Tuesday, October 25, 2005

October 25, 2005 @ 8:53 Comparos and Shootouts Like most motorcyclists I read a number of motorcycle magazines. The postal service brings four to my mailbox each month and I regularly visit bike sites on line. I subscribe to Motorcycle Online and visit a variety of special interest sites as well. The motorcycle press is especially valued during the hot stove riding season, when many of us across the country are snowbound and the bike mags become our wish books and dream books. (Not so true for those of us here in the desert southwest where we ride all year long, but they still feed our fantasies about bikes we’d like to own and places we’d like to ride if only most of the country weren’t buried up to its collective hips in snow.) I love the latest reports on and comparisons of exotic machinery I’ll never own, or wouldn’t suit my riding style if I did own. I even like to read about gadgets like GPSs that would tell me, as I ground out miles on I-40 that yes, by God, I was still on I-40. All of this is fun, but the hard truth is that for many of us these magazines are only the stuff that dreams are made on. For the most part they are not real-world useful. Example: MO recently did a five bike "Comparo" of ‘sport-touring’ bikes with prices from $12,498 to over twenty grand. It was fun reading but I really needed that as much as a moose needs a hat rack. If my 1990 K75 is stolen, run over by a nitwit who can’t park a truck, or lost in a flood, garage fire, or other disaster I’ll need to replace it with a good used bike. 20 grand new? Fugedaboutit. Here’s what we need, motorcycle journalist guys: Regular reviews and comparisons of used bikes in various classes broken down by age groups. What’s out there I might replace my touring K bike with that’s, say, in the 1999-2000 model year? Reliability records, service costs, parts availability, reasonable prices, road tests. One last word. New bike costs have kept up with inflation, but for many riders wages have not. More of us need to buy used if we are going to keep doing what we love. The motorcycle press could help.   9:40:52 AM    comment []

	Thursday, October 06, 2005

October 6, 2005 @ 9:10 am BMW f800s                      Finally! Official pictures and details of BMW’s new 800 cc bike are up on a number of internet motorcycle sites. The new bike, in the aggressively sporty "s" series, is going to delight canyon-carving beemer fans. Older riders, who were hoping for a mid-weight two-cylinder touring mount are going to be disappointed. I’m disappointed, but I’m not angry or annoyed. I had hoped for one more new Beemer before my long-distance touring days were done, but my wife and I have two perfectly adequate touring mounts in the carport: My 1990 K75 and her ’03 F650cs. They’re better than good, they are just right for the sort of motoring I did when I started riding BMWs forty years ago: Days of leisurely touring that ended around a camp fire. 9:48:23 AM    comment []

	Wednesday, October 05, 2005

October 5, 2005 @ 5:16 am Invisibility Except during major road trips I don’t ride at night, but on the road I often ghost away from my motel in the pre-dawn dark and slip along a small town main street to the interstate. I like the lonely dark punctuated by flashing stoplights and the occasional watchful cop car nosing out of a side street. There is no traffic, and even on the interstate your only company is an occasional long haul trucker. The lights in your speedometer cluster are cheerful, and the long throw of your headlight is a bright rope pulling you through the night. Headlights approaching you are seen minutes before they arrive and the red taillight ahead of you is a goal you may never reach. Because I’m a bright, constantly moving, light at the center of the empty dark seeing and being seen are hardly a problem. Night riding on busy urban streets is. I’ve become increasingly aware of how nearly invisible motorcycles can be as the result of a work schedule that has kept me on city streets well after dark. In a line of traffic, whether it’s yours or the stream of lights coming toward you, a motorcycle with only a tail light and a head light is virtually invisible. I’m a rider and I’m certainly more conscious of other bikes than the drivers of the cars around me. (Ain’t that the truth, gang! Even at high noon they don’t see us.) At night a single tail light disappears in the cluster of tail lights in the traffic ahead of you. The approaching headlight of a motorcycle gets lost in the glare of headlights at different distances in front of you. The rider not wearing a helmet is even worse off. His or her presence in the traffic stream can come, too late, as a complete surprise. Riding bareheaded in city traffic may be cool when it’s hot; it may look cool when you get where you’re going; it’s like having a cloak of invisibility. For years I’ve thought that wearing a reflector vest looked incredibly dorky. Maybe it does, but I no longer give a… well you get the idea. I’d rather be a visible dork than an invisible accident statistic. And I’ve been assured by folks who have seen me on the road that it really does make a difference. 5:22:44 AM    comment []

	Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Riding Safe Isn’t it odd that when we write about the motorcycle life we find it so easy to use an adjective to modify a verb. I have always tried to "ride safe," paying particular attention my riding gear. When I started riding forty-five years ago about all we had for protection was leather for road rash and layers of sweaters for warmth. Well, sweaters and newspapers. Folk wisdom held that if you got stuck in cold weather you could pad yourself with newspapers inside your jacket and pants. The problem with that is that if you had already gotten chilled all the newspapers did was to make you bulky. Electrically heated riding suits were unheard of. Rain gear? We had some, but it was frequently bulky rubberized stuff that didn’t breathe, so you got just as wet from the inside out as you did from the outside in. I remember the almost boundless joy with which I received my first Belstaff jacket, an English contribution to motorcycling that more than made up for ‘reliable Lucas electrics.’ Belstaff was the best riding and rain gear I ever owned and I still have one of the older jackets. Belstaff continues in business, by the way. (I’m sure Lucas’s reputation was not so well justified as we all believed but it was fun to refer to ‘the prince of darkness’ and the motto on the Lucas coat of Arms: Never Go Out After Dark) I’m prompted to these recollections by the fact that we continue to have temperatures in or near triple digits, and I have succumbed to the climate. I have given up all protective gear except helmet and gloves; no jacket, no fancy euro-style riding suit, no ventilated "Joe Rocket" gear. I’m riding around town in devil-may-care t-shirts.   He Wasn’t Wearing a Helmet Sometime in the past two weeks the Star printed a short notice of the death of a local motorcyclist, who was killed by an automobile. I can’t find the piece on line, so my recollection of the details is sketchy. I do remember ‘killed’ and ‘wasn’t wearing a helmet.’ That old refrain again. What else wasn’t he wearing? He wasn’t wearing a bra; he wasn’t wearing a seal skin hat; he wasn’t wearing golf shoes; he wasn’t wearing a tuxedo; there’s a lot of stuff he wasn’t wearing. Was not wearing it contributory to his death? The helmet reference would only be pertinent if he died of injuries that wearing a helmet would have prevented. If not, then the old ‘no helmet’ refrain is just another way of blaming the victim. 1:20:56 PM    comment []

	Monday, September 26, 2005

September 26, 2005 @ 9:04 am Spooky Tooth Cycles There’s a long article in today’s Arizona Daily Star about a local mo-ped builder, Roland Bosma. It’s a good piece, written by Tina Velez, and you can read it here. Giving you the link is just a little courtesy and the only reason I mention it is that it is a courtesy the Star seldom extends to its readers. Tina knew there was a web site because she mentions it. I guess the editors were afraid we’d jump to it and not return to the ad-cluttered pages of the Star. I googled Spooky Tooth and found the Spooky Tooth web site, here. Now that’s pretty interesting. Go ahead and visit…you might dig the band, and I don’t care if you leave the blog. But come back, because this is the link for Spooky Tooth Cycles. That’s a pretty goth look, but basically full of good stuff about the bikes. Once you’ve poked around there for a while you’ll probably find a little rat in a white sporty car. Click it and go here. Wasn't that fun? 10:17:57 AM    comment []

	Wednesday, September 07, 2005

September 7, 2005 @ 9:50 am Blessed Singleness First, a disclaimer: Where motorcycles are concerned it’s "freedom hall." Whatever floats your boat or turns your crank is what’s right for you and ain’t nobody going to tell you different. That said, let me go on to say that it seems to me that motorcycles have gotten too damn big, too damn heavy and way too expensive. There is something about huge luxo-tourers like the BMW K1200 LT that misses the point. The point is that your ride should be super-maneuverable; easy to push, park, and pick up. It should be as much fun on crowded city commutes as it is on inter-city super slab runs. And has it struck anyone that if your scoot needs a hydraulic center stand something is not quite right? My local Triumph store has been doing a brisk business in the retro Bonneviles, T-100s and Speedmasters. Compared to today’s giants these bikes are pretty small, but they are as big as all the bikes we used to call ‘big.’ My guess is that maybe more and more people are finding out that sometime less really is more. I’ve become addicted to my BMW F650CS, a single-cylinder bike with more displacement, horsepower, and mechanical sophistication than many of the "big" bikes I started riding. It gives great gas mileage (60 mpg) will cruise all day at 75 to 80 and is super maneuverable. It’s a kick to ride. 10:28:03 AM    comment []

	Wednesday, August 31, 2005

August 31, 2005 @ 10:41 am I am going to duck out of the office later today for a quick look, again, at Triumph motorcycles. My last exploration was truly an eye-opener: I was flat-footed on the bikes I was interested in and the biggest of them, the Rocket III, simply floated up off the sidestand. They have a Triumph America on the floor and I’m going to throw a leg over it. My only question would be how comfortable on long rides the forward position of the brake and gear shift pedal would be. 10:46:45 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Arthur Jacobson. Last update: 10/25/05; 9:41:51 AM.