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Some Good Miles On The Bikes In 2022

Thursday, January 5th, 2023

Running up alongside the Mississippi River on one of my 2022 trips.

Every year after the first of January I look at my mileage for the year just ended. I did pretty well in 2022; rode the motorcycles more and put exactly 12 more miles on my car than I did in 2021.

First the car, because that’s my primary basis of comparison. I drove my car all of 2,506 miles. I wasn’t far off that with the Concours and well beyond it on the V-Strom. Nowhere close with the Honda, though.

The Honda only got ridden 729 in 2022. That’s down from 1,086 the year before. Which is a bit surprising to me considering that I thought I was trying to make a deliberate point of riding it regularly. Oh well, I’ll do better in 2023. And I’m also going to put some money into some work this good old bike is in need of.

The Concours had a better year than the CB750: 2,354 miles. That is up from 2,002 miles in 2021 and, as I said, almost as much as the car. Just 152 miles shy of the car. The Kawi got to go on the OFMC trip so it got a lot of miles off that one.

The champion this time around was the V-Strom. I rode that bike 3,866 miles in 2022. It got to go on the RMMRC Great River Road Ride and that was a good long jaunt. I hadn’t planned it that way. I was going to ride the Concours but had to make a last minute change when I discovered the valve stem on one of its tires was totally rotted away. It’s good to have more than one motorcycle.

Altogether that adds up 6,949 miles on motorcycles in 2022, versus 2,506 in my car. I may not put really big miles on any of my vehicles the way a lot of people do but by gosh, I do most of my getting around on the bikes. I kind of like it that way.

Biker Quote for Today

I love being on my bike, but I don’t consider that a sport: it’s too pleasant.

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Posted in Honda motorcycles, Kawasaki, Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club, Suzuki motorcycles, V-Strom | No Comments »

Mileage Target Time

Thursday, November 10th, 2022

This is my original speedometer/odometer after it broke. The numbers quit turning, too.

It’s that time of year when I always look at the odometers on my bikes to see if I can turn over just one more 1,000-mile mark by the end of the year. This year looks like it’s going to be easy.

With the V-Strom I just turned over 42,000 miles. It’s at 42,058 at the moment. No way I’m putting another 942 miles on that bike before the end of December.

With the Concours it’s not quite so cut and dried but still pretty obvious. The odo now sits at 76,309. Theoretically, if I had only one bike and I really got out on it a lot I could reach 77,000 by year’s end, but that’s not the case. I’ve got two other bikes that need to be ridden at least once each month. So no, I’ll just consider that turning over 76,000 hits the mark. If I turned over 76 in May there would be no excuse for not reaching 77, but doing so in October is good enough for this year.

Then we come to the Honda CB750. This is the bike I’ll be choosing on most of my rides for the next seven weeks. This bike is currently sitting at 36,730. That’s only 270 miles from 37,000. That’s doable. In fact, just two more rides like the one we did this past weekend are all it will take. (I do want to make a clarification here for anyone who is new here. This 1980 Honda CB750 Custom does not have only 36,730 on it in all these 42 years. The original speedometer/odometer set broke at about 84,000 and I replaced it with a salvage yard instrument cluster with about 29,000 on it.)

I track the mileage each year on all four of my vehicles, with my eye particularly on the motorcycle miles vs. the car miles. For about the past 10 years I have always put many more miles on my bikes than on my car. That’s the way I like it. I’ll do it again this year, no question. Heck, I’ll probably end the year with more miles on the Suzuki all by itself than on the car. Did I ever tell you I love my motorcycles?

Biker Quote for Today

Why didn’t the motorcycles get in the carpool? Because they didn’t have trunks.

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Posted in Honda motorcycles, Kawasaki, Suzuki motorcycles, V-Strom | No Comments »

Wind, Wind, Wind

Monday, October 24th, 2022

This isn’t a recent picture but it’s a mass of the critters that were bombarding us on this ride.

The tumbleweeds were out in full force Sunday when eight RMMRC riders headed out to Patty Ann’s in Kiowa for a lunch ride. The weather has been great but the forecasts are for cold very soon and high winds immediately. They weren’t kidding.

As we headed east on a variety of roads the wind was blasting out of the south and tumbleweeds were blowing across the road like a mass migration. I felt like I was riding rather skillfully as I managed to get to Kiowa without hitting a single one but when we left a big one nailed me right away. OK, some skill, a bit of luck, too.

The wind was killer. I was on the V-Strom, which is my smallest and lightest bike, and we were getting pushed all around. With all its body work my Concours is like a sail but at least it weighs a lot more and so it is more stable. At times this wind had me leaning so far to my right that it felt like the wind might just blow my wheels out from underneath me. But it didn’t.

What it really reminded me of was heading out from Patty Ann’s the first morning of the Great River Road trip we did this summer. Heading southeast out of Limon that day on US 287 we hit such powerful winds that I rode for about 50 miles with the only thing visible in my left mirror being my chest; that was how far I was leaned over.

It also reminded me of a technique I discovered one day riding out this same road, CO86. On that day the wind was out of the north, not that that matters. What mattered was that I was struggling to keep that bike going where I wanted it to go and at one point, for whatever reason, I left go of the grip with my left hand. Suddenly controlling the bike was a lot easier.

The nearest I can figure is that when I was holding on with two hands my hands were working in opposition to each other. It certainly wasn’t a conscious effort but it was a strain and a struggle; once I let go with one hand, control was easy. I wasn’t fighting against myself. I’ve tried this many times since that day and it works every time.

An interesting aside: having figured this out I thought it was worth sharing so I sent a letter to one of the motorcycle magazines so they could pass it along to their readers. I never heard anything and they never printed my letter so I have to suspect they thought I was talking crazy but I’m not. It really works. Try it for yourself and you’ll see.

We headed out after lunch but original plans to take a roundabout route home got dumped because the wind was just blowing so hard and it was obvious the front over the mountains was coming our way. Everyone decided they just wanted to head home. So we did. But it was good to get out for one more ride before the bad weather arrives.

Biker Quote for Today

I thought of that while riding my motorcycle.

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Posted in Kawasaki, Rocky Mountain Motorcycle Riders Club, Suzuki motorcycles, V-Strom | No Comments »

New V-Strom Tire, Hello To A Cousin

Monday, September 5th, 2022

1 Up 4 Down and Let It Ride are right next door, which makes things extremely convenient.

I’ll be leaving soon on this year’s OFMC trip and I plan to ride the Concours. So I got a new tire put on the V-Strom.

You have to understand, one of the best things about having more than one motorcycle is that if you’re planning to ride and find at the last minute that the bike you planned on has an issue, you just take a different one. I’ve run into that situation more than once.

Most recently, I was loading my Concours the night before departure on the Great River Road ride and found that the valve stem on the rear tire was totally rotted out. I immediately unloaded and moved everything to the V-Strom. I don’t expect anything like that this time but I wanted to be prepared just in case.

And man was that front tire in need of replacement. It wasn’t down to the cords or anything like that, but ever since I’ve had that bike I’ve run 80-20 Shinko tires that have an 80 percent bias for street riding but a chunkier tread that provides the 20 percent bias toward dirt. The thing is, in reality I don’t get off on the dirt all that much, but this tire doesn’t seem to like the pavement very much so it had a really odd wear pattern.

In fact, the guy at One Up Four Down, where I had the work done, commented on what an odd wear pattern it had, how the cupping was very unusual. Basically, the chunky tread along the outside was still thick but sloped down to almost nothing diagonally at an angle, while the inner portion of the tread was almost down to the DOT lines. Weird.

So I decided OK, I’ll just go with street tires. The guys next door at Let It Ride, where I bought the tire, recommended a Metzeler so that’s what I got.

   A 1980 Honda CB750 Custom just like mine.

In the meantime, while the guys were putting the new tire on I looked around at all the bikes they had in the repair shop. In the front of the shop, in an area where I was told the bikes were either ready to be picked up or were waiting for parts to arrive I spotted something very startling: A 1980 Honda CB750 Custom exactly like mine, except looking a lot more shiny and polished than mine.

It seems this bike, though, has an aftermarket exhaust system that has gone to crap and now they’re having a hard time finding something to replace it with. I still have the stock exhaust on mine and it works fine so whoever took theirs off and replaced it might have made a bad decision.

But there it was, looking very pretty and otherwise probably in a lot better condition than mine. I’m glad to see there are still others out there loving this old bike.

Biker Quote for Today

100 reasons not to date a biker: 38. “Am I dating an adult or a 10 year old” you’ll wonder sometimes.

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Posted in Kawasaki, Motorcycle Gear, Suzuki motorcycles, V-Strom | No Comments »

Prettier Country In Eastern Kansas And Missouri

Monday, May 23rd, 2022

The route from Jefferson City to St. Charles. Highly recommended!

We left McPherson, Kansas, very early with a lot more miles to cover this second day of the Great River Road Ride. Riding in early morning is frequently magical and it was this day. Plus, eastern Kansas is a lot prettier than the western portion. Winding through emerald green hills broken by the jagged red clay banks of little streams it was absolutely beautiful.

Crossing into Missouri we followed smaller roads all the way across the state. From Jefferson City we followed MO 94, which follows the Missouri River. Judy and I drove this road the other direction just last year and I knew it was a nice road. I did not remember that there were considerable stretches that were hilly and twisty and perfectly designed for motorcycles.

I was riding second behind Dave and we got into the good stuff and he cranked it up, as he typically will do. I am not an aggressive rider normally but in this case I did not want to hold up everyone behind me, plus, I figured my V-Strom has to be more agile than his big honking Beemer so if he can take this road at a rapid clip I can, too. And I did. I kept tightly with him every mile of the way and you know what? It was fun. It was a lot of fun. That evening on our way to dinner he told me “You did some fine riding today.” I knew that, and I know that I’m probably a better rider than a lot of folks, but it feels good to have that competence recognized by someone who is himself an excellent rider.

At one point Dave made a wrong turn and I’m guessing his GPS told him we could get back on track if we just took this one small road a few miles. We turned off and paused. Initially at least it was gravel. I was on the V-Strom so no problem for me but I wondered about the others. We continued and so did they and we reached pavement in just a few miles and all was well. Then we were back into the twisties. And who knew these Missouri hills were so full of wineries?

By this time we had come a long way and I know I was long past wishing for a stop. We came by several places I felt were perfect to pull over for a while and I was praying Dave would take them but no, he kept cruising. And then we were into the mess of suburban St. Louis afternoon commuter traffic. A couple more navigational glitches slowed us down more and even put us a bit at hazard but we finally worked our way into St. Charles, our stop for the night. Oh man, another 455 miles on top of the 470 the day before. Let me off this bike!

Biker Quote for Today

You can’t ride all day if you don’t start in the morning.

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Posted in BMW motorcycles, motorcycle touring, Suzuki motorcycles, V-Strom | No Comments »

Carrying Stuff On The Bike, Part 2

Monday, May 16th, 2022

This is the second part of a post I started a few days ago. You may want to go read it first.

I’m so pleased to have this top bag. But I haven’t used it enough yet to truly know that it’s as good as I hope it is.

As we’ve gotten older and more affluent our equipment has gotten better, so some years went by and I started becoming acutely conscious of how when we would stop my buddies would just pull their helmets off and stash them and their jackets in these large top bags they all had come to have on their bikes. I have chain-type locks on all my bikes for my helmet and I always just carried my jacket with me. I was getting jealous.

Then I got my V-Strom. And it came with two of the biggest Givi bags I’ve ever seen. These things are so big, when I travel alone on this bike I don’t ever bother to do any deliberate packing. I just toss it all in and have way more room than I need. At the same time, the bags were not quite so very big that I could easily get my helmet and jacket in along with all the other stuff I carry. I could, but not easily.

The answer was still a top bag and I bought one for the V. I was surprised it was not ungodly expensive, and the color was actually a terrific match for the bike, which I don’t care about a lot but it’s nice. It looks good. Now, once again, as long as I didn’t have a lot of stuff in the top bag I could put my helmet there and put the jacket in a side bag.

I’ve only ever gone down one time when I was moving, and that was at a very slow speed so no injuries. But every one of my bikes has been dropped or fallen over more than once. More than twice. With the V-Strom I’m thinking at least six or seven times.

I’ve concluded that the reason this top bag cost what it did was that it was not ruggedly built. After the bike had fallen a few times with the top bag on, the top bag was looking like it might not stay on much longer. It is mounted on a rail system and there were four bolts. The bolts were set into the plastic underside of the bag and two of them are no longer there. Cheap work. Now I flip a bungee over the bag just to add a bit of stability. But I often forget and leave it hanging there, although it’s attached at both ends and there is no end flapping free. I still have some concern about how if that bungee fell off it might get entangled in the chain or the wheel. Some day I’m just going to need to get a better top bag for this bike.

In the meantime, thanks to getting dropped, the Givi bags no longer make as good a seal so some small amount of water can get in. Plus, the bags mount onto pegs on a rail and one of the pegs broke off.

And now the ultimate of ultimates. I’ve had a very good (I think and hope) top bag put on the Concours. This bag is large–no problem throwing the jacket and helmet in. One thing I know for sure is that the mounting is good. I haven’t dropped this bike in a long, long time–and I really don’t want to–but I suspect the bag would hold up a lot better than the one on the V-Strom.

I had expected to get my second opportunity to put this bag through the paces on this 10-day Great River Road trip. That was not to be. On the day before we were to leave I was packing and doing stuff like checking tire pressure, and when I went to put air in the rear tire I discovered the valve stem is rotted through and leaks profusely. There was no way I could take this bike; I’m surprised the tire wasn’t flat. So I shifted everything over to the V-Strom and that’s my bike for this trip. I guess I’ll have to discover the flaws of this new top bag on the Concours some other time.

Biker Quote for Today

If I actually did “ride it like I stole it” I’d be in jail.

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Posted in Kawasaki, Motorcycle Gear, Suzuki motorcycles, V-Strom | No Comments »

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