Passes & Canyons Blog

Having three bikes reduces the number of miles you put on any one bike.

My mileage numbers were up on all three bikes in 2014, so that’s the good news (at least as far as I’m concerned). And down on the car. I would have liked the numbers to go further in each direction but at least they moved in the right directions.

The Honda was up the most percentagewise, although it had the lowest base to start from. I rode it 712 miles last year, compared to a paltry 327 miles in 2013. That’s the thing with having three motorcycles: time spent on one is often time not spent on another.

The Concours numbers were still a tiny fraction of what they had been the four years I spent freelancing full-time, but at least I put in more than 1,000 miles on it, which I had not in 2013. Total miles for 2014 were 1,037, compared to a piddling 666 in 2013. Compare that to the 9,437 I put on the Connie in 2012. I’ll point out though that I took the Suzuki on the OFMC trips in 2013 and in 2014, so that reduced the Kawi numbers substantially. The Connie is the bike I normally like to take on that trip.

And how did the Suzuki do? It rang up 2,596 miles compared to 2,294 the previous year. So that was respectable.

Meanwhile, I only put 7,558 miles on my car, compared to 10,109 in 2013. Match that with the total of 4,345 for the three bikes versus 3,287 the year before and you get more than 1,000 more miles on the bikes and about 2,500 fewer car miles. I’ll take that.

The difference this year had an awful lot to do with the fact that I just simply rode to work more often in 2014 than I did in 2013. I also went to work less, having cut back from five days a week to four days a week in about June. And I still ride the light rail to work a couple days most weeks.

I’m looking for things to change seriously in 2015. My job at the National Park Service will be drawing to a close around the first of May and I just don’t see any way in the world that I’m not going to ride a heck of a lot more and drive my car a whole lot less. Plus, the OFMC is looking at taking several trips this summer instead of the usual one.

I have a strong expectation that 2015 is going to be one heck of a good motorcycling year. Bring it on!

Biker Quote for Today

I’d rather be a rider for a minute, than a spectator for a lifetime.

Tags: motorcycle mileage

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 1st, 2015 at 10:29 am and is filed under Honda motorcycles, Kawasaki, Suzuki motorcycles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.