BUILT FOR WAR, just as fun on a trip to the coffee shop

THE CLASSIC URAL SIDECAR CAN TAKE YOU ANYWHERE YOU WANT. AND A FEW PLACES YOU DON’T.

The Russian-made Ural motorcycle is a three- wheeled movie star. The bike can’t go anywhere without getting some attention, whether it’s from the motor-head in the parking lot, the woman who wants to sit in the sidecar, the nice older couple who offer you free coffee because they think you’re driving around the world, or the toll-booth collector who won’t let you ride on without answering a bunch of questions. Kids stare, men and women take photos with their phones, drivers accelerate to pass and give a hearty thumbs-up. People connect with the bike. It’s like they’re interacting with a piece of history; and they are, sort of.

I’m riding a 2016 model, but the original Ural dates back to the Eastern Front during World War II. The Russians needed reconnaissance and defensive mobility after the Nazis’ blitzkrieg of Poland, so they reverse-engineered the Ural from a handful of covertly acquired 1930s German BMW R71s. War is hell, but it sure produces some cool toys.

Ural headquarters is nestled in a corporate office park 23 kilometres outside Seattle. It’s a place you’d expect a small tech company to ship computer chips from, not somewhere you can buy a rugged Russian sidecar for R175 000 to R210 000. The shop neatly houses every part imaginable. Fifteen to 20 completed sidecars with cool paint-scheme names like Asphalt and Urban Camo wait to be shipped off to their new homes. Some are vintage red and others are a powder-coated high-gloss black. Each one looks very different, with a huge number of custom add-ons: luggage racks, spare wheels, a machine-gun stand, firstaid boxes, spotlights, jerrycans, ammo canisters, and on and on and on. Everything you’d need for riding into war.

Every motorcycle comes equipped with an air- cooled fuelinjected 749-cm3 (31 kw) flat-twin four-speed (plus reverse) that puts out 57 N.m of torque at 4 300 r/min. Most of them have two drive shafts, one for the rear tyre and one engageable sidecar drive that gives these mini tanks two- wheel

drive, enabling them to roll over any number of trenches or land mines and even barbed wire. The only thing that looks slightly modern are the Brembo brakes on all three wheels.

Ural’s rep, David George, instructs me to take everything I know about riding motorcycles – other than clutch and shifting – and throw it to the side of the road. Instead of countersteering corners as you do on a two- wheeled bike, with a sidecar you push and pull with the handlebars and lean into the direction of the corner, always watching for the sidecar.

Applying the front brakes in a typical manner throws the steering all over the place, so you use even pressure with the front and two rear brakes simultaneously. What you really don’t do is try to “fly the chair”, that trick where you lift the sidecar wheel off the ground in turns. It’s a really tough manoeuvre and pretty dangerous unless you know what you’re doing. (I don’t know what I’m doing.) I ask David to teach me anyway. My wheel hardly gets off the ground, but David’s pops up high enough to hit a Nazi’s helmet right off his head before he fires his rifle. Unbelievably cool.

I’ve never been to Seattle, so I have no idea what to expect on our 150-kilometre journey. All I know is it’s cold and wet and this place is beautiful. We start out on Highway 202 where it takes about 15 minutes for me to become fully acquainted with “turn left, lean left, brake straight with all brakes” – ah, the hell with it. Go with the flow, man. You’ve got this!

As logging trucks and other passing vehicles whiz by us in the opposite direction, I’m actually happy these bikes top out at 110 km/h. The Ural is steady and smooth, even as we reach the Denny Creek Campground, where we fly through massive potholes, over streams, and into a forest where Sasquatch probably lives. I’m pounding on this bike, and even though my legs are soaked, my hands are cold, and the temperature is dropping fast, I’m having too much fun to notice any of it, until we reach the snow.

Riding a motorcycle in snow is like setting yourself on fire to get warm. It just ain’t going to work. The snow is deep and covers the entire road. But Urals were made for this kind of thing. After engaging the two- wheel drive by flipping the lever towards the back of the engine, David tells me, “Don’t let off the throttle!” and takes off. If I think about this too long, I’ll screw it up, so I yank the throttle and go for it. The back tyres grab and throw the bike forward while fishtailing. The motorcycle feels more like a snowmobile at this point and climbs the steep mountain with ease.

We enter the Summit Inn parking lot, where a juicy cheeseburger and hot cup of coffee wait for me. Snow is starting to fall while I stare at the Ural through the front window. I think how I could totally take one of these cross-country with the right sidecar passenger and a group of hardened rebels. I could mount a machine gun and we’d fight Nazis, or slow people driving in the fast lane, all the way home.

“Flying the chair” – a little – near Snoqualmie Pass.