The One-Bike Quiver: Can One Motorcycle Really Do Everything?
I am at Sonoma. Formerly Sears Point, if you are old enough to remember when it changed. And the bike I brought is a bike that has no business being here.
It has no adjustable suspension. It has no lap timer. It has a headlight shaped like a fried egg. And I just took it around one of the best road courses in the country and it did not embarrass me once.
So here is the pitch. This might be the only motorcycle you need to own.
The one-bike quiver, borrowed from the mountain bikers
In the mountain bike world there is this idea of the one-bike quiver. One bike that can do anything, from cross-country to mellow trails, work its way up something steep and then descend like a demon. Riders love arguing about it. How much travel do you actually need, what wheel size, what frame geometry can genuinely do everything, and whether the whole thing works or is just a compromise dressed up as a philosophy.
I have wondered for a while whether that idea translates to motorcycles, and if it does, what kind of bike it should be. I think it is a naked middleweight. So I went and tested the theory in the least forgiving place I could think of.
Start with the boring stuff
The stuff you actually do five days a week, not six sessions a year at a track.
Commuting first. The seat height is low enough that it is not intimidating in traffic. Fueling is clean off idle, which matters far more in stop and go than people give it credit for. And the maintenance ask is low. This is not a bike demanding attention every weekend just to stay happy Monday through Friday.
Touring is the part people underestimate
It will take soft luggage without a fight. The ergonomics hold up over real distance, not just a Sunday canyon loop. Fuel range is decent for a naked bike. You are not going to load it up like an adventure bike and disappear into the backcountry for two weeks, but a long weekend, or a week on pavement, absolutely.
That is a naked sport bike for you. It just flexes into whatever the day needs.
So why drag it 800 miles to somebody else’s racetrack?
Fair question, because I have unprecedented access to my local track. I ride it all the time, on this bike included.
Here is why. Riding my own track is like riding my favourite stretch of local road. I know every bump, every camber change, and exactly where this bike will forgive me when I get something wrong. That is not a test, that is muscle memory. If I actually wanted to know what this thing is like for somebody on their first ever trackday, I needed to be a stranger somewhere. Alpinestars invited me out to Sonoma, which turned into the perfect excuse to go find out.
The trackday is the hardest sell in this whole argument
Now look, you can do a trackday on pretty much anything. There was a guy out there on a Gold Wing. Respect, genuinely, but that is a different conversation than the one I am having. I am not asking whether a naked middleweight can survive a trackday. I am asking whether one bike can be genuinely good at this, and not merely present for it.
And this is the part that trips people up. People will believe a naked bike can commute. They will believe it can tour. Say the word track and they immediately picture safety wire, race slicks and a bike gutted for weight. That is racing gear, for racing. A trackday is not a race. Nobody is timing you against anyone but yourself.
Riding a bike like this on track, with street tires and stock brakes, is honestly one of the better ways to keep yourself from getting too excited.
You do not need adjustable suspension to have a good time at a trackday. This bike does not have any, so the question never came up. A racetrack is probably smoother than your favourite canyon anyway, and soft suspension on a fast piece of road is a great way to perfect your smooth inputs, because it will tell you loudly when they are not.
What actually runs out first
The one place the average naked bike is likely to find its limit is footpegs. They tend to touch down before a modern chassis runs out of ideas. And while tube bars will not let you hang off like Marquez, you can still get your head down, reduce lean angle, and look plenty good for the photographer.
While we were there, my buddy Jake Tran from You Can Do Things demonstrated a Tech-Air 7 deployment, which is one of those things that is genuinely worth seeing at full speed and then again at a quarter of it.
An honest concession
This is not really a Monster Plus review dressed up as a bigger idea. Almost any middleweight naked could make the same case. A Street Triple, an MT-09, a CB650R. The category is the one-bike quiver. The Monster is just mine.
And I have trailered a dedicated track bike to plenty of far off circuits, because that is still the right tool when lap times actually matter. But if I had not had that option, if this had been the only bike in the garage, it would have gotten me there, gotten me around the track without excuses, and gotten me home.
That is the whole pitch of a one-bike quiver. Not that it is the best at any one thing. That you never have to think twice about which bike to grab.
We already ran this experiment with cars
Here is what I actually walked away with. The way things are going, owning multiple motorcycles is getting harder to justify. Garage space, insurance, the time to actually ride all of them. You are lucky these days if you get to own one.
And if you are only getting one, you have really got two options. Choose a bike that does the one thing you love most extremely well, or choose a bike that does everything reasonably well.
When I was a kid, a family driveway had a pickup, a station wagon, and something fun for Saturday, be it a muscle car or a Miata. Now a lot of those families own one crossover, because a crossover can sort of tow, sort of haul the kids, sort of get you to work, sort of carry something big, and maybe all in one trip.
A middleweight naked is the crossover of the motorcycle world. The difference is that this one still grins at you out of a corner. And even the most tame motorcycle still leans the correct way.
