Regular Car Reviews: What It's Like Being A Biker Among Distracted Jetta Drivers And Drum Brakes

My first full motorcycle was a 1982 Honda CM250c. While the ‘c’ stood for ‘Custom’, there was nothing custom about it. All the CM250s were called ‘Custom.’ See, Honda was trying to be like Harley:

“Oh you like the custom bikes? Here, have an entire line of cheap bikes…all custom! Where are you going? Come back. You said you like things that are custom. Your American magazines always put the words ‘custom’ and ‘good’ in the same sentence. I read your magazines. Custom equals good! See, it says ‘Custom’ right on the tank of our new 250. It has buck-horn bars and chrome fenders! Come back!”

The Honda CM250c is the predecessor of Honda’s relentless Rebel and Nighthawk 250. If you want to rewind further, the Honda CM250c is a lightly fluffed-up Honda 200 Twinstar. Honda took its 300 Twinstar, bored-out its engine from 199cc to 234cc, and called it a 250. Close enough.

The engineers stretched the frame a tad, added long wheels and tyres and called it a workweek. A single carburetor fed two square-bore cylinders that exhaled through a two-into-two exhaust with no crossover breather tube. The final drive used a roller-chain, not an o-ring chain. That meant that you had to be vigilant with the chain-lube. Do it every other fill up and you’ll be fine. But oh man, if you slacked-off and didn’t oil the roller-chain, you would feel it. When a roller motorcycle chain gets dry, friction starts. Imagine some ghost hand slightly pressing down on the rear brake all the time.

Speaking of brakes, the Honda CM250c stops with your hand muscles. Mechanical drum brakes are all it has. A mechanical drum brake is more archaic than the hydraulic drums which occupy the rear hubs on my 2007 Honda Fit/Jazz. Imagine the limply steel cable on your bicycle (or push bike as some of you call them). Are you thinking of your bike right now? Are you thinking of your thin little brake cable with that fishing weight on the end? Good. Same thing.

There’s a good reason for having brakes that would be considered out of date even by 1970s standards. A Honda CM250c’s gearbox is an intrinsic part of the braking system. You are forced to engine brake to slow yourself down. Ahead of you is a texting VW Jetta that can’t even…ugh…the driver is spending more time rolling his eyes than looking down the road. That car is coming your way and needs to make a left turn with no turn signals. It needs to make a left turn in the intersection before you. You’ve been riding your CM250c for a month now and you know its lackluster brake shoes.

You’re quick on the draw with your left foot. It hovers over the gear selector. Your right fingers cover the right brake lever. Your right foot rests on the rear brake pedal. Just as you thought! The social-media Jetta is turning left right in front of you…

Time slows like it always does for bikers, even young bikers. You jam on both brakes and feel the shoes do their best to bite into the drums. The driver is steering with one hand and just now looking up from whatever garbage evening plans are flashing on the phone. You click down three full gears with your left foot. The bike lurches backward while the tiny 234cc engine surges. You don’t know how high the little plant is revving because the CM250c never came with a tachometer. With the front drum, rear drum, gearbox and pistons all working together to slow you down, you’re finally safe. The driver never saw you and the Jetta continues on, spurred by the promise of tonight’s bottom-shelf Vodka and Wub-Wub music.

Here’s the secret: It was never the bike that saved you. It was your wakefullness. You knew your bike was a weak-stopper. Even though you had the green light. Even though the other car failed to use the turn signal. Even though the Jetta appeared to continue straight. You rolled off the throttle before the Jetta was even part of this intersection scenario. You knew you were approaching a zone where something might happen. You gave yourself a time-buffer. Had you been riding something like a Suzuki GSXR600 with double front disks and a single rear, you would have never slowed down for that intersection. No amount of EBC pads could save you. No matter how fast a bike can stop, it can’t stop time.

I poop.