(02-09-2018 08:34 AM)VLJ Wrote: ... I'm not going to push this bike beyond my comfort level, either real or imagined. It's simply not that important to me to extract that last Nth of sporting performance from her. I have to keep reminding myself that I didn't buy her to go as fast as possible on Skaggs Springs Rd. I bought her in an effort to enjoy slowing down a bit. It just so happens that she's not slowing me down in the corners as much as I thought she would, at least until her tires began squirming on Skaggs.
I'm sorry to drag the hoary-old chestnut of the 'need for speed' out of the fire, but that statement, VLJ, seems to me to encapsulate the problem some of us have wrestled with reading of your journey to the CB1100.
I'll say again: I'm really pleased you like the bike and I hope it continues to give you the sort of pleasure you have just written an excellent report about. I hope to read more of them, as well as looking at the pictures.
But ... your post confirms for me a suspicion that you like to ride any bike to the limits of its and your capabilities. that led me to assume, perhaps wrongly, that your need for speed was an absolute thing; that you'll be disappointed if you're not getting along as quickly as technology will allow. So I assumed the CB was unlikely to make you happy for long because it just won't let you go as fast as your XSR. If I'm wrong—and it appears I may be—and you can continue to find pleasure in the different experiences of riding each bike as quickly as you can both manage, you're a lucky bloke. And I guess you'll slow down in some absolute way.
North of Brisbane, where I live, there's a wonderful, well made, but short, hill climb on Mt Mee. It's a dream of a stretch and used to be hoon heaven. It's now heavily speed limited and those limits are heavily policed. Legend has it that, back in the day, an old bloke had an old, upright BMW that he could ride ridiculously fast. His pleasure was following young hooligans on sports bikes up the hill and sticking to them like faecal matter to a blanket as they tried to go faster and faster and faster to get away from him. Few did and, so the tale goes, a good few fell off trying.
Please don't get on the CB and play that trick on hapless hooligans.