One reason not to ride a small motorcycle

I like small motorcycles. I find them easier to touch the ground, easier to ride fast, cheaper to insure, less cost to run and just generally more fun. The dictum, "I'd rather ride a slow bike fast than a fast bike slow" is often proven correct to me when ridding "small" motorcycles.

Well today I learned why sometimes I need a faster motorcycle. And as faster and bigger are often synonymous when talking about speed of a vehicle, I needed a bigger motorcycle today. Coming home from work I did my normal, legal, lane sharing move up to the front of the line at a light leading onto the 8.

As I'm sitting there the BMW X5 suv to my left edges forward and towards me. I look over then the middle aged white guy is gesticulating wildly at me. In a threatening way. When the light turns green I figure I need to move out quick as this road rager is not happy.

And I was right, as the light turns green he goes all Mario Andretti on me and tries running me down. I've got my little 300cc motorcycle pinned, wide open and he is right on my tail. And not happy still. As quick as I can get to 80mph here is still right there, bearing down on my and giving me angry looks and hand gestures.

Basically I couldn't go fast enough to get away. He kept lane changing when I did and I had to start thinking about what to do so this guy doesn't follow me home and try to kill me. Over reacting you say? I've had a gun pulled on me in a road rage incident, so NO, I'm not over reacting.

In tactical terms, I needed to get "off the X" and I was unable to. Which was kinda frightening as I've never had that happen before. I love small motorcycles but this time I was wishin' for more.