timothy st.john
Cruisin' Guzzisti
Hi everyone,
The great thing about having a V7 Racer, I now find, is that most everybody else who got one has dumbed their's down in embarrassment of being targeted by riders of humbler V7 variants, both on forums and on the street; they believe that their course of more...temperate acquisition, somehow reflects that they boast a greater level of 'actual' rider enthusiasm, while Racer owners are clearly posers.
There is only one thing (well, two actually) that I enjoy more than a good 'ride' (wait, philosophically two of those are the same thing...moving on), and thats meeting, and talking to new people. If you presently choose riding 'bikes' over 'talking' to people, I can help you (I keep regular office hours but I'm not cheap), and nothing, but nothing, attracts people like a Racer; not even a blinged-out or blacked-out Harley (both of which intimidate rather than attract), and no one on the street has ever commented on my Panigale.
Many Racer owners seem to have lost sympathy for their once beloved seat cowls, chrome tanks, and solo saddles. As a happy result of this, nobody else's Racer looks like mine; which ironically is largely stock. What many of you failed to have grasped, is that excess in one aspect of the bikes styling was largely balanced out by excess in another area.
The tail section was balanced (in consequence only) by the chrome tank; the dull black wheels were balanced out by the red frame and hubs, etc. Philosophically, formal aesthetics is about balance, and formal philosophy is what I do. I've played around with aesthetic syllogisms to improve on the balance of this bikes style, and almost every time more was lost than was gained by it. Well done Guzzi!
Even the simple addition of knee pads to the tank (as a means to quiet the amount of chrome on show) disturbed the pregnant joy of the lines of its pleasantly portly tank, more than it succeeded in dumbing down the 'bling'. And thats just my point. A simple algebra of debit and credit fails in address of the calculus of emotion. In sessions, I ask everyone who absently says, 'I feel...' to tell me what they think; and vice versa. Neither question should ever be asked without it is immediately followed by the other.
Now, go and look at your bike, and ask yourself what you 'feel'. If the answer is different than what you 'think', then you have failed 'caculus' (again?) of aesthetics that first attracted you to the bike.
Its not very often that stylists, even Italian ones, get it so right. That being said, I did discover two fixes that, in my opinion, greatly improve the existentialism of the bike without detracting from it at all.
These 'character' mods corrected the pretence and arbitrariness of the least popular style elements of the V7, to give it the gritty...legitimacy it otherwise lacks; but desperately needs in order to woo those men that lack the courage to mount a beauty, because she's too...obvious. God forbid your kids, your pastor, or worse...your mother should see you in such company. Less is always just less (even in philosophical ideology).
On the other hand, these are the kind of changes that cause your buddies to be quietly covetous (though their stares betray them, she won't blush or mind; even if you do) and slap you on the back (this assumes a back broad enough in metaphor to suffer the blow without injury; physical or emotional), if only when their own mounts are out of sight, and I assure you...out of mind.
If you've been following, then you should have expected that these changes are going to actually ramp things up a notch (in terms of what you 'think' in analysis of the individual elements), in pursuit of dialling things down (what you feel in synthesis of the overall effect), in achievement of aesthetic equilibrium. As I said, Guzzi almost got it right. You bought it, but realized on some level that something was amiss.
In philosophy, moving away from a thing only to arrive unexpectedly back to it is called dialectic: a thing (the thesis) passes over to become its opposite (its antithesis), before achieving intellectual marriage in 'synthesis': the forfeiture of independence necessary to the realization of an existent thing: something real or dimensionally substantive born of two unreal 'essences' with no independent substance.
One of the aesthetic, and yes...by definition, philosophic upgrades, involves the number plates, on the seat cowl and front fairing, while the other involves the rear fender. But it has just occurred to me that the pictures I took of my bike are on the Blackberry I use for my corporate clients. So maybe I'll just leave off here, until I get that phone in hand later in the week.
The down side of elegant urban living is its a long way to my bike (to take more pictures), and to the nearest fly-fishing stream for that matter. If there is enough uptake on this thread, I will revisit it with pictures, but I suspect that there aren't as many Racer owners out there committed to its true ethos, and who are also tuned in to this forum, as might be necessary to deliver it to general consideration.
Timothy St. John
P.S. If you want to meet people, wear a Bell Bullitt Helmet (fine for casual rides); people love that thing; preferably in the silliest colors: metallic blue or the TT version. Add a bubble shield and your a rock star; if only in costume. Hey, I can get you there, the rest is up to you.
The great thing about having a V7 Racer, I now find, is that most everybody else who got one has dumbed their's down in embarrassment of being targeted by riders of humbler V7 variants, both on forums and on the street; they believe that their course of more...temperate acquisition, somehow reflects that they boast a greater level of 'actual' rider enthusiasm, while Racer owners are clearly posers.
There is only one thing (well, two actually) that I enjoy more than a good 'ride' (wait, philosophically two of those are the same thing...moving on), and thats meeting, and talking to new people. If you presently choose riding 'bikes' over 'talking' to people, I can help you (I keep regular office hours but I'm not cheap), and nothing, but nothing, attracts people like a Racer; not even a blinged-out or blacked-out Harley (both of which intimidate rather than attract), and no one on the street has ever commented on my Panigale.
Many Racer owners seem to have lost sympathy for their once beloved seat cowls, chrome tanks, and solo saddles. As a happy result of this, nobody else's Racer looks like mine; which ironically is largely stock. What many of you failed to have grasped, is that excess in one aspect of the bikes styling was largely balanced out by excess in another area.
The tail section was balanced (in consequence only) by the chrome tank; the dull black wheels were balanced out by the red frame and hubs, etc. Philosophically, formal aesthetics is about balance, and formal philosophy is what I do. I've played around with aesthetic syllogisms to improve on the balance of this bikes style, and almost every time more was lost than was gained by it. Well done Guzzi!
Even the simple addition of knee pads to the tank (as a means to quiet the amount of chrome on show) disturbed the pregnant joy of the lines of its pleasantly portly tank, more than it succeeded in dumbing down the 'bling'. And thats just my point. A simple algebra of debit and credit fails in address of the calculus of emotion. In sessions, I ask everyone who absently says, 'I feel...' to tell me what they think; and vice versa. Neither question should ever be asked without it is immediately followed by the other.
Now, go and look at your bike, and ask yourself what you 'feel'. If the answer is different than what you 'think', then you have failed 'caculus' (again?) of aesthetics that first attracted you to the bike.
Its not very often that stylists, even Italian ones, get it so right. That being said, I did discover two fixes that, in my opinion, greatly improve the existentialism of the bike without detracting from it at all.
These 'character' mods corrected the pretence and arbitrariness of the least popular style elements of the V7, to give it the gritty...legitimacy it otherwise lacks; but desperately needs in order to woo those men that lack the courage to mount a beauty, because she's too...obvious. God forbid your kids, your pastor, or worse...your mother should see you in such company. Less is always just less (even in philosophical ideology).
On the other hand, these are the kind of changes that cause your buddies to be quietly covetous (though their stares betray them, she won't blush or mind; even if you do) and slap you on the back (this assumes a back broad enough in metaphor to suffer the blow without injury; physical or emotional), if only when their own mounts are out of sight, and I assure you...out of mind.
If you've been following, then you should have expected that these changes are going to actually ramp things up a notch (in terms of what you 'think' in analysis of the individual elements), in pursuit of dialling things down (what you feel in synthesis of the overall effect), in achievement of aesthetic equilibrium. As I said, Guzzi almost got it right. You bought it, but realized on some level that something was amiss.
In philosophy, moving away from a thing only to arrive unexpectedly back to it is called dialectic: a thing (the thesis) passes over to become its opposite (its antithesis), before achieving intellectual marriage in 'synthesis': the forfeiture of independence necessary to the realization of an existent thing: something real or dimensionally substantive born of two unreal 'essences' with no independent substance.
One of the aesthetic, and yes...by definition, philosophic upgrades, involves the number plates, on the seat cowl and front fairing, while the other involves the rear fender. But it has just occurred to me that the pictures I took of my bike are on the Blackberry I use for my corporate clients. So maybe I'll just leave off here, until I get that phone in hand later in the week.
The down side of elegant urban living is its a long way to my bike (to take more pictures), and to the nearest fly-fishing stream for that matter. If there is enough uptake on this thread, I will revisit it with pictures, but I suspect that there aren't as many Racer owners out there committed to its true ethos, and who are also tuned in to this forum, as might be necessary to deliver it to general consideration.
Timothy St. John
P.S. If you want to meet people, wear a Bell Bullitt Helmet (fine for casual rides); people love that thing; preferably in the silliest colors: metallic blue or the TT version. Add a bubble shield and your a rock star; if only in costume. Hey, I can get you there, the rest is up to you.
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