Reminds me of seeing guys on Harley's in New Zealand. Unless you are on the Canterbury or Hauraki plains a Harley will meet far too many tight corners in NZ roads for comfort.
I rode Suzuki and then a Kawasaki road bikes. Bigger is not necessarily better there either. I was on my z440 Kwakker going down the Kaikoura coast road (in pre broken times) behind a guy on a GPZ900. He would pull away from me on the wide sweeping bays but I'd pull up behind him on the corners round the points. In NZ you get speed boards on corners giving a safe comfortable speed. On some parts of the old road they got down to 20kph (hairpin).
I understand the rebuild has fixed a lot of those. Fairly easy to do, the quake lifted the seabed meaning the road can use that and the mountains fell down onto the road/rail line so had to be moved anway.
The original effort to run first a rail line then State Highway 1 down that coast was colossal. It went either rocky shore:road;rail line;mountainside or rocky shore:rail line:road:mountainside. The swap was usually when the rail was in a tunnel. There were little road tunnels through the points at some places as well. The road is still listed as 'fragile' since they cannot contain all the stuff which tends to come down when it rains heavily. it will take a while for things to settle.
The road from Te Anau to Milford Sound has a roading depot half way along on the eastern side of the Homer Tunnel to keep the road open WHEN slips happen. A bit like the road around Rest and Be Thankful in the Highlands of Scotland.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
