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[andy230]

will do!

Cheers!

a

[Andy M]

IMHO the trouble as usual is the compromises and alternatives.

You take 30 truck's carrying 50 bikes, a load of kit, enough fuel for 10,000 people to sail to America and you drag it to a race circuit. 5000 people then clog the roads and burn even more fuel to watch 20 blokes finish exactly where they set off from. This isn't very good for the planet.

So, lets make it greener, only burn ethanol and hydrogen and do circles to see who made least noise and least pollution and used least fuel. The crowd will at least use less fuel as they mostly only came in the first place only for the chance to see some bloke wearing half a dead Kangaroo slide on his **** at 120 mph. They'll use their fuel instead to visit the local IKEA and buy sliced dead tree's trucked in from Scandanavia. Trouble is, the ethanol is made by a dictator in South America who's population are now half starved as their food is turned into fuel and they'll have built an atomic power plant on every street corner to electrocute sea water and make a bit of H2.

The truely green alternative is to sit in a dark corner and imagine the race bikes. However, this is not what we humans are any good at as someone will soon go build what they imagined (and it might be a bomb not a bike!). The only solution then is to murder and compost half the population, this providing proper green entertainment for the others. I'd therefore like to suggest Roman style games (but not chariot racing as this requires Osterich feathers to go with the Kangaroo skins) as the true green alternative to bike racing 

As it seems joined up thinking isn't going to happen, I'm thinking it's far easier to just take small steps and see what happens next. We should try the new fuel ideas, try transport solutions like park and ride for the crowd. Motorsport is part of the solution as well as part of the problem I think. We've hit the limit of the resources this planet has, so we need to get smarter in how we use them.

If technology doesn't provide the answer via some miracle fuel, the planet typically finds a way of removing the offending species anyway!

Andy

[guest18]

Hmmm the only thing I can add that most haven't covered... with fuel now apparently averaging over £1 / litre and congestion getting worse more people are commuting by bike (I'm certainly seeing more "winter" bike/scooter commuters as time goes on). The fuel consumption on a "normal" middlewight is appalling(eg quoted 40mpgish or worse, a Renault Megane diesel which can carry five in centrally heated comfort can better 50 easily)), and sometime in our lifetimes it's going to get much more important...
Picture yourself as a potential bike commuter giving up a car to hack to work on a bike... would you spend £5k on a bike that'll do 130mph and 40mpg or one which will do 100mph and 80mpg.... and if you can't decide think forwards a few years to when the govt doubles fuel tax again and the oil price keeps going up, £2/litre? £3?... it's gonna happen*, it's only a question of when (*unless WW3 or global economic collapse sneaks up on us first  )
Say the muppets who are trying to sell the KLR Diesel donk for stupid money got Kawasaki to market it in Europe as an ideal commuter at £5 to £6k... 100mpg, tough enough to survive even our city roads, "off road" image, commanding riding position etc etc... how many Bandits/Hornets/500 twins would the big four sell then? Do it right and they could convince a lot of commuters too, quite a few car commuters I speak to who queue every morning for an hour for the Forth Bridge would consider the swap if offered 100mpg on something decent sized. (CG125s are amazing bikes, but with the best will in the world they can be scary in heavy traffic on a motorway/dual carriageway).

Oh and before you say performance matters more to buyers, how many GTI's are bought against how many diesel/economy cars? Modern bikes are an anomoly(sp?) at the moment!

The only consolation is there will be some nice cheap used sportbikes available in the future... if you can afford to run them!!

[andy230]

diesel enfields are looking more tempting.  I dont really ride for pleasure anymore.  Not to say I dont LOVE riding on the road, I enjoy almost every mile, but I only ride to work and back, and on other business.  Very rarely do I simply go "for a ride"...

So I dont need lots of power, just a slim bike!  With a bit of scoot to get MY space in traffic.  I suppose the latter consideration rules out my diesel enfield!

a