Exhausting

Mmmmm. I love the smell of motorcycle exhaust: an oily, metallic fragrance with a top note of something purely motorcycle in nature. It always reminds me of when I worked for Rockingham Security as a job in college. One weekend I had to stand guard in a Harley shop because the owners were in receivership or something. Every now and then I'd go from the showroom to the shop and start one of the hogs up, just to hear it roar. It was then I came to really know that distinct smell of an idling and revved motorcycle engine.

I'd been driving motorcycles since I was 14 or so but had never warmed up a bike's engine indoors and so missed that smell. Or perhaps it was just that my little Suzuki 250 and Kawasaki 500 just didn't have the digestive system to produce the smell. Certainly my big V-Twin Honda cruiser does it.