About that bike I bought

Inspired by Og's decision to get rid of his, and some thoughts that stirred up, here goes:
My current bike is a Honda VFR800. Sport-touring bike, fast and maneuverable, and described by me as 'probably having more horsepower than I'll actually need', and it's that latter bit that brought this back to mind:
More horsepower and torque 'than you need' just might translate into 'enough'.
To explain: years back, during the first marriage, wife had a little Honda scooter she'd used at college. If I'd known her back when I'd have said "Do NOT buy this thing if you have any intention of using it on public roads outside of the campus." Specifically because it had all the acceleration of a tired kid on a bicycle. In good conditions. But I wound up using to to & from work because money was damn tight and it saved on gas.

Little sucker got close to 90mpg as I recall, and didn't use much oil in the injection system, the tradeoff being that it was marked has having a max load of 170 pounds. I, fresh out of the shower, weighed 175. So I was over the limit without adding dinner and clothes. Add to that that fouling built up in the exhaust port over time and it slowly lost power until it reached the point you had to pull the exhaust and scrape the port clean. Let me put it this way: there's a long hill on one of the streets I took to stay out of traffic, and if the port hadn't recently been cleaned I'd have to stick my feet down and paddle to make it up the last bit. Not good*, I'd been riding for years before that, and having that little 'get up & GO' scared me. . So when finances improved a bit and we got rid of it I didn't miss it.

Neither did my parents, as I found out later; Dad, having worked about every kind of vehicle accident you can think of, said he'd been scared to death of me riding that thing because "You can't get out of the way on it." Which is where my 'enough' statement comes in.
Doesn't matter that you have right-of-way, or they did something dumb, if you're on a bike you just might have to get the hell out of the way of some clown. Or you see something developing/about to happen and want to get clear before it does. And at a time like that it can seem like there's no such thing as 'too much'. Especially if you ride on highways.

So, while scooters have improved(a LOT) over time, I prefer a motorcycle, one that will move when you have to(over the years I've developed a liking for 'move' that translates to someone thinking "Wasn't there a bike over there?")

Yes, there's a downside of plenty of power: the (usually young) dumbasses who think pulling a wheelie as they go through traffic at ten or more mph above the limit is just so freakin' COOL, and aren't I something? If you were only likely to hurt yourself I wouldn't mind, but
A: If you lose it somebody may have to live with the image of you just before they hit you, or
B: In trying to avoid hitting you, somebody may swerve and smash into somebody else.
So, tradeoffs on everything, as usual.



*If you're wondering why the hell I risked this thing, did I mention two little kids and very tight finances? You do dumb things at times when it'll save a bit.