Heed 505

The FedEx dude dropped by the MotoUSA Orange County office today while I was polishing our new 2009 Honda CBR1000RR test motorcycle. We’ve got the limited edition model dressed up in the same eye-catching Repsol Honda MotoGP colors that Dani Pedrosa and Andrea Dovizioso rock so it’s not much of a surprise how much attention this motorcycle gets.
 
The first question he asked was how much power does it have? And it kind of caught me off guard, because the first question 99% of the usual non-motorcycling public asks is how high the speedometer reads on the dash. So I told him that it makes right around 150 horsepower at the rear wheel.
 
Although it doesn’t really seem like that much power to me after a few years of being acclimated to the current state of liter-class horsepower, to him, he was in total awe.

“That’s more power than my Honda Civic!” he said.
 
“Yeah. And it weights like 5-times less than it. So just imagine how fast it is,” I replied.
 
After I said that this dude was completely blown away. His mouth was literally hanging open as if he just saw supermodel Gisele Bundchen dancing on a stripper pole right in front of us. It was crazy. I’m sure his facial expression was similar to mine after first blast on the Ducati Desmosedici D16RR.
 
Nevertheless I proceeded to fill him in on some other fun facts about the CBR1000RR and 1000s in general: “And it’ll do wheelies in third gear just from accelerating. You can go like over 100 miles per hour in third gear, slam open the throttle and the front tire just comes up.”
 
“Wow! Are you serious?” he said. “You just accelerate in third gear and it’ll do a wheelie?”

“Yeah no joke. When you think about it it’s crazy they even sell these things in America,” I replied.

It is crazy. Isn’t it?