The Bulldog It Is

I'm taking a weekend trip that involves a ~50-mile motorcycle ride out, several hundred miles by car with friends, and that same ~50-mile motorcycle ride back.

Now that I have the Lifan KP Mini 150, it feels like the natural choice over the Italica Bulldog 150 for non-local transport. It's somewhat faster (it seems to be continuing to break fully in -- I GPSed it at 68 miles per hour the other day, while the Bulldog rarely tops 60; cruising, 50ish seems to be the cruising RPMs sweet spot on the Mini, 45ish on the Bulldog). It gets better gas mileage (76.2 mpg vs. 66.22 average). It's not a freeway bike, but it's a perfect "country highway" bike, while the Bulldog makes more sense for city streets (clutch shifting vs. continuous variable transmission).

BUT!

1. Luggage. I'm carrying more than usual this time.

Riding the Mini would mean either wearing a pretty heavy backpack or removing my small zip-tied tail bag, putting on saddlebags, and strapping the  (somewhat lightened into the saddlebags) backpack on as a tail bag. Probably half an hour doing all that and then un-doing it after. I suspect wearing the backpack would throw my balance off somewhat, which is not what you want if you're riding on what passes for "twisties" in this area -- not a lot of really steep curves, but more than most of the areas I ride in most of the time.

The Bulldog has a semi-permanent (I've been leaving it on) top box that can hold the (somewhat lightened into the lower built-in storage box) backpack. I packed almost everything in that way and took it out to fill up with gas. The balance feels pretty good, with the low front rear storage compartment partly balancing out the high rear top box.

2. While the route I'm taking is mostly country highway, it's country highway that will likely be busy with slower, stop-and-start traffic during my trip out (morning rush hour, school buses, etc.). Lots of shifting if I'm riding a standard clutch bike. No shifting at all on the Bulldog. And not as much worry about maintaining normal highway speed.

3. The part of the route that isn't country highway partly road combines narrow ruts with deep, fine "sugar" sand, and based on my limited experience I think the Bulldog's rear wheel doesn't get quite as squirelly in that environment as the KP Mini's.

So the Bulldog it is, for that and a couple of other reasons (one being that I want to get it near the 3k mile mark, when it gets its next maintenance, soon; that 100 miles will get me to 2.75k or so).