2024 ROAD GLIDE THREE – “OMFG! WHAT’S IT DOING NOW?!”

“You’ve ridden a trike before, haven’t you?” asked the nice Harley bloke as he led me to where the Road Glide 3 waited.

“Of course, I have,” I said. And it wasn’t a lie. I HAD ridden a trike once. A long time ago. It was at night and there were girls, drugs, and alcohol involved. Back in those days, almost all of my nights involved those elements. I remember that. But I have little memory of riding the trike. I just know I did.  It must not have ended badly because I bear no scars.

A few minutes later, I was on my way back to Singleton and utterly terrified. But also excited and challenged. Obviously, the Road Glide 3 is not a bike. But when you’re sitting on it, it looks like a bike from the rider’s seat. It’s a Road Glide from the seat forwards. Put it into first and move off, and it is immediately clear that what’s happening behind you and under you has nothing to do with riding a motorcycle.

To make matters even more intriguing, it’s no slug. It makes a mere 87 horses, but it chugs out 158Nm of torque. Sure, it weighs more than half a tonne (528kg), but let me place my hand on my heart and swear that 114-cube engine is taking no prisoners when you kick it in the guts.

And if you need me to explain that 160km/h on a trike is easily as dak-shittingly exciting as 280 is on a superbike, then you clearly need to ride one.

Allow me to explain what I have understood this trike-riding business to be all about…

As motorcyclists, we utilise the laws of physics to enhance our ride experience. We go with the flow of centrifugal and centripetal forces, and there are terrifying mathematical formulas which explain how all this works, but it all comes down to that counter-steering stuff. You pull your handlebars left, you go to the right, and vice versa.

On a trike, the laws of physics are your brutal enemy and you must fight them all the time. And you must win. Losing is a bad option.

When you’re travelling in a straight line on a bike, and you give the handlebars a jerk, you get a slight weave and then the bike quickly realigns itself back into a straight line. Do that on a trike and you will, upon the instant, charge across all the lanes of traffic and into a tree. It’s hilarious. Trikes are intensely and immediately responsive to your handlebar inputs.

A few kays down the freeway I felt I had absorbed enough trike knowledge – I had thus far not hit anything or speared off the road, though it was a close a few times – and felt that in order for me to more fully grok this three-wheeled thing, I must do corners. And lots of them.

I immediately took the Kulnura turn-off and made for Wollombi. There are lots of corners on that road, some of them evil, blind, off-camber bastards, but I am not the son of a fearful man.

And so began the most terrifying and simultaneously exalting experience I have had for ages. Firstly, you must understand I did not know what I was doing. I had no way of reading what the trike was doing. I had no terms of reference. If I went hard into a corner, braked heavily and hauled on the ’bars, I’d wash off so much speed I’d start to head for the inside of the corner and the table drain. If I stayed off the brakes, carried more corner speed, and hauled on the ’bars like I was wrestling an ox, I tended to run wide. I ran wide because I was clearly not wrestling the ox hard enough, but I was scared that if I wrestled it harder, the ox would lift its outside rear-hoof off the road, and…well, then I don’t know what happens, but it would not be pleasant.

Maybe twenty corners in I worked some shit out, and got into a bit of a flow. Of course, I could have slowed down, but I’m not wired that way. I wish to ride at a certain speed, and will expend all my energy to do that speed. And I was expending a tonne of energy doing it on the Road Glide 3. You will certainly get a full upper body work-out on a trike if you decide to ride in The Manner Spirited.

And no, it’s not like the Can-Am Spyder. That has one driving wheel at the back, and two wheels at the front. Nor is it like a sidecar – that’s all sorts of different. The trike is its own thing. Its own magnificent, terrifying, but ultimately hilarious thing.

I felt it generally wanted to kill me. I was strongly opposed to that happening, and since I can still bench 120kg, I resolved not to be killed. I pushed on. I wrestled that damn ox like a gladiator. I then discovered the front wheel, if pushed hard enough into a corner that may not be perfectly smooth, sometimes decides it wants to skate sideways a bit, in a juddering fashion, over the bumps, while the idiot at the handlebars (me) flatly refuses to button off because he has no idea if buttoning off will make things worse.

Despite this, I was enjoying myself immensely. It was challenging to ride this thing at a pace that would not shame my ancestors. And I had seen my brother, Alice, haul industrial-level arse on his trike, so a manly pace was certainly possible.

That evening, my wife asked me what it was like to ride. She had been intrigued by it when I rolled into the garage, examined the rear seat, deemed it suitable for pillions, and asked me how it went.

“Well, if I strapped a cushion to our fridge, welded some handlebars to the front of it, hopped on, and got you to push me off a cliff, it’s kinda like that. But that’s only because I have not yet gelled with it. But I shall gell with it. I am determined.”

And of course, I did.

I actually kinda liked it, in some strange and perverse way. Like when your stripper girlfriend does too much coke and starts swinging from the light fixtures. I did actually yell out: “OMFG! What’s it doing now?!” more than once.

I have always loved the hammerhead fairings Harley uses on some of its big tourers. And I thought the steel-blue-grey Road Glide 3 looked very cool. I may have read too many Easyrider magazines in my youth, but the trike conjured powerful visions of the wild-arse seventies in my head.

It’s quite possible the entire concept of the trike originated on an Arkansas farm. Jim-Bob and Cletus hit the ’shine hard one day, and figured sawing the back-end off’n Cletus’s stroked Shovelhead and replacing it with the two wheels, diff, and axle off daddy’s old Chevy would be quite the hoot. If they died, they died. Hell to the yeah.

The obvious take from this, is that these trikes are insane fun. They are challenging to bang fast, and I found myself wishing the handlebars were wider to give me more leverage, and most interestingly, they seem to radiate some ineffable cool to the world at large.

I have never ridden anything that attracted so much attention from girls who would normally not go anywhere near a bike. Each one of them would ask me questions about it, tell me how lovely they thought it was, and ask if they could sit on it and take pictures.

I found the back brakes worked much better and were stronger than the front units, for obvious reasons, so I used them heaps. And because these aren’t built in an Arkansas hillbilly shed, the Road Glide 3 comes with adjustable rear shocks, and all the electronics anyone could need – ABS, electronically linked brakes, traction control, slipper clutch, cornering-enhanced anti-lock brakes, cornering-enhanced linked brakes, and cornering-enhanced traction control. Oh, and a tyre-pressure monitoring system.

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It also comes with Harley’s neat dash with all the lights, buzzers, and info – though it’s not the stellar dash H-D is now putting on its Street Glides and Road Glides, but I guess that will happen in the next year or so.

It has a boot, too. And a foot-operated hand-brake. And reverse gear, which is certainly handy. But do cover the rear brake when you use reverse. It’s very eager to go backwards.

It’s also quite a lot of fun in the dirt, as you can imagine. But nowhere near as much fun as it could be if the traction control was disabled. The general ride is relatively well-suspended, though that front-end might benefit from heavier springs. Or I could just slow down, right?

So, who would buy one? Obviously, people who might be less-abled. My brother, Alice, is missing a leg, so he’s a fan of trikes. But I think people who have no confidence on a bike would get a kick out of these. Of course, none of them would ride theirs like I rode the one I had, but that’s maybe because they are God-fearing and scare easily. You wanna take it easy and cruise? This will do it with all sorts of ease. Only madmen buy trikes and then try to set lap records. They’re not bikes. They do not “bike”. We all get that, right?

But what they do do, in a most unique and truly engaging way, is give you a handlebar-led experience unlike any other. I am very pleased Harley makes these – and they make three different ones – the Free Wheeler, the Road Glide 3, and the Tri Glide Ultra, so customers have a choice.

I may well yet own one.

HOW MUCH? The experience starts at $59,995.

You may examine all the colours, options and spec here.

https://www.harley-davidson.com/au/en/motorcycles/trike.html