities I would like, how much the bike and amenities would cost, and whether my budget would handle any of it.

Then on Wednesday last week I trolled craigslist here in Seattle and found a Ural Patrol listed. I quickly sent the info to my buddy and asked him what he thought. His response was that if I was serious about getting a sidecar rig then I would be an idiot not to buy this one, as it was a steal. Then I got on the Ural forum (sovietsteed,org) and found a discussion about this specific bike, the gist of which was "Doggone it, I wish I didn't already own a Ural, 'cause this is a smoking deal."

Gulp.
So a friend and I headed south on Saturday to have look-see. There is some minor surface rust on various parts, no doubt a combination of Pacific Northwest weather, Russian coating technique, and the fact that the bike was not garaged but only covered under a car port. The engine ran fine, the electricals worked, and the bike is loaded with extras.

Gulp.

So we cut the deal, settled the paperwork, and it was my bike to take home - 40 miles away. Except I have never driven a sidecar rig before, which you would think would be no big deal … but it is.  I have been madly reading about how to drive a sidecar rig for the past couple of weeks and even got a 96 out of 100 on a written exam, but it is sort of like trying to learn to swim on dry land - you may understand the theory but reality is something else.

I have not been this terrified on a motorcycle since I was 15 years old and learning how to ride my buddy Norm Wantland’s Honda CB 160.  Steering a sidecar rig is precisely opposite from steering a two wheel moto; the skill sets do not transfer and in fact actually oppose one another.  My brain knows this, but my muscles don't know this. Thus when I pulled out of the guys backyard into the alleyway, I headed towards a trash can and reactively counter-steered to avoid it - the correct technique to use to avoid a collision when you are on a two-wheeled vehicle.

Except that is precisely the wrong input on a sidecar (see paragraph above!), so I immediately ran over the big-ass trash can belonging to the neighbor next door. The good news is that I then got to practice driving in reverse, to get the bike back off the trash can.

Down the alley I set off, desperately yawing back and forth as the bike pulled left and right - accelerate, pull right; panic, let off throttle and apply brakes, which immediately pulled the bike left. And so on. When I got to the end of the ally I was supposed to turn left, where a buddy was waiting to lead me home, but the bike was pointing right so I said "Nuts, I'm going right and circle the block."

And so it went through town, and since it was raining and I was wearing my helmet, I had to pull down the face shield, which of course fogged up my glasses, significantly reducing sight lines. An inexperienced idiot on an 800 pound machine is bad enough, but a blind terrified  inexperienced idiot in the rain? Sigh.

Soon enough I had to enter the freeway via the on-ramp. Do you have any idea how many people get really mad at you when you are entering an on-ramp curve at only 15 miles per hour because you are terrified you are going to flip the doggone bike? Lots.

Once on the freeway I ran it in the right lane all the way up to 55 MPH and managed to miss only one connecting by-way because there was no way on God's green earth I was going to try to whip across two lanes of traffic to get on the left-side exit. So I went down to the next exit where I had the privilege of pissing off eleventy-seven more off- and on- rampers.

The next forty-five minutes were some of the longest of my life. I was gripping the handlebars so tight I darn near broke them off. My brain kept screaming, "Steer, don't lean; steer, don't lean!" And at each mile marker I would think to myself, "only thirty minutes more, only twenty-five minutes more, only twenty minutes more ... ad infinitum." At last we reached my exit, I took the off-ramp at a legal and not unreasonable 25 MPH, made a sharp right-hand turn safely without requiring two lanes, and motored the rest of the way home. Finally at my street I pulled over to the curb to park so I could open the garage and rearrange the other vehicles, and promptly ran the friggin' sidecar up over the curb because I am not used to having four feet of Russian dead weight hanging off my right side. But I decided to make lemonade and just counted it as my first off-road experience.

Now the bike is in the stable with the other steeds, my heart-rate is close to normal, I have changed my undershorts, and I will limit my excursions to the parking lot until after I complete the three wheel course.

But you know, after my blood pressure returned to normal I started thinking about how too often we settle into a comfort zone and never challenge ourselves.  At some point we do in effect choose to quit learning; we stop trying new things because we think we might look silly and worry about what others may think. 

What a shame!  Little children don't worry about how they look - they just do it!  The excitement of learning something new, of expanding a horizon far outweighs any sense of "I can't do this."  At what point does that creative urge to explore and expand get socialized out of us, I wonder?

So I am going to learn to drive a sidecar rig, even though I will look pretty dumb for awhile (by the way, the guy I bought the rig from actually called me late on Saturday evening and said, "I just had to call - I have been so worried about you since seeing you drive off!") but eventually I will learn how to drive it with skill, just like I did the two-wheeled moto.

So sign up for piano lessons, or take a beginning Spanish class, or learn how to paint ... just don't ever quit learning!

By the way, if you ever hear anybody call a hack rider a sissy because they are riding on three wheels, just hand them the keys to a side car rig and watch them soil themselves ...