Very well put!mender wrote:The main point is what the bike is being used for; leisure or commuting.
If you have the time and can smell the flowers and take it all in along the way, great-but commuting as an alternative to a car is an entirely different thing, especially in a tight working day or schedule when you don't have ten minutes more and the reason you chose a bike was to save time.
I'd hate to commute on the Vox and be ragging it to death and holding other cars up, but for a dawdle around the back lanes when I have all the time in the world it is great.
That being said, I do use it to see mates and have to encounter commuter traffic so I would welcome the extra power and cruising speed on the Innova to be used when appropriate or when needed to be safe keeping in the flow of traffic.
Horses for courses, I used to like going fast and used to travel long distances daily too (20k on my R1200RT in 6 months) but I do prefer taking it easier now. Even then, I find it embarrassing to be holding up commuter traffic or the lorries on the banks so would welcome 65mph ability and more torque for some of the journeys I carry out.
The strange thing is, I find it very difficult to 'just go for a ride'. I MUST have a destination in mind, and actually have a purpose to going there. there's a natural speed we all find (i like to call it 'best speed') and at the lower edge of that day's 'best speed' is an involving flower sniffing bimble. At the top end is a ride where skill, traffic observation and all the other dynamics of the process are handled effortlessly, competently and to great personal satisfaction.
For me, on an open fairly empty road on the Innova with it's useful handling, great brakes and so on, 55 to 65 IS flower sniffing bimbling 'best speed'. On a more congested road, 55 to 65 is top end concentrating 'best speed' where continual overtaking strategies and conservation of momentum are the things that involve and consume my interest.... Which is why the Innova 'fits' me.
Having done long distance high speed dispatch on faster bikes, my brain was geared to find that top end 'best speed' at around 80-90 on clear A roads so even now, having slowed from lack of daily high speed 'practise', I still find 45 too slow...Not engaging enough on any level. On a very slow bike however, 45 IS engaging as the bike itself forces you to engage mechanically......