Buenos Aires Motorbikes

Originally posted to El Cantar de la Lluvia on Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Every metropolis instills the visitor with a characteristic feeling. Personally, I declare myself an extreme fanatic of the feeling that Buenos Aires gives me.

In this short article I'll have a go at showing one of the many elements that contribute to this Buenos Aires feeling: its motorbikes.

For someone accustomed to the docile and dull Santiago del Orto, in Chile, just starting out with motorbikes, arriving in Buenos aires is quite a shock, from a biker's point of view. For starters that goody-two-shoes ambiance of "we're all good kids that wear our helmets" disappears abruptly. The porteños seem to have a fixation with the physical integrity of their elbows, to the misfortune of their cranial health, because most helmets you see are hanging off biker's left elbows, as they ride around city streets.

Those that decide to hazard the risk of a grazed elbow wear their helmets like a sort of strange tiara, or some french-beret-and-fiberglass experiment gone horribly wrong. I presume this is to funnel air in through the visor area towards their heads.

The bikes themselves are different to those found in Chile, not only with respect to the model, since it is natural to expect the predominance of different models in different countres, but also with respect to the effects of time on said vehicles. Here in Chile, bikes progress more or less directly from new and in good condition, to old and in a bad condition (unless they're well-kept), and finally end up in the lowest category, that of the toilet on wheels.

In Argentina, on the other hand, a motorbike can apparently suffer a myriad of bastard transformations, taking direct advantage of the availability (or absence) of any replacement part. It is thus that monsters such as those I saw on my trip to BA are born: a small-displacement bike, with a turn signal used as a headlamp (minus the yellow plastic cover, of course), or some decrepit variety of the Honda CG100 (a city bike) with an off-road XL200's headlamp and coloured plastic mask.

Here are some pics of some tamer curioisities.

Possibly the best-kept bike I saw on my trip. Also, the prettiest.






I had never seen a bike like this before.


The good old Virago.


PFA bikes, Policía Federal Argentina.


My bike! (Edit 31/8/6: my ex-bike, to be precise.) Well, not really. This one doesn't have a front disc brake, and is called "NXR 125 Bros". Pretty horrible name, if you ask me. Apart from the headlamp and front brake, it would seem to be identical to an XR 125 L.


... and the kickstart. The XR 125 L has an electric starter.


Ah, and the rack. The XR 125 L has a much larger and useful rack.


Bolted onto the frame, in front of the gas tank, is what appears to be a voltage regulator. On the XR 125 L there is a similar object underneath the rear shock (mounted on a tab that broke on my bike).


The best for last: A KLR with a red velvet seat. Yuck!