Motorcycle Review: Hyosung GV650/Avitar

All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day

While I was waiting for Garceau's to finish prepping the bike, I walked around the shop and looked at the Hyosung (pronounced "Yo-sung" or "Why-oh-sung") models on their showroom floor. I knew I'd be reviewing the 650, but the bike that really attracted my attention was the GT250 Comet. The Hyosung models use a lot of common parts and the 250 models are not "little bikes," they just have small motors. However, when Jim Debilzan rolled out the 650 Avitar, my heart sunk. Unknown to me, Hyosung makes a cruiser and I would be testing it.

Years ago, a friend was visiting our home and my wife was trying to feed him. She'd made some guacamole dip and salsa and she was shoving it at him, assuming that everyone loved guacamole. He took a scoop and tasted it. Then he said, "I hate avocado, but this is pretty good for what it is." The Hyosung GV650/Avitar is my guacamole. No matter how well this bike was designed and assembled, there was no chance I would like it. I've ridden a bunch of cruisers. The best I can say about any of them is that they were equally unpleasant, "I don't like cruisers, but it's pretty good for a cruiser." I would, honestly, rather ride a mountain bike. With that in mind, off we go.

The Avitar looks a lot like a V-Rod. Two people, both opinions more diverse than mine, said, "It's pretty." The Avitar's function follows its form and "pretty" is not mine to judge. The bike feels large, partially because rider's position perspective is set by the wide tank (4.5 gallons), the chrome tank treatment, and the wide bars. The Avitar is long (95.6", stem to stern); with a 66.9" wheelbase. In town, the long wheelbase provides a huge turning radius. To get out of a parking space, I made several maneuvers for every one I'd need on my V-Strom.

The footpegs are way out in front, but they can be brought in a couple of inches. Moving the pegs to the "short" position wouldn't have done anything for me. If my feet aren't under my butt, they aren't where they belong. I had to fold myself almost in half to find a posture that worked. The seat height is a low 31". The seating positions appear to be designed for a fairly tall rider and an incredibly short passenger. The right passenger peg is directly over and uncomfortably close to the muffler. The footpegs touch ground easily in twisties and I can't move from the center of the seat to do much about the cornering ground clearance.`

The electronic console contains a lot of information: speedo, odometer, two trip odometers, fuel and temperature bar gauges, and idiot lights. The "Select" and "Reset" buttons are small and hard to engage with gloves. The right-and-left turn indicators could be easy to ignore. The ignition key is on the right side of the tank and is almost guaranteed to be sheared off in a parking incident.

From the rear of the bike, the brake light (ten high intensity LEDs) is insanely visible.  The small, close-in turn signals (front and rear) may be too subtle to be noticed. The single round headlamp provides old fashioned illumination with hot spots near the bike and diffuse light a couple dozen feet out.

For maintenance, the tank props up on an included stay, so air filter servicing can be done with the tank in place. The toolkit and owner’s manual are stored under the seat. The seat only requires the removal of a single screw at the back of the seat. The battery is under the seat along with the tank prop and owners' manual. Idle adjustment is easily accessible from the rider’s seated position. The oil change interval is 6,000km (about 3,700 miles) and Hyosung recommends the valve clearances be inspected at that same interval. The bike has an oil filter (on the right side case) and an oil strainer (near the drain plug).

The steel tube frame is rigid enough to provide a stable, confident ride on pavement. The seat and feet-forward position puts a lot of responsibility on the suspension, though. The 43mm upside-down forks have “H-to-S” damping adjustment, but the old-fashioned dual shock rear suspension only allows for spring loading adjustment. Both ends are short travel, which accounts for the low seat height and harsh ride. Vibration is moderate, especially considering the cruiser short-travel suspension. The fact that the mirrors provide a stable rearview image at all speeds proves that the bike is relatively vibration-free. The stock tires are Bridgestone Battleax BT54 radials. The double disk front, single disk rear brakes work, but you don't have to worry about using too much pressure because the brakes are far from aggressive. I couldn't apply enough front brake to approach breaking the front wheel loose.

Hyosung claims 71hp at the rear wheel and my ride gave me no reason to doubt it. The Avitar does not have a tach, so I don't really know where "bottom" is, but the motor pulls strongly from low-midband up. The dual 39mm Mikuni carbs provide enough fuel to the 81.5 x 62mm 647cc V-
2 to give the bike a solid 50mph 5th gear roll-on and plenty of passing power. The Avitar's mild but macho exhaust note, turns into a snarl when you get on the gas. People who appreciate that kind of thing commented that it "sounds cool." At 55, with a constant throttle, I noticed a bit of hesitation that almost felt like fuel starvation. That reappeared any time I was in that RPM range with steady throttle. In my 135 mile test ride, I averaged 40mpg; not great but not bad.

Ten miles from home my hands were tingling, my butt was sore, and I still can’t figure out why my feet are sticking out in front of the rest of me. Usually, I'm good for 100-150 miles between rest stops. Today, 20 miles and I'm ready to look at scenery, on foot. Those aren’t Hyosung complaints, those are cruiser complaints. At 70mph, the wind is trying to blow my feet from the pegs and me from the seat. I'm dangling from the bars. In this seating position, 55mph feels fast and 70 feels out of control. My friend on the Yamaha TDM thinks this is a great road. Every bump, crack, and ripple in the highway drives my tailbone into the middle of my spine. The historic twin-shock rear suspension, long wheelbase and sluggish steering turns some of my favorite letter-roads into work. At about 250 miles, the clutch began making a squawking noise on cold starts and it would grab and lunge forward. That reappeared once in slow moving traffic, when the bike was a little hot. The 5-speed transmission is predictable and well-spaced and shifting is as smooth as you'd expect from a long linkage mechanism. The “poly chain belt” drive, as usual for the genre, sucks up some transmission shock but it isn't elastic enough to disguise some transmission lash.

The GV650 has lots of chrome: engine cases, monster pipe, fork bits, and all of the places cruiser owner's like chrome. The engine case chrome is a little heavy looking, like plastic model plating. The welds, paint, chrome, fit and finish all look up to modern standards, although the finish on the top side of the swingarm was a little crude. Generally, the Avitar looks well built for the price ($6,299 MSRP).

Competition in this style and engine size is fierce. The Avitar is priced $100 above Yamaha's V-Star Classic and $200 over the Custom and Suzuki's Boulevard. The Honda Shadow VLX is $400-800 less expensive than the GV650 and Kawasaki's Vulcan 500 LTD is $1100 cheaper. The Harley Sportster 883 is $400 above the asking price for the Hyosung. It will be hard to make a dent in this market without a substantial cost advantage over the more established competition.

Postscript: This review generated more flame-mail than anything I've done in the last decade. I must have been right, because some of the mail came from owners who claimed I'd devalued their "investment" by describing its faults and failures. In retrospect, I only wish I had been more blunt in my dislike for the Avitar. Even more, the overreaction by the manufacturer and dealer to my exposing the bike's terrible reliability and incompetent design demonstrates exactly how a consumer will be treated with similar complaints. It is, without question, a POS motorcycle that is overpriced, poorly designed and more miserably executed, and belongs in the "cheap Chinese shit" category of motorcycles.

Media Morons

In a classic case of misinterpreting data or dumbing it down to the point even Communications majors imagine they understand it, this idiot article completely misses the most important point about the boneheads who play with their cell phones while driving, “Survey finds people text and drive knowing dangers.” There are two major contradictory statements in this article:

“In an AT&T-sponsored survey of drivers who text daily — regardless of where they are — 98 percent said they were aware of the dangers of texting behind the wheel. Nonetheless, three-quarters of them admitted to texting while driving, despite broad public-service campaigns and laws against it in some states.”

and

“More than a quarter of those who texted while driving believed they ‘can easily do several things at once, even while driving.’"

I disagree with the claim that those delusional drivers that surveyed first statement are “aware” of anything. I watch those morons tailgate, wander across lane markers, panic at the slightest variation in road or traffic conditions, fail miserably at the most remedial attempts to merge in traffic, and generally display driving skills that would embarrass a dog. I do not, under any circumstances believe 98% of cell phone addicts are skilled enough to recognize any sort of danger until their vehicle is sliding over a precipice.

On the other hand, I totally agree with the second statement. I do believe these skidding down the highway of life morons absolutely believe “they can do several things at once, even while driving. The problem is that they do not do anything well. Ever. So their standards are sub-human.

Almost ironically, AT&T conducted this poll with the half-hearted side-goal of promoting their “free app that silences text message alerts and activates automatically when a person is moving 15 miles per hour or faster. (Passengers can turn it off.)” True to form, this too-big-to-fail corporation is masking their responsibility in this plague of distracted, deadly drivers with an easily bypassed app that requires the user to be sentient. We all know the solution is to force the telcoms to use existing technology to shut down all mobile communications when the phone is in motion. Fuck a lot off passengers. They can’t drink in a moving vehicle, why should they be calling anyone and distracting the driver with their inane chatter? Personally, I think the real solution is to make the telcoms partially responsible (as deep pockets) for any crash, injury, or fatality in which their service is involved. A few multi-million dollar lawsuits and they’ll suddenly do the right thing.

#81 What We Amount to (on Ride to Work Day 2009)

All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day

Earlier this year, the United States Census and the Department of Transportation released stats on urban commuting traffic. Motorcycles are an embarrassingly insignificant minority. Apparently, there are 80 million cars, trucks, SUVs; and minivans on the road every day while only 200,000 motorcycles and scooters occupy those same public roads. For the math-impaired, that amounts to a paltry 0.25% of the total commuting vehicles on the road being two-wheeled. I would be amazed if motorcycles are more than half of that. As I've often suspected, we're barely more than a pitiful two-tenths-of-a-percentage point.

"Ride free, but ride rarely," must be the US motorcycle crowd's motto.

Today was a beautiful, 80oF, cloudless June weekday with a mild breeze and the kind of clean, crisp summer feel that ought to irresistibly force motorcycles on to the highways. When I wake up to this kind of day, I gotta find some place to visit. Due to a management screw up, I ended up on the far west end of the Cities at the peak afternoon rush hour. I never travel these roads when other people are on them, but today I was out there in the human cattle drive. Man! Why are there so many people crammed into cages and wheeled coffins on days like this?

I rode forty-five rush hour miles, from the southwest end of the Cities, up 212 to 62 to I35W to I94 to I35E to home. You'd need a few hundred people assigned to counting particular colored cars or trucks or SUVs or minivans to be able to count the number of cars I passed on that trip. You barely need the fingers of two hands to count the motorcycles and scooters: seven motorcycles and two scooters. Forty-five miles and a zillion cages and seven freaking motorcycles. There is absolutely no chance that Minnesota holds up its end of that puny 0.25%. Just making a wild guess, I'd guess that every freeway mile I traveled held at least 600 cages and I did about 25 multi-lane miles: 15000 cages. The other twenty miles probably averaged about 175 cars per mile: 3500 cages. That makes us a grossly conservative estimated 0.038% of commuting traffic. I would buy someone a steak dinner for a thirty minute video of the trip I took this Monday, it would be a terrific documentary of how few Minnesotans actually use their motorcycles for anything practical.

We gotta fix this.

While we barely exist on the highway, we make a big mark in the morgues. A recent NPR report stated that Minnesota motorcyclists account for "10% of traffic accident deaths" and 1% of the vehicles on the road. Using the DOT's statistics, that means a two-wheeled motorized traveler is forty times as likely to get killed on the road as a cager, bare minimum. Using MnDOT's numbers, Minnesota motorcyclists mortality improves to ten times the cage rate. My seat-of-the-pants numbers make me suspect that we're about 10X more likely to get killed than MnDOT estimates.

We gotta fix this.

On the other hand, I have a chunk of the freeway in my backyard and a stretch of relatively popular residential road practically in my front yard. I can sit on my porch and listen to the whine of cage tires, semis-rumbling, and the beeping of construction equipment backing up and it all blends into an irritating background noise that is the reason I could afford this house in the first place. The only noises that stand out amid this cacophony of mechanical noises is the occasionally window-rattling "potato-potato" farm implement sound produced by a "big twin" or the shriek of a over-rev'd squid-piloted crotch rocket. So, while we don't contribute anything significant or worthwhile to traffic flow, we stand right out there as noise polluters.

Obviously, that has to be fixed.

So on June 15th this year, Ride to Work Day will be celebrated by the few, the valiant, the dedicated, the skilled, and the rest of you will drive your cage-lumps to work like all the other sheep on the highway. Or, you could join us. Put on a demonstration of how much we could contribute to traffic flow and safety, fuel economy, and how much better the world would be if more of us rode motorcycles to work everyday possible.

June 2009

Book Review: More Proficient Motorcycling: Mastering the Ride 2nd Edition

by David L. Hough, 2012

All Rights Reserved © 2013 Thomas W. Day

David Hough and, through his writing for Motorcycle Consumer News, Sound RIDER!, and BMW Owners News has been a strong advocate for motorcycle training and safety for most of his 75 years. Hough was inducted into the AMA's Motorcycle Museum Hall of Fame in 2009. As a motorcycle safety advocate, Hough has won the Motorcycle Safety Foundation's Excellence in Motorcycle Journalism award twice, but he isn't one of the MSF's fans. In fact, in this 220 page book, the MSF is mentioned exactly three times and mostly in an unfavorable light. In 2004, through a short series of MCN articles ("Trouble in Rider Training 1 & 2") Hough championed the argument that the MSF is more committed to selling motorcycles than promoting motorcycle safety and crash and fatality reduction. In 2013, he obviously holds the same positions to be true.  There are numerous references to rider training programs that Hough considers to be worthwhile, but the MSF is not among them. With that as a background, the newest edition of Mastering the Ride takes on many of the issues Hough believes are driving motorcycle fatality statistics into public discussion.

Hough has some excellent arguments regarding how we ride and how that relates to the frequency that we end up in hospitals and cemeteries. Marketing gurus say "perception is everything" and that goes for motorcycling, too. Several sections of Mastering the Ride are dedicated to discussions of safe following distance, scanning for hazards and escape routes, visibility, and evasive maneuvers. In many piloting, automotive, and motorcycle training programs, this translates to SIPDE (search, identify, predict, decide, and execute). This takes the MSF's SEE (search, evaluate, and execute) to a more functional and detailed level by forcing riders and drivers to think about all of the steps necessary in avoiding catastrophe on the road.

All of this stuff is about learning how to accurate gauge and react to typical situations with exceptional skill. Since Hough managed to overshoot his own limits at a ride in August 2012 and crashed Lee Park's Triumph in an emergency stopping maneuver, some people might take his advice with a small block of salt. However, most experienced riders know that there are only two kinds of motorcyclists: those who have crashed and those who haven't crashed yet. Hough isn't shy about illustrating this book with pictures of his own off-pavement misadventures and self-deprecating examples of moments when his mental state resulted in (or could have) his sliding down the road shiny-side-down. Crashing is just one possible result from riding a vehicle that doesn't balance itself. During Aerostich's VBR3, I had the pleasure of talking to David for an extended period about his post-crash take on "motorcycle safety" (a phrase he believes is an oxymoron) and his position on motorcycle training is even more controversial now than ever.

There are a lot of valuable, but subtle, riding tips that could be missed by a first pass through Mastering the Ride. As an example, in MSF classes, instructors always challenge riders to "look where you want to go," but Hough extends that further by saying "point your nose . . . in the direction you want to go." Using the fighter pilots' tactic of both looking in the intended target direction and keeping your eyes level to force a commitment to a direction change, this hint goes a long ways toward minimizing "target fixation." Just for this tip, I'm glad to have read the book.

Hough's take on preoccupied drivers is accurate and usually far more politically correct than my own. When he describes the reckless homicide rear end crash that took Anita Zaffke's life in 2009, he doesn't provide more than the first name of the victim or much of a condemnation of the homicidal fingernail-painting driver. In a similar fashion, he refrains from seriously criticizing modern driving skills or in-vehicle distractions. Hough is less politically correct when he describes most US highway law enforcement tactics as being "revenue generating" rather than safety-oriented. Having been hooked by speed traps in some pretty silly locations and even sillier law enforcement legal interpretations, I'm totally on board with Hough in this regard.

Hough mistakes bicycle habits or newbie fear for skill when he describes using two or three finger-braking as an advanced riding skill. If you watch the extras on the Faster DVD, you'll see that Valentino Rossi often uses all four fingers and I suspect Hough is rethinking his own braking skills after flipping Park's Triumph this past summer. There are times when two finger braking is more than enough, but making that a regular habit is a formula for reduced braking when you really need it and a busted finger or two when the bars slam to the ground in a right turn low-side. His take on advanced braking systems (ABS and linked) seems to be pretty "old guy biased," too.

Where this book shines is in the street riding strategies. Hough describes a roadway that is in constant flux and a high state of hazard; just like the roads we all ride. His tips for evaluating traffic, turn radii and camber, road surfaces, and other road risks are valuable and expert. There are two appendix entries that the majority of American riders should read: "The Aging Rider" and "Travel." Since the average age of American motorcyclists is moving right along with the Boomer generation, we're all heading toward that moment when we have to consider being too old to ride. Goofy "solutions" like trikes and sidecars aside, it is simply a matter of time for all of us. Hough is close to that point himself and discusses aging and declining skills honestly and factually. His admonition that we all need to ride somewhere on our motorcycles is just good sense. Ride someplace you've always dreamed of visiting. 

Aftermarket Stuff Sucks Everywhere

The one and only problem I’ve had, so far, with my new-to-me Nissan Frontier pickup is the aftermarket (Viper) “security system.” From the start, the damn thing has been a glitch-factory. Why anyone would fuck up perfectly good remote control doors and a factory alarm system with some goofy crap that might or might not provide the basic functions totally loses me. Of course, I have the same mental block with aftermarket crap on motorcycles. Because only one of the Viper’s remote controls appeared to be sync’d with the system, I crawled around under the dash until I found the “valet” button and turned the system off. Once that was accomplished, the pickup seemed to be pretty normal.

After going over the pickup, cleaning, inspecting, and sorting out what a maintenance process might be, I noticed the Viper’s “siren” had been left dangling in the engine compartment. Not being a fan of loose ends, I found a place to ground the thing and bolt it solidly to the chassis and discovered the system re-initialized itself once the siren was grounded. I had errands to do, so I didn’t worry about it for the moment. On the highway, I discovered the door locks now randomly cycled with the vehicle’s speed. As I found when I first got the pickup, if I stalled the truck (still getting used to the manual transmission), I had to do a routine with the key to get the truck to restart. Back under the dash and once again with the “valet” bullshit. With the Viper crap out of the system, the pickup is back to normal.

I mentioned this to a friend who worked for a company that specialized in hotrodding electronics for diesel trucks and he said, “One of the techs for [his old employer] told me the first thing he always asks his customers when they complain about electronic problems is ‘Did you install a security system?’” If they did, his first suggestion was that they remove the damn security system, then try troubleshooting the truck if there was still a problem. Usually, he claimed that solved the electrical/electronic problems; everything from hard starting to fuel mapping to malfunctioning automatic transmission programming and the usual immobilizer and door lock problems.

Supposedly, it should be easy to pull this damn Viper system, but I’m between houses, garages, and test equipment and tools. I might have to live with no electronic door keys for a winter. It’s too cold to crawl around under the dash reconnecting wires and testing the results and my new garage will even be colder for a season. Once again, it proves my rule for everything from noisy exhaust systems to air-box modifications to Power Commanders: for every dollar spent on aftermarket crap I take two dollars off of my resale offer over what the stock motorcycle might be worth. You’re buying that crap on your own dime because I’m going to be pulling it off and tossing it or selling it. Shade tree mechanics are not nearly as often catastrophic as shade tree “engineers.” When some math-impaired fruitcake with a set of cheap wrenches thinks he can re-engineer a Yamaha, Husky, Honda, KTM, BMW, Suzuki, or Kawasaki to perform better than those companies’ engineers, I’m skeptical, at best. Harley, Polaris, Ducati, or Indian might be a different matter.

Going Fast Is . . .

You tell me. I've done a few of these spill tactics in my younger years and pulled off a couple of them last winter on the WR in deep sand. This summer, I had a thirty-something guy in one of my ERC's explain how he'd quit off-roading a few years back because of his kids. I thought he meant the usual "now that I'm a dad I have to be responsible and play it safe" thing, but he explained his decision came from watching his kids. He described his toddlers as being "made of rubber and magic" and realized that if he took any one of the sorts of falls they experienced dozens of times a day he'd be in crutches and casts for months. Once he assessed his own deteriorating "rubber and magic" quotient, he decided going fast off-road was for younger guys.

Survival after some of the spills on this video can only be explained by "rubber and magic." At 66, my rubber components have oxidized into brittle cheap plastic and the magic has gone away. Regardless, I miss having the confidence, durability, and gumption to go fast off-road and envy these guys; even the ones who got hurt going balls out where smarter people would fear to fire up the bike.

#80 It's Too Damn Easy

All Rights Reserved © 2005 Thomas W. Day

Way back at the beginning of the information age, in about 1992, a biking, IS'ing friend of mine told me that he was beginning to hate the World Wide Web. Since we'd been working together to assemble a corporate website for our employer for the previous couple of months, I was a little surprised. His argument was that when the web really hit, "everyone" would be on the internet. When that happened, the Net would cease to be a resource for geeks and technoids and it would become as saturated with unskilled people and pointless crap as radio airwaves have been in the last fifty years. At that time, about the only way to even use e-mail was to be a moderately competent UNIX programmer and be able to assemble enough code to modify a text editor to suit your ISP's requirements. It was a pretty exclusive club. You had to be a geek, or be really nice to one, to accomplish anything on the Net.

He was right. Now, everybody is using the WWW and it's commercial, crass, packed full of time-wasting, resource hogging advertisements, porno and politics, and, in a few seconds of search engine manipulation, you can find the wrong answer to almost any question. The web is more fun and more useful, too, but if you didn't know how to use the old tools you probably don't get as much out of the newer, more powerful tools. Looking at national and Minnesota accident statistics, I'm beginning to think that my real gripe against hippo-cruisers is that they make motorcycling too damned easy for "everyone" to become motorcyclists. In particular, they make it easy for average, poorly trained, unskilled, "physically (and, sometimes, mentally) challenged" folks to ride a motorcycle. At least, they can ride it badly.

An Art Friedman Motorcyclist column noted that there has been a steady and significant increase in engine displacement that appears to be closely linked to a steady and significant increase in motorcycle crashes and motorcycle deaths. The writer cautioned that relationship could be related "to rider-training availability, to older riders, to faster sportbikes, to fewer helmet laws, to a reduction in recent rider experience, to the displacement march among popular cruisers. . . " And so on. How about a possible relationship between all these crashes and the fact that most of these older, untrained riders are buying butt-heavy big cruisers that any damn fool can get out of the driveway but nobody can actually safely maneuver on the road?

Look at the characteristics of the typical hippo-bike:

• Minimal horsepower, but lots of low rpm torque. So grandma or grandpa can let that nasty clutch lever fly, like a pinball machine flipper, without stalling the bike or wheeling down the driveway.
• A center of gravity so low that the bike stands by itself, requiring hardly any concentration from the rider in balancing the bike and putting it in motion.
• Fat and flat tires for more of that balance-free start-up action. 22" to 28" seat height so obese and inflexible American couch potatoes can wedge a knee over and mount up, even if they are so disabled that they are no more agile than a marble statue.
• Short seat heights and a low center of gravity forces designers to accept impractically low ground clearances. Yet another way to sacrifice one of motorcycles' safety advantages. If you can't even think about clearing a curb in a tight situation, you've trapped yourself to the asphalt where all the violence is going to be.
•   To make up for years of cubicle paralysis, blimp owners want lots of sound and vibration to compensate for all that wasted time making the boss rich. I think Shakespeare called this "sound and fury signifying nothing," It's not nothing. It's a sensory generator for the the tactilely disabled. If you can't tell how fast a well tuned four is spinning by the buzz in the bars, ride a big-ass twin and your ribs bang together for a much more obvious sensation. Of course, you can't hear a 747 about to fly up your butt, but you can imagine all that noise moves people out of your unstable path of travel.
• Hippo-bikes are exercises in long-framed, super-stable geometry. So, once you get your hippo rolling, it doesn't do anything surprising, like turning. Some of these bikes won't change direction unless you really put your mind (and lots of body and handlebar pressure) to it. Trains are more maneuverable.

The list could go on for pages. Every aspect of these bikes is intended to make it easy for "anyone" to saddle up and roll forward. Unfortunately, rolling forward isn't all there is to motorcycling. You have to stop, sometimes you have to stop quickly; something that is made much more difficult when all that extra mass gets plugged into the momentum equation. Turning is a good thing, too. Sometimes being able to turn quickly is the difference between an exciting moment and a final moment. Turning these massive and infinitely-stable motorcycles feels like something you do after submitting a flight plan and requesting a stay on the laws of physics.

Here's a discouraging quote from Motorcyclist's 2003 review of BMW's F650CS, "to put the entry-level rider in the crosshairs, BMW has kept the engine full of torque and the injection purposely tuned to make the bike as docile as can be. With generous flywheel effect and a smooth clutch, edging out into traffic couldn't be easier." That's a positive spin on exactly what I'm talking about. I don't want to pick on the F650CS much, though, because I happen to think it is an ideal bike for riders of all skill levels (assuming those riders have at least a 36" inseam). This is a pretty good, general purpose bike, but it's obvious that BMW's designers are joining the mindless marketing rush to attract unskilled crowds to their motorcycles.

Don't get me wrong. I want lots of folks on motorcycles. I'd like to have dozens of models at my local dealership that tempt me to part with my money, if I had any. I'd like to have the highways, freeways, and side roads buzzing with motorcycles so that we have enough political and social clout to take advantage of motorcycles' advantages. I just want those riders to be competent enough that they don't all kill themselves in a lemming dive across the median.

Even further back in ancient history, my ancient history, I was taking a cross-country bus tour and ended up sitting next to a comedian heading back to L.A. after making an unsuccessful run at New York. We started sharing jokes and stories and he hit me with "why is there handicapped parking at tennis courts?" Thirty years later, I still can't explain handicapped parking at tennis courts, but I've been watching ever since and I never see those spaces filled.

Motorcycling is somewhere between a physical activity and a sport. I don't think people who might park their cars in handicapped spaces belong on motorcycles. There have been a few times in my own riding history when I began to think that I either needed to become more fit or quit. The thought of leaving two-wheeled transportation is always an exercise motivator for me. If you don't have the coordination to deal with the controls, you don't belong on two wheels. If you can't turn your head far enough to check blind spots, you shouldn't be at the wheel of a car or riding a motorcycle. If your judgment is impaired, temporarily or permanently, two wheels are less safe (for you) than four and you should avoid self-piloting altogether. There are folks that some MSF instructors classify as TDTR (too dumb to ride). It may not be a full-fledged sport, but motorcycling is a lot more physically and mentally demanding than driving a car or riding the bus. A clue to your motorcycling future might be "if you suck on a bicycle, you will most likely suck on a motorcycle."

I don't think motorcycling is well served by the "universal vehicle tactic." Building bikes that allow new riders on the road with next-to-no-skills or capacity for riding is the easy, dangerous way to attract customers. It's easy because it avoids the responsibility of getting across the critical point that motorcycling is a high risk activity, unless you have the skills to reduce the risk. Without bodywork to act as armor, motorcyclists don't do well in multi-vehicle collisions. It's dangerous because, when these baby-rider-sitting-bikes put a large quantity of riders on the road whose lack of skills and physical incapacity gets them killed or injured in ways that attracts the insurance industry's attention, we could be in for some nasty regulation from Big Momma Government.

We'll be seeing even more regulations like road and traffic access restrictions, helmet laws, health and life insurance penalties for motorcyclists, equipment inspections, and even more limitations on motorcycles that can be imported and receive EPA and DOT approvals. That, particularly, bothers me because the bikes I like the best are the bikes that provide the lowest profit margins for manufacturers. Those bikes will be the first to go when the boom falls. High tech, leading edge, small caliber bikes are only profitable if they sell in big numbers. Without those profits, even the big companies will try to imitate the boutique bike manufacturers to attract the discretionary dollars of the idle rich, because that's where the big bucks for minimal engineering and manufacturing investment lies.

I can clearly remember a lot of great bikes rotting on the showroom floors in the early and mid-80s. Depressing times and the bikes that followed were almost as depressing. Today's big bikes are the residue of that economic lesson. A lesson not well learned by the motorcycling business. Motorcycling is not the kind of activity that survives well in a vacuum. We have to stick together, as a sport and a mode of transportation, or we all vanish. I don't think the World Wide Web model will work for motorcycling. If we put enough incompetent people on the road, insurance companies and government will start to take notice. That won't be a good thing.

May 2009

Helmet Questions

Russ asked...

Hi there. I'd just send you an email, but I can't find one, so I hope you don't mind if I ask my question here in the comments.
I'm new to riding so I know almost nothing. After buying a helmet (full face, bright green Icon Alliance. Maybe you remember it from when from when I took your course in September) I started wondering if it actually fit me properly. See, it locks down tightly around the my skull, so that I can't wedge my fingers between under the front and my forehead. However, there's a bit of play between my cheek and the cheek pads so that they lose contact when I wobble the helmet back and forth. I've heard that is an indication of a problem with the fit. I have almost no fat in my cheeks, so maybe that's a factor. In short, it seems to fit my skull perfectly, but not my face.
My question is this: would you, in your opinion, consider the above problem enough of a safety issue to justify getting an entirely new helmet, or is the fact that it fits very snugly around the skull the most important factor? Any input you might have would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Russ

Sorry about the lost “contact” button on the blog. I don’t know where it went, but I’ll try to get that fixed this week.

I have almost no visual skills, so I might be misinterpreting the helmet fit you’ve described. If so, someone else on this list may get it better. Helmet fit is a really personal thing and several manufacturers make a decent effort to shape helmets differently in size gradations. Arai, for example, narrows their helmet form with smaller sizes. The HelmetCheck.org website has a pretty good description of one method of inspecting the fit of a helmet: http://www.helmetcheck.org/thefit.aspx. Their list of inspection points are:

The cheek pads should touch your cheeks without pressing uncomfortably.

There should be no gaps between your temples and the brow pads.

If the helmet has a neck roll, it shouldn't push the helmet away from the back of your neck.

On full-face helmets, press on the chin piece. The helmet or face shield should not touch your nose or chin. If it does, it will surely do so at speed from wind pressure.

From your description, it sounds to me like your helmet is a pretty good fit. I guess it depends on how much force you are using when you “wobble the helmet back and forth,” though. The real question, in my mind, would be does it feel like the helmet would come off on impact due to the lack of contact on the side of your face? If not and it’s comfortable, it’s probably fine. If you can rotate the helmet enough to slip it over your head with the strap adjusted normally, it’s too loose. Remember, the helmet will loosen up with use. I always buy a helmet that is slightly uncomfortably tight (everywhere) and, 5,000 miles later, it will be perfect.

One piece of gear I’d never recommend buying untried is a helmet. That said, I’ve done it before and been unhappy with the results. The reason stores like Bob’s in Little Canada have lots of helmets is because they know fit is everything. I think this YouTube video is about as good a presentation on helmet fit as I’ve ever seen. I especially like the concentration on visibility and fit.

Book Review: Modern Motorcycle Technology: How Every Part of Your Motorcycle Works

by Massimo Clarke, 2010

All Rights Reserved © 2012 Thomas W. Day

Massimo Clarke is an Italian version of Cycle World's Kevin Cameron. Clarke has several motorcycle books to his name, was the technical editor of Motosprint, and is currently a Director for Assomotoracing. (If you can figure out what this organization does, please explain.) Clarke's grasp of technology is excellent and his ability to quickly describe the function, advantages and disadvantages, and evolution of machines and their parts is why this book is worth reading. The photographs and illustrations, on the other hand, are what make Modern Motorcycle Technology fun to look at and browse through.

For me, this was not a cover-to-cover read. Instead, I skipped around to read about subjects that interested me at the moment; starting with "Intake and Exhaust." I followed that with going back to the beginning for "Engine Design" and "Structure and Function." While I have a decent basic understanding of internal combustion engine operation, there is no subtlety to what I know. When I'm troubleshooting, "suck, squeeze, bang, and blow" is about all the theory I use to stumble my way through solving engine problems. Clarke's detailed explanation of how the myriad of engine systems work and how the various one, two, three, and four cylinder configurations provide power, reduce vibration and instability, control heat, convert fuel to energy, and how design engineers compensate for the weaknesses of the basic design they have chosen was worth the price of the book. There are useful descriptions of the reliability sacrifices several engine designs make in the hunt for superior performance.

If you ever wanted to know what manufacturing processes were used for the various parts of your motorcycle, this book is for you. If you're interested in more than surface-level motorcycle metallurgy, fuel system chemistry, and frame and suspension geometry and physics, this book is for you. If you want to know the real effect of exhaust and intake modifications on the design intention of your motorcycle, Clark has a whole chapter just for you. Transmission? Exhaust emissions? Frame geometry? Suspension parts? Wheels and tires? Electronic components? It's all there and with enough detail to provide a decent background on how each of these bike bits works.

I can't decide if I'm going to keep my copy of Modern Motorcycle Technology in the bathroom/library or in the garage. It's good recreational reading, but it's also detailed enough to be useful as reinforcement to my service and owner's manuals, when I'm stuck troubleshooting some unusual problem. I might need two copies.

#79 Who Will Claim the Body?

[If you've been following the "re-publication of my old GWAG columns for MMM in this blog, you'll know that I put this article on the blog a good 1 1/2 years ago. I could be dead now, but I still have a few more old article scheduled to be published on this blog because of Google Blogger's cool scheduling feature. My wife was particularly freaked out by my having noted that I was so far ahead of my life in the blog that I could, literally, become my own ghost writer anytime in the future. If that makes you nervous, this article is particularly ghoulish.]

All Rights Reserved © 2009 Thomas W. Day

"Bring out your dead."

Recently, I pissed off a collection of street riders by making the assertion that no matter how you crash, you own some part of the responsibility. Like a newly converted hooker, I'm often guilty of coming off too piously convinced that "accidents" are rarely accidental. One of the folks I pissed off replied, "You sound like one of the MSF instructors I've heard about that bought the farm despite their years of experience and expertise."

That comment reminded me of watching an old guy with cancer answer a young nurse's lifestyle questions. When she asked if he'd been a smoker, he replied, "For a couple of years, when I was in my twenties." She quickly checked the box that attributed some component of his mortal illness to cancer sticks. He objected, but she ignored him. After the nurse left, he listed a string of things that were more likely causes for his cancer: such as 1940s farm chemicals, Korean War chemical weapons and radioactive materials, the industrial chemicals from his manufacturing jobs, his twenty-year-career as a mechanic and the associated time spent with asbestos brake components, and "all the crap they put in food these days." A couple of years as an occasional smoker seems pretty mild compared to the stuff most of us have been exposed to during our lives. George Shaw wrote, "It is the mark of a truly intelligent person to be moved by statistics." I'm unconvinced.

I'm more impressed by people who actually understand the flaws and misleading characteristics of statistics. Even the sloppy common language use of statistical terms, such as "most" and "everyone," are evidence of poor statistical sophistication. Most everyone appears to be "moved by statistics," but most of us move in the wrong direction. Last year's NHTSA stats demonstrated that a motorcycle injury or fatality occurs every 125,000 miles. In my case, if I do "buy the farm" on a motorcycle, I'm not sure that will say much about the fallacies in my late-life attempt at a safe motorcycling philosophy. For one, I'm riding toward 400,000 miles on a motorcycle, not counting 15 years of off-road riding before I bought my first street-legal bike. I've long since passed a million automotive miles, including a five year period of driving a commercial vehicle 100k/year. So far, the most dangerous place for my motorcycle has been in my garage, where at least two brake levers and one clutch lever have lost their lives. My wife has made the garage a statistical hazard for our cars. So, what exactly will my buying the farm on a motorcycle prove? Sooner or later, something is going to get me. It's not like I've made myself a small target.

In my manufacturing career, I was regularly exposed to (read "swimming in") trichloroethylene, carbon tetrachloride, all varieties of alcohol, acrylic lacquer thinner, methyl ethyl ketone, acetone, and practically every hydrocarbon ever compounded as a propellant, solvent, or paint. I have inhaled large quantities of asbestos, fiberglass, mineral wool, and all of the crap used to protect, cure, and laminate modern wood products. For the first 20 years of my working life, practically no one thought twice about wearing a simple cotton face mask as protection for any of these hazardous materials. In fact, I've only worked for one company in 40+ years that bothered to provide employees with Material Safety Data information. Every face mask or filter I've ever worn, I bought myself. You might think OSHA has been overprotective of employees, but I think they've been non-existent for all of my career. I lived next to a lead plant, a packing plant and, for most of my Midwestern life, was regularly surrounded by cattle feedlots. Motorcycling has been considerably safer than working and not much more dangerous than staying home.

All my life, I have suffered with asthma, allergies, and a tendency to turn any cold or flu into bronchitis or pneumonia. Since I turned 18, every chest x-ray is followed by a "how long have you been a smoker?" question from my doctors. I did smoke, for two weeks, when I was 19. After the initial high, it seemed pointless to spend money on a drug that barely returned my consciousness to normal, so I quit. I am a "child of the sixties" and, if I were inclined toward chemical addiction, I'd pick a much better chemical than nicotine. Until the late 80s, every work or recreational environment was a smoking environment. For forty years, my living room was the only "non-smoking" facility to which I could escape. I've inhaled every kind of second-hand smoke, from cigars and cigarettes to burning buildings and smog-spewing factories. Nothing portrayed in the Blues Brothers (I or II) was in any way more miserable than the places my bands played. I once picked a drummer solely for his ability to throw a broken drum stick like a knife with barely a click lost in the beat. Up until this past couple of years, I never imagined a smoke-free would exist in my lifetime.

Genetically, I'm in pretty poor statistical shape. My mother died of cancer when she was 34. I'm the oldest living male on my mother's side of the family, for three generations; our poor longevity is all due to cardiac failure and strokes. I've been mostly pleasantly surprised at every one of my birthdays since I turned thirty. I drink coffee and whiskey, sometimes together. I eat anything that grows, crawls, swims, floats, or walks on four feet. I'm the essential American; overweight, under-exercised, and over-stressed.

I'm a bit of a "risk-taker." Since I was 15, I've ridden motorcycles, on and off-road-and-track, fast and, sometimes, carelessly. I've bungee-jumped, rock-climbed, packed into a good bit of the American wilderness, scuba-dived to 175 feet, snorkeled with sharks. I've swam, kayaked, and canoed lakes and river rapids and both of our oceans. I've hitchhiked across a good part of the west, bicycled-commuted Los Angeles and raced down mountain goat trails, hung out with bikers and musicians, got married at 19, raised teenagers and baby-sit my grandkids. Most of those "dangerous" activities I do solo, even the ones that usually require a buddy-system. I have an allergy to groups, even groups of two. It's pretty likely that whatever thing that kills me will do so when I'm all alone. Some people believe that being alone is the biggest risk of all. Most days, I can't get anywhere near enough solitude.

I am totally capable of spacing out in the midst of any activity or crisis. I incessantly daydream and that is something that safe motorcycling does not tolerate. I hear and see more songs and stories in my imagination than all of Hollywood has put into movies. Most likely, what ever activity I'm engaged in when that fatal moment occurs, the most accurate COD will be inattention.

You want to blame a motorcycling crash for my demise? You want points for a piece of my mortal action? Get in line. I'm like the Simpsons' Mr. Burns; every one of my diseases, habits or activities is finely balanced against the rest and a puff of air from a butterfly's wings could trigger a total meltdown of my survival systems. Big deal, I'm going riding.

April 2009

A Logical Conclusion

California’s Office of Traffic Study looked at lane splitting for a year and concluded “the practice is no more dangerous than motorcycling in general, if the rider is traveling at speeds similar to or only slightly faster than the surrounding traffic.” The Sacramento Bee did a pretty good review of this study called, “Motorcycle lane-splitting study finds: the more speed, the more danger.” The article and study found that “Lane-splitting in California appears to be on the rise. The state Office of Traffic Safety study found 62 percent of motorcyclists say they lane-split on both freeways and other roads, a 7.5-percentage-point increase over 2013. Seventy-five percent of riders between the ages of 18 and 24 report they lane-split on all roads, including freeways. Notably, the survey found that motorcyclists were splitting lanes at slightly slower speeds and in slightly slower traffic than the year before.” The last part surprises me and is encouraging. Maybe California’s motorcyclists are beginning to wise up a little. If they do, it will be to the benefit of all of us. Lane splitting and filtering are the single most important issue that makes motorcycle commuting beneficial.

As in most areas, the US lags the world here and we appear to be going backwards rather than forward. If you think your right to illegally and obnoxiously loud pipes is more important than lane splitting, you are the problem. You’re not part of the problem, you are the problem and motorcyclists everywhere should join with the rest of society and give you the finger when you rattle and blast your plodding way along public roads.

#78 Crashing Cold

All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day

A friend, who wrote a book about motorcycle crashes and what the rest of us can learn from the mistakes of those who will admit to falling down, once asked a few riders to send him an accounting of their favorite trip to the hospital. Since I quit racing dirt bikes, I've been mostly without anything interesting to report. That doesn't mean that I've been especially cautious, competent, or any other c-word that implies something positive about my riding habits. It mostly means that I've been lucky. In my twenty-year street riding career, I've ridden while suffering hypo and hyperthermia, I've pushed on for hundreds of miles when I should have found a place to park and warm up or cool down, and I’ve risked life and limb with impaired riding skills due to temperature.

Mostly, it has been cold weather that caused me the most risk. I do not ride well when I’m cold. One of the keys to riding smoothly is to be relaxed at the bars. That becomes especially critical when your tires are cold, the road is unpredictably slick from rain or spots of frozen water, and when visibility is reduced. You can only shake out the tension so many times, to get some level of flexibility back into your arms and legs when you are freezing. Sooner, rather than later, you need to get warm or you risk crashing and getting hurt. Getting hurt when you are cold feels even worse than when you aren’t freezing your nuts off.

I used to play dirt biker year-round. When I lived in Texas and Nebraska, I raced all season and played racer all winter. A few years before that, in Kansas, I raced in the summer and commuted on the same bike (a 250cc Harley Sprint) six days a week to work and school. I moved from Nebraska to California by Honda CX500 in late March, 1983. My family followed, by train, a few months later. Sometimes it seems that I’ve ridden more miles cold than comfortable. The older I get, the less inclined I am to put in long, cold miles. I suck at it, so I’m learning not to do it.

Not long after I moved to California, a friend from Colorado wanted to do a tour of the Golden State. We planned to meet at an undetermined campground in Yosemite and start our adventure from there. As usual, I didn’t escape from work until dark. As usual, I hadn’t planned the trip any further than picking a spot and a general time when I was supposed to be at that destination. I rolled the CX into heavy traffic on I405 and headed north until I had to choose between going the fast route, I5, in boring commuter traffic and the scenic route, California’s famous Pacific Coast Highway along one of the most spectacular coastlines in the world. Even with my messed up “schedule,” I picked PCH and left the traffic. North of Santa Barbara you leave the L.A. atmosphere and California turns into “California.” The air is breathable, the natives are less restless, the scenery is incredible, and gas is expensive.

Without a thought in my head, beyond driving toward point B, I followed the highway with the setting sun supplying a reader’s light, falling just over my left shoulder. Until it got dark, just a few miles before I made it to San Luis Obispo, my trip was progressing better than I could have imagined. My usual travel habit is to create my schedule as I go. Somewhere along the road I’d decided that I needed to make it to Carmel that first day of travel. If you know the area, you’ll be noticing by now that my course wasn’t the short route from point A to B. In fact, I practically doubled the necessary miles by putting PCH and Carmel in the travel plan. “Logic be damned, full speed ahead” could be the title for a vacation planning book I might someday write.

Pushing on in the dark and rapidly dropping temperature, I made it to the edge of Big Sur and I was getting cold. The air was wet and cold and a strong wind was blowing from the ocean. I knew it was stupid to be riding through this incredible place in the dark, for scenic reasons, but I had set Carmel in my sights and I was going to make Carmel or die trying.

The Pacific coast had taken a severe weather beating that spring. Much of PCH had washed down the cliffs and I’d been redirected on several non-scenic detours around swept away sections earlier in the day. Big Sur doesn’t offer many options to the state's highway engineers, so quick patches are more practical than detours. Half-frozen, tired, and stupid, I whipped around a mountain curve to discover one of those quick repairs; an off-camber, gravel and broken asphalt section of road, bordered by a large pile of rocks on both sides. No way was I going to make this corner. I came into it way too hot, in poor position, and with limited skills. I was too cold to control the tension in my arms, so instead of pushing the bike as far into the corner as I could, I wasted my remaining strength pitting my left arm against my right arm. I headed for the pile of rocks furthest from the ocean, only partially intentionally.

The CX500 was my first street bike, since I’d stripped down a 1963 Harley Sprint to make it into a ¼ mile scrambler. I sucked on asphalt, but I had twenty years of off-road riding under my belt. Highways I didn’t know, rocks I did. When you are in a panic situation, conscious decisions get put away for better moments. Panic reactions are either controlled by practice or fight-or-flight. Without thinking about the kind of bike I was riding, I straightened up the bike, scrubbed off as much speed as I could before the front wheel hit the first rock, stood up on the pegs, got my weight as far back as my soft saddle bags and stubby legs would allow, and got back on the little twin's gas. A fraction of a second later, I was stopped at the end of the line of rocks, wondering what had happened and how I managed to be in that spot undamaged.

When I started back up, the bike was incredibly noisy and it handled weirdly. I rode for a mile or two until I spotted a grassy outcropping overlooking the ocean, pitched my tent, and crawled into my sleeping bag to shiver uncontrollably until I drifted into sleep. Five hours later, I struggled out of the tent and examined my bike. The exhaust headers were flattened and the mufflers were ripped from their clamps and pulled back about 2” from the end of the headers. My centerstand was busted to bits and the stand’s mount was smashed and ripped from the frame. The oil filter was dented, but not leaking. The bottom of the engine was scarred, but not busted. The front wheel was no longer round, the Comstar’s rim was intact, but one of the rivets that attached the hub to the wheel support was missing. The tire held air. The rear tire was gouged up, badly, but it appeared to be functional (that assessment would cause serious problems for me a thousand miles later). A couple of lower frame bolts were sheared off. Pretty much, the bottom side of the bike looked like it had been drug across a pile of rocks.

I removed the centerstand, cobbled the exhaust together with wire and snot, installed a new filter and oil (dirtbikers carry spares), and wobbled into Carmel, wounded and reprimanded. Carmel is too small to have a bike shop and too snooty to give a crap, so I kept riding until I got to Monterey. I found a Honda shop, bought some parts (including a new front wheel and centerstand from a recently rear-ended CX customer), and did my repair work in the shop’s driveway. The Honda mechanic even loaned me some tools and helped me straighten my exhaust headers enough to make a fair muffler seal with the new clamps. A welding shop cut off the old centerstand bits and installed a makeshift replacement. Six hours later, I was on my way to Yosemite.

I survived my first half-frozen street incident. I managed to learn next-to-nothing from the experience and put myself in similar situations several times in the next twenty years, but I’m beginning to realize that I am never going to be a good cold weather rider and I compensate, a little, for that disability. Now, when I can’t relax my arms, I take that as a sign that I’m too cold to ride and start looking for a motel or campground. It’s been too many years since I actually rode on rocks on purpose and I’m sure my panic reactions are less conditioned than they were on that trip. I don’t want to test myself, so we’ll just have to assume that is true.

March 2009

Hoping to be on the Move

Still wrestling with Wells Fargo Bank on our new house in Red Wing. With a memory about as long and clear as a mosquito’s, Americans tend to forget the incompetence with which US banks mismanaged property just 5 years ago. I’m getting another reminder this month. Wells Fargo appears to be unable to locate the title for the foreclosed house we’re buying. So, they’re putting off the closing until they get their shit together or can’t. We won’t know which it will be for at least another week. In the meantime, we’re bagging up our possessions, selling stuff, giving away stuff, throwing away stuff, and generally operating under the assumption that we’re going to be moving . . . somewhere yet this year.

One bright light, so far this year, has been getting rid of the Winnebago and, last month, replacing it with a Nissan pickup. The proof is in the miles and we don’t have a lot yet, but so far so good. Nissan manages to get more torque and horsepower out of 4L than pretty much anyone. On top of that, Nissan is (was) the last Japanese manufacturer to put a manual transmission (a six-speed, yet) in a 4L six. You can still get a 5-speed in a little 4-cylinder, but the bigger the truck the less competent the manufacturers think the drivers are. So, we went for a low-mileage, 2008 4-door Kingcab. It cost more than I wanted to spend, but Nissan and Toyota trucks are like that. I hope we discover why.

Two weeks into ownership and I installed a Class III hitch, the electrical tow package, figured out a ramp system for the WR, and managed to disable the godawful Viper security system. The next project will be taking the damn thing out and returning the truck to stock Nissan wiring; or as close as I can get it to that. Unlike most of the used motorcycles I’ve bought, the only non-stock bullshit on the pickup is a grossly overpriced Pioneer GPS/Stereo/Bluetooth phone system and the Viper crap. 
I suppose the security system came after the previous owner bought a $1,000 stereo system.

Someday, I’d like to sit quietly and listen to someone explain how a stereo system that does not provide one watt more power, the slightest improvement in frequency response, or any useful new feature over the stock system provides more value. Cars depreciate astoundingly quickly. In 5 years, this vehicle lost almost $18k in value; not counting the likely interest, additional insurance, and maintenance costs (to ensure factory warranty coverage). That’s nothing compared to the “entertainment system,” though. New price on this silly piece of electronics was a grand and, today, you can buy the same system new in the package for $250 and used for about $150. Pioneer, not exactly a leader in GPS technology, stopped making update disks (Yeah, the GPS disk has to be in the player for the system to work. It has no significant internal memory. Dumb, huh?) for this unit in 2012. Not that long ago, consumers realized that buying console home entertainment systems was a dumb bet. Putting a television, stereo system, tape deck, turntable, CD player, and speakers into one giant box was a fool’s way to buy electronic gear that had a variety of MTBF expectations. Car owners appear to have yet to learn that lesson.

Now that the stereo system is practically worthless, the bug-factory security system is overkill. As a manual transmission vehicle, we already have a tiny bit of built-in theft insurance. At least the car will be near-impossible to drive away for joy-riding kids.

This sort of With all of the yap you hear about how auto-piloted cars are going to eliminate the “joy of driving,” it’s entertaining to learn that manual transmission sales have declined from 34.6% of car sales in 1980 to 3.8% in 2010. If you really want to be a driver, controlling the engine speed to road speed relationship is baseline. If using a clutch and shifting is more driving complexity than you like, you’re not really a driver. You’re a glorified passenger, probably distracted by silly electronic crap right up to the moment you run over a motorcyclist.

None of this is new territory. Way back on #90 (Too Dumb to Scoot), I came to the conclusion that I am too dumb to take scooters seriously. The automatic transmission is a big part of that. Reducing the riding requirement to hanging on to the handlebars and twisting the throttle pretty much turned riding into boredom for me. Maybe I should install an unpredictable security system on a scooter to see if that livens things up a bit? Maybe mount an entertainment center on the handlebars?

A Low Risk Generation?

There is a lot of talk about how the Gen-X, Gen-Y, etc kids are low risk takers. I have a different take on that. I think the human race is splitting, again, into haves and have-nots. We've decided, at least in the US, that we want a country with a tiny number of insanely rich people and a huge number of uneducated, underprivileged, mostly incarcerated poor people. The cost to the upper-middle and upper classes is that their spoiled brats are terrified of their own shadows and have about as much chance of survival in any sort of stressful conditions as cotton-candy in the rapids of the Colorado River. I doubt that the world is in any danger of losing risk-takers, they're just going to come from other places. Americans, on average, are conservative ("holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation"). If any part of that definition looks courageous to you, you're part of the problem. Don't worry, though. Survival requires risk (No, that doesn't mean an ability to carelessly gamble with other people's money, moron.) and the species will either take risks and survive or not. The planet and the universe will continue to evolve with or without us.

Here, for example, is a video about some asskicking risk takers.

the US, t

Good Advice from another Source

Imagine this, solid motorcycle advice from a website called WallStreetCheatSheet.com, "6 Motorcycles that Make 250cc Fun on the Cheap." Author Eric Schaal is dead on the money and a whole lot smarter than about 90% of the motorcycle press.

#77 On Being Alone

All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day

"I gotta hand it to you. I couldn't ride 6,000 miles across country by myself." I've heard that a few times, but I haven't been able to explain how untrue that assumption is. There isn't a place in the country where you can be alone for long. In fact, as Ted Simon said at the Very Boring Rally II this summer, "You aren't alone anywhere you go on this planet." There are people everywhere and they are, mostly, pretty friendly and helpful. Sometimes, they are a little too interested in what you are doing, where you are going, and why you are going those places and doing that stuff.

For example, I was riding in the Yukon last summer with a friend when I managed to get blown backwards and crash on the Dempster Highway. My riding buddy was about 1/2 mile ahead of me and managing his own problems. So, by the time he discovered I wasn't inhaling his dust I had picked myself and my bike up, patched up the busted stuff, and was ready to struggle my way back to asphalt when he showed up. About the same time, a trucker stopped and offered to satellite phone for help. Of course, if I had slid off of the road into the permafrost nobody would have found me or the bike when we sunk into the muck.

My favorite example was in Montana on a dirt road to a microscopic place called Helmsville. The road to Helmsville is between a two-lane highway from nowhere to another two-lane to the grand village of Lincoln, MT. The road is paved for the first few hundred yards, turns to loosly packed clay punctuated with sections of deep gravel and sand. There were no signs that anyone had driven County Road 271 since the last wind or rain storm, not a track in the gravel. About 50 miles into this adventure, I needed to stop and relieve my bladder. I found an abandoned corral with an even more abandoned outhouse outside the gate. The outhouse floor was collapsed, so I chose to water the weeds by the door. About the time I got an unstoppable stream flowing, a flatbed full of high school girls drove by, waving and whooping, "Yooo-whooo!"

I'm pretty sure they'd have stopped to rescue me, if I'd have needed rescuing. As it was, they kept moving without asking about my well-being or vehicle status. I don't blame them. I wasn't even secure enough in my position to wave back.

Later that summer, my wife and I were on a 40th anniversary trip around the Iron Range and points surrounding that territory. We were on a dirt road detour around the construction on MN Highway 1 to Ely, when I discovered a cool two-track path to a hidden lake. We dirt biked our way down the path to where it dead-ended at a picture perfect lake. It was absolutely quiet; again, no signs of any other vehicle having been on the path. We enjoyed the lake and the privacy for a half-hour or so. Before we headed back to the main road, I decided to get rid of the morning's coffee. Once again, at the point of no return, a couple wrangled their pickup and boat trailer down the road and headed down the path to my watering hole.

I'm telling you, there is no such thing as a place to be alone on this continent. Anywhere you go, someone is there to share the planet with you. You might as well travel without food, tools, clothing, or shelter. While they are in your space, you might as well borrow something from them. At least ask for spare change. I know I can't go anywhere without someone asking me for money, why should you be any different? If you really get insecure, feeling alone in the world, whip it out and relieve yourself. If your luck is anything like mine, a truck full of high school girls will be along any minute.

On a motorcycle, you're pretty much by yourself as long as you are rolling. No matter how many folks there are in your "rolling bowling pin" traveling configuration, nobody but you is in control of your bike. Assuming you are in control, that is. Once you get off of the bike, though, it's harder to find privacy than it is to instigate an intelligent conversation in Missouri. 300 million citizens in the US amounts to about 85 people per square mile. Eliminate Alaska's 1.16 person per square mile ratio and that state's 572,000 square miles and the nation's grazing ratio is 101 people per square mile. That's a lot of people for every 640 acres; one of us for every 6.4 acres in fact.

Being "alone" is a relative thing. Simply being outside of your neighborhood is a long ways from alone. Not being able to hear the rumble of traffic doesn't mean you are out of the reach of civilization or humanity. A bonus that comes with traveling alone is that you are almost forced to make new acquaintances and friends. If you let yourself get into the traveler mode, you will meet people you'd have never known about if you had stayed home.

Being alone is probably scary. I wouldn't know, I've only been to places where I'm surrounded by other people; as few as 1.16 of them per mile2 in Alaska and as dense as more than 500 per square mile in the eastern states and way more than that in the cities. Since man is the "most dangerous animal," being alone is probably safer than being surrounded by people. Still, sometimes it's comforting to know that anywhere I go I have the opportunity to be part of a community, if only temporarily. Starting off by myself means that I get to chose where and when those opportunities happen. That's as alone as I can get.

Winter 2008

Why I Hate Kids

MSF ERC: Is there a point?

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yamirider Slowpoke: “My dad REALLY wants me to take it. Will it really help me? From what I've heard its nothing but low speed maneuvers. He wants me to do it in the name of keeping me alive.
”Of course better control of your motorcycle is only going to help, but I'm not that worried about breaking both my legs and getting paralyzed by a little 5mph incident.”

Followed by lots of good advice by some really smart people about how taking the course would make his father happy (Point 1), provide the little douchebag with a few basic skills that might save his pitiful life (Point 2), provide an opportunity to discover something useful about the motorcycle in a safe environment with experienced riders explaining motorcycle safety (Point 3), and if his father bought the bike the little moron is obligated to do whatever the hell Dad says if he wants to play with his massively inappropriate toy (a Suzuki SV650).

Brat boy’s response to this good advice was:

yamirider Slowpoke:

“First off, I paid for half of this bike.
”Now, here is the thing I'm worried about:
”I've ridden 2 miles on my SV...and that was during the test ride. My dad hasn't let me ride it 2 feet since I've gotten it home. I'm not used to it at all. I don't want to go take the MSF where I'm supposed to put my bike through its low-speed paces and possibly crash and rash it up. (it has ONE scratch on it right now)
”I mean, is that a legitimate concern?
”I've heard of people crashing before during MSF thats why I'm worried.”

Waaaaa!

The very first response to this spoiled douchebag’s bullshit was:

“If you're afraid you're gonna crash in an ERC, you've got no business being on the street.
”Think about what you posted. You think you're too good or too experienced to derive any benefit from the class, but you're afraid those simple maneuvers are going to make you crash?

“I too, have nothing of value to add to this thread...”

Me either, other than I’d put money on the odds that Slowpoke put that scratch on his bike dropping it in the garage or driveway. I bought my 1999 SV650 from a douchebag just like him, in 2000. The spoiled little creep’s mommy bought him the bike practically the day SV’s showed up in his local dealership. Smartass put a Two Brother’s asshole pipe on the bike and fucked with the air filter and air box, dropped the bike in his driveway, and bawled until Mommy bought him a new 4WD Toyota. He was selling the SV to get money for loud pipes on the Toyota. I paid $2,000 for a slightly-scratched 1999 SV with about 300 miles on the odometer. I was afraid to ask where the 300 miles came from, but the bike turned out to be like-new and lasted me a good long while before I sold it.

Luckily, most of the kids I see in motorcycle safety classes are not blatantly like yamirider Slowpoke. They might be that much of a jackass under their usual sullen teenager facade, but at least 90% of them make an effort to hide their assholyness. Of the 90%, a good bit more than 50% actually seem to enjoy the experience and are consistently the best riders I get to work with. Still, as a Geezer and a parent, I fuckin’ hate kids. Slowpoke reminds me why.

Now, back to researching the history of the ERC.

Hipster Biking

In the end-of-season letter to Minnesota motorcycle trainers, Bill Shaffer noted, “While the final numbers are not in, it looks like we’ll train fewer students than last year, and with the number of registered motorcycles falling last year for the first time since 1995, I think we’ll be training 5,000 to 6,000 students a year for a number of years to come. Also, a lot of the baby boomer generation is getting to that age where they may not start riding if they haven’t already done so, and a number of their kids, the ‘boomlet’ generation, are trading motorcycling in for mortgages and families. Hopefully I’m wrong, but I don’t think we’ll see the big number of students, that we did six to ten years ago, for some time.” I, sort of, hope Bill is right, since I need to find someone from the “boomlet” generation to buy my Little Canada house. Mostly, though, that generation is not buying much of anything but expensive coffee, lots of booze, video games, and cool clothing at over-priced second hand stores.

Very possibly the hippest guy I know. Mr. McNally on his hipped-out CX500.

When I first got back from New Mexico I had a head-full of the stuff a fellow camper had told me about the motorcycle and vehicle industry. He is a semi-retired ex-Motorcyclist, Cycle World, Powersports, etc writer and editor. Like a lot of RV-ers, he never volunteered his name and, in kind, I never asked. Darwin Holmsted and I think we know who he is/was, but I suck at facial identification and pictures almost never tell me much. This retired writer and I spent a lot of mornings between the campground shower and our respective campers talking about where the industry/business/sport had been and where it was going. When we weren’t talking about that, he had a good time describing his perspective on my comedic deep sand riding experiences from the previous day. He had a DL1000 in tow behind his Class B camper, but I never saw it unhitched. I attempted one picture of his rig next to our at Elephant Butte and another camper rolled past right when I hit the digital shutter. I took another when he was “camped” in a neighborhood in TorC and I can’t find that one anywhere, now. His camper and trailer both had California plates. That’s all I have for identification.

Anyway, he was full of doom-and-gloom from the industry side of the rider/driver equation. None of it was stuff that he was ever allowed to write about because the industry thinks happy talk will sell vehicles. So far, it's not working.

To the majority of this crowd, the important thing about motorcycling getting a good picture of yourself “riding.” This is an excellent example of pretend-riding. I’m sure this kid’s riding career peaked at this moment.

To sum it up, there are at least a couple of current and upcoming generations that are about as interested in owning/driving/riding vehicles as they are in buying CDs or any kind of music, going to movie theaters, owning homes, playing musical instruments, doing manual labor, etc. A lot of things that previous generations took for granted as "necessary skills" are solidly untrendy. Motorcycling is one. Owning a car is another.

I know a few hipsters who proudly bought a 70's or 80's motorcycle, spray painted it black, got pictures of themselves on the bike in tight black pants, designer leather, and an 80's open face helmet and put the bike back in the garage indefinately. It's all about image. You don't have to actually ride to maintain the image, just repost your picture on Facebook occasionally. I’m sure I’ll hear the usual suspects whining about my disrespect of their lifestyle. When you’re right, you’re right. I do, in fact, have little damn respect, tolerance, or interest in the lifestyles of the chronically boring, wealthy, sullen, idle hipsters of any generation. Always have, always will.

In an academic paper titled, “Marketing to the Generations,” the authors stated, “Baby Boomers are [were] a good market for travel, adventure vacations, expensive restaurant meals, second homes, recreational vehicles, maintenance-free homes, personal chefs, personal trainers, motorcycles, and financial advisors.” There were no such claims for “good market” of anything for either Gen-X or Gen-Y. In fact, the paper mostly discussed the media most likely to “reach” those two groups without any positive indication that once a marketer had found his target market they would be interested in or able to buy any significant products. It is legitimate to classify Boomers as a marketer’s wet dream. We are a bunch of silly suckers. I have a really hard time imagining aging X-gens populating smelly, noisy, ugly casinos.

#76 Hearing Damage and Motorcycling

All Rights Reserved © 2008 Thomas W. Day

It's tough to talk about technical things without technical language. So this article is going to be burdened with technical terms and other debris that can't be avoided. If thinking makes your head hurt, you may want to move on to another page.

A lot of motorcyclists suffer from tinnitus; "a noise in the ears such as ringing, buzzing, roaring, or clicking." My generation, the Boomers, is experiencing a higher rate of hearing damage than our parents suffer at their more advanced age and the generation following us is even worse hit by hearing loss. The reason is noise exposure.

You may wish to blame sinus infections, being dropped on your head as a baby, or bad luck for your tinnitus, but the real reason is probably your long term exposure to excessive noise. Even worse, your tinnitus was probably caused by exposure you could have prevented if you'd have cared about your hearing when you were younger. "If I'd have known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself," sayeth (said-eth?) vintage rocker Al Kooper.

Motorcycling is a particularly abusive activity, as far as your hearing is concerned. If you are one of the "loud pipes save lives" crowd, you are probably a charter member of the "what did you say" group. Even by OSHA's conservative, obsolete, and employer-friendly standards, the kinds of noise levels we expose ourselves to riding motorcycles is beyond the harmful levels and into the "are you crazy?" territory. Good old mommy OSHA only grants our employers a "maximum allowable duration per day" of 1/2 hour at 110dBSPL (Sound Pressure Level) before hearing protection is required. OSHA "weights" that noise level with an "A-filter," which reduces the measured low and high frequency content, which would be appropriate for low level signals (under 55dBSPL unweighted) but is an improper use of the filter for high level signals. The original 1940's source for the OSHA standards, NIOSH (National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health), has continued evaluating this hazard and now says that "exposure for any duration" to sound pressure levels above 106dBSPL (unweighted) "may pose a serious health risk"

Inside a full face helmet, behind a moderate windshield, at 70mph, my noise measurement equipment says that I'm exposed to about 110dBSPL (C-weighted or mostly-unfiltered, for the technically inclined). These numbers have been confirmed by other test and measurement sources, but you're welcome to test your own gear. I'll even help if you don't mind riding your motorcycle for a few miles with small microphones stuck in your ears. Riding without a helmet and without hearing protection exposes your ears to sound pressure variations very near the levels of the loudest rock and roll concert you've ever attended; add loud pipes to that and you are probably venturing into uncharted territory.

The folks with the biggest noise exposure problem are probably those who ride big twins. After stripping off the manufacturer's already noisy pipes, these riders often add chrome exhaust farkles that boost the bike's low frequency (LF) noise output substantially. This, supposedly, compensates for the lack of actual power with the illusion of power; more noise. The problem with low frequency (below 150Hz) signals is that they pass through most acoustic obstacles (including your head) relatively unattenuated. Those LF signals cause all sorts of hearing mechanism damage. If this wave motion is strong enough (the signal is loud enough), it rips the cilia (hair-like structures inside the cochlea) from the inner lining causing loss of sensing at the frequency band previously measured by that cilia. Maybe more often, the noise just "flattens" those sensors so that they are less sensitive. This loss of sensing results in a neurological feedback loop that causes tinnitus. If enough cilia are damaged, you may hear a constant roaring or multiple ringing tones. Pete Townshend (songwriter and guitarist for The Who) described his tinnitus as having progressed into sounding like a constant "loud metallic waterfall." Your tinnitus may not be that bad, but it could get worse.

If you're looking to blame someone else for your tinnitus, you are a true American. However, you're probably stuck with either your parents to blame or yourself. The overwhelming majority of hearing defects are noise-related, but some of us have inherited our hearing sensitivity or defects. A life of sinus infections is probably not the cause of tinnitus, but the allergy medications you've taken could be. Other medications can also cause hearing damage and tinnitus.

Lots of us suffered hearing loss from 1960-70s pre-OSHA industrial noise exposure and some of us added to that with motorcycles and music and other bad habits. The problem with trying to overwhelm your tinnitus with more noise is that you are causing more hearing damage and even more tinnitus. I sympathize with that maddening noise you’re hearing, but trying to kill it with noise is self-defeating. If that constant noise bothers you during a distracting activity like riding, how do you sleep? If you move that constant noise from background to the loudest thing in the room won’t that be much worse? Eventually, you'd think that we might begin to pay attention to Al Kooper's warning about taking better care of ourselves in case we have to deal with the consequences later.

In the last decade, there have been a lot of studies on noise and biological noise effects. I don’t think this is something we should take lightly. We (as motorcyclists) are on the leading edge of a coming noise pollution reduction movement. In many urban areas, motorcycles are one of the most identifiable and prominent noises. Noise is making us, as a country and species, dumber and less civilized. Lots of countries are realizing this and attacking noise sources with science and legislation. Sometimes I suspect that in the US we may be too damaged to make much progress on this front, but that isn’t a good thing for our future.

On a personal level, I think you should consider wearing hearing protection when you ride (regardless of your exhaust output) and I would be very cautious about the noise levels you are suffering when you listen to music while you ride. If you wouldn't listen to music at that volume in your living room, you shouldn't be putting up with it while you ride. My wife's argument is "if it hurts to hear, it hurts your ears." Like most of our critical organs, the sensitive parts of your hearing are not repairable. If you overuse it, you will lose it. That is true for political clout, too.

MMM October 2008

All of the stuff that is technically correct in this article was thoughtfully edited and amended by Sarah Angerman of the University of Minnesota's Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences Department. All of the errors are my own.

Another Geezer or Just Another Rider with A Grudge?

I think I love this guy, Damon Lavrinc, and this article, "Why No One Will Sell You The Bike You Want" is so dead-on it hurts, "This isn't intended to be negative or anything, it's just stating the great unstated caveat when it comes to the American motorcycle industry."

• Combine that with our overwhelming need to overcompensate and you create a market that sees motorcycles as toys. 
• The Harley idiots (pictured) are all drunk, all the time and refuse to wear helmets.
• The sport bike tools think their chin strap beards and bright white sneakers endow them with a professional athlete's riding ability and buy those GSX-Rs as first bikes, then quite predictably run them into the first tree off the dealer lot.
• If you owned a small general contracting firm and a nice man at the bank suddenly told you you could buy any motorcycle you wanted, would you want a nice little runabout or the HOG with the most tassles ever squeezed on two wheels?
• Where, in most of the rest of the world, governments have imposed tiered licensing for motorcyclists, requiring them to work their way up to riding the big, dangerous bikes, America has always been a total free for all. Here, a 16 year old can perform a couple U-turns in a parking lot on a scooter, hitch a ride from Mom to the local Suzuki dealer and walk out the same day with a Hayabusa.
• All of a sudden, sportbikes don't sell and, try as they might, Harley's success can't be emulated by the Japanese. Kawasaki logo's just never looked as good on a bandana.
• . . . the parent companies can't be bothered making the bikes newly-impoverished Americans might be interested in buying. Why would you, when this country only accounts for .66% of your sales?
• Will you ever ride a motorcycle? Well, it's one of the most life-affirming, time-saving, downright awesomest things you can do, but the people trying to sell you motorcycles would never tell you that, which is a shame. 

Those are just a few of what I considered to be core nuggets in Lavrinc's argument, but you should read the whole article and get a load of how a real marketing guy thinks. (I'd pretty much forgotten that there are marketing guys who DO think.) (Thanks Paul!)

Now for Something Not All that Different

The Midual Type 1 (that thing on the right) is the latest toy designed for the world's 1%. There are lots of them (toys, that is) so you have to watch closely to see what POS those goofballs are storing in the garages, closets, and warehouses this week. A french company, headed by Oliver Midy, has cobbled together this Ducati-look-alike and is asking a mere 140,000 Euros or £111,790 pounds or $177,628.50 each for the 35 copies of this bike. I'm sure those of you with a couple hundred grand wasting away are going to charge out and gobble up this 106bhp longitudinally-mounted, 1036cc monster (Monstro?) because . . . you can.

The things you get for $200k?

• 78ft-lb of torque at 5300rpm
• an aluminium monocoque which, Buell-like, contains the fuel tank 
• 239kg of pure overpriced sex appeal
• custom colored and finished leather seat
• a wooden dash and custom frame finish
• one-off switch gear, displays, gauges, signal indicators, footrests, brackets and mudguards so when Midy goes bankrupt you'll never have to worry about riding this thing anywhere, since you won't be able to buy replacement parts
• Brembo calipers 
• 43mm Ohlins forks
• a TTX36 Ohlins rear shock
• adjustable steering head angle

Of course, you could get all of that stuff for a 10th of the price with a Ducati, BMW, MG, or several other bikes. But there would be more than 35 of them and that defeats the purpose, doesn't it?