Apparently, this video is reminding lots of people of . . . me. I can not imagine why.

Music to Ride By

Now I'm on a roll. Listening to Heartbreaker, I'm reminded of all of the rock and roll songs I used to crank up in my head to get motivated before a race. I occasionally get asked why I don't listen to music while I ride, especially on long distances. First, I don't want to be deaf. Second, I have a lifetime of music on-line everywhere I go. I have a head full of rock and roll, blues, jazz, and classical music. The audio quality is dramatically better than any crap MP3 player and cheesy helmet headphone rig. I don't have to worry about batteries (although I need to recharge with breakfast and lunch). The selection is practically endless and I don't have to fumble with the player's tiny controls when some tune I hate accidentally slips into the cue. So, in some particular order, I've decided to list some of my favorite racing and riding head-tunes:

• Heartbreaker - Rolling Stones (The Stones' best song from their best album.)
• Frankenstein - Edgar Winter (My moto gate go-to song from 1973 on. Synthesizers should have been abandoned as musical instruments after Edgar put this tune on tape. They've done nothing new or better since.)
• Medicated Goo - Traffic (Pretty much anything quick from Stevie Winwood and/or Traffic will do when the road is twisty, rough, or missing altogether. I've been a fan since he was "Little Stevie Winwood" with Spencer Ward.)
• Hocus Pocus - Focus (The band Van Halen wishes it could be if Eddie had the chops and Roth had a sense of humor and  Van Halen had a rhythm section.)
• Scatterbrain - Jeff Beck (Actually, all things Jeff Beck are worthy of riding and racing. All other guitar players are just cheap imitations. Get the real thing, listen to Jeff. Once, I thought I could play guitar but Jeff reminded me that I just own guitars.) 
• Give It Everything You Got - Edgar Winter's White Trash (I freakin' love this song. The closest I ever came to winning a moto was when I had this going hard in my skull. The Rickman caught nothing but neutrals in a big sweeper and down I went.)
• Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo - Johnny Winter  (Rick Zerringer wrote this one for Johnny. It didn't hit, so Zerringer renamed himself "Derringer" and did it again.)
• Won't Get Fooled Again - The Who (I used to drag out the synth intro in my head until the gate dropped, then . . . not much. I could never ride as fast as Pete can windmill. It is a good covering-miles-tune. A solid block pass motivated by a Townshend power chord is hard to forget, though.)
• Living in America - James Brown (I can ride for days on this song. It should be the 21st Century's national anthem. It isn't because we're a nation of pussies and other sorts of gutless conservatives. On my way back from Canada, I have to get this tune going or I might immigrate.)
• Ballroom Blitz - Sweet (Racing is semi-organized war. What better music than a bar fight tune?)
• Whammer Jammer - J. Geils Band with Magic Dick (One of the great, rarely heard rock motorcycling tunes. When Hancock started with this jam, I knew I was gonna like that movie. I did, thank you for asking.)
• 1812 Overture - Tchaikovsky (Not a race tune, but a wonderful thing to be able to replay on long, boring cross-country trips. You wouldn't believe how loud the cannons are in my version.)
• A Night In Tunisia - Dizzy Gillespie (Dizzy's music got me into music. I hear this song a half-dozen ways; from his New York 5-piece combo  to this big band which I was blessed to hear in the 70's.)
• Traveling Lady - Manfred Mann Chapter Three (Traveling music, not racing music. There are a few songs from this album that I get going on a great day: Snakeskin Garter, Mister You're A Better Man than I, and Time. I recently converted my LP to digital audio and have been re-enjoying this music a lot lately. I need a trip to somewhere a long ways away.)
• High Falls and One Way Out - Allman Brothers (I think I did the entire Alaska and British Columbia mountain section with High Falls in my head. I saw this band -- the High Falls band -- in '73 and have never forgotten how great a rock and roll band can sound. The best day on the road almost always coincides with my being able to pull up the entire Live at the Filmore East album from memory; lead parts included.)

And my "new" (post-racing) travel-pump favorites:

• Jack You Dead - Joe Jackson (The version I really hear in my head was from the Sum Fun Band in SoCal. I ran sound for them for 8 years and they kicked the snot out of Louie Jordan's song. This is the closest thing to their version, add a killer harp solo, a much hipper rhythm section, and a bigger, blusier voice, and you've got Sum Fun.)
• Let's Get Fucked Up and Die - Motion City Soundtrack
• Whatever Happened to My Rock and Roll - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (As best I can tell, the theme song from "Faster." I can't watch road racing without having WHTMRR in my head.)

I'm not even close to running out, but I am getting bored. I think I'll go for a ride and listen to music. See 'ya.

Can't Help Myself

I don't know why, but this song has been stuck in my head all day and I had to hear it. It's off of an album, Goat's Head Soup, that some consider to be the end of the Stone's productive period and the beginning of their rock star decay. I must be decadent because I am no Stones fan, but I loved this record. I like everything about Heartbreaker, especially the horn arrangement.

All There Is to Say about This Subject

Thanks Sheldon.

 Ok, just one more thing: http://brewsteruniversity.com/2010/10/04/decibels-penis-size-inversely-proportional/.

NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition! Our chief weapon is surprise...surprise and fear...fear and surprise.... Our two weapons are fear and surprise...and ruthless efficiency.... Our *three* weapons are fear, surprise, and ruthless efficiency...and an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope.... Our *four*...no... *Amongst* our weapons.... Amongst our weaponry...are such elements as fear, surprise.... I'll come in again.

Ragheads on Wheels

A while back, one of the local MSF coaches told me I should check out the Parts Unlimited catalog for do-rags. More recently, Paul Young pointed me at Iron Horse Helmets (a mis-named website if there ever was one) to look at the neoprene face masks. Considering that the children who wear this crap are about as rabid anti-helmeters as douchebags get, you have to wonder why they want to cover their ugly faces and bald heads with napkins and wet-suit material. I've worn a wet suit in the ocean, but I can't imagine the up-side to wearing one on my face on a hot summer day. 


However, having looked at images like the one at left, I get it. This is a "truth in advertising" thing. A clown mask for a clown. Makes perfect sense. We all know what's under the mask and this is clearly an improvement. If Lady Bird Johnson were alive, she'd call this "highway beautification." If you click on the clown mask, you can see the whole collection, all 182 of them, of Iron Horse's neoprene face bags. Maybe you can find one that is just right for your next convenience store hold-up. In fact, I'd sort of like to know why cops don't fire a few warning shots into these things just to get the morons' attention? Seems like a reasonable response to someone wearing a mask in public. 

The napkin craze is totally over the top. There are at least eight pages of these girlyman things in the Parts Unlimited catalog (click the the nancyboy's picture at right and feast your eyes on the douchebaggery). Amazing. You'd think the napkin pages would be followed by a selection of pancake premixes and griddles. If I'm gonna look like a fool, I at least want to be cooking something edible while I do it. (Damn that kid has a lame "biker stare." He looks about as badass as Bill Clinton after a two day intern-boinking binge.)

Crap! I bet I know what the next non-helmet biker hat craze will be: a chef's hat. Everything the dochebags love is wrapped up on one stupid looking hat: uselessness, clownish appearance, a way to hide a bald head, and head wear that makes a Harley look like it's moving faster than a crawl. Freakin' awesome. Right now, the typical chef's hat costs about $3. We should corner the market and wait for the biker clowns to catch up to us, then sell hats for $10 each (the going price for biker napkins). Tell me that the fruitcake on the left doesn't look like he belongs on a Harley. 

Driven to Consume

All Rights Reserved © 2011 Thomas W. Day

In early 2011, when Apple released yet another useless and over-priced piece of consumer electronics, I found myself talking to a young friend about why he would be compelled to buy this thing before he knew what it could do. Unfortunately (as after hearing the explanation of most consumer motivations), a year later I remain clueless. The young man provided a series of scenarios that included the world "need" which had to be translated into "want" and several descriptions of silly apps/diversions that a couple of good hobbies could cure. Along with two million other consumers, he ran out and bought one of these silly toys the first week Apple released it. Six months later, he still hadn't found a useful application for the thing, but it wasn't because he didn't try. For two weeks, he practically let his whole life slide while he loaded apps, modified the iPad's preferences, and tried to find a practical justification for his new $1,000 toy (after adding the Apple-recommended accessories, but not including the $30/month charge for 3G service that almost makes the toy usable). After this extended experiment, he demonstrated how indispensable the Apple toy had become by showing me how it--and his desktop computer, laptop computer, and cell phone--combined to bring him all the power of a tiny television set, a mediocre laptop computer, a poor quality telephone, a low-res still and video camera, and a few pieces of paper.

Yeah, I know. I don't get it. He can ask his friends "wht r u doin" any time, any place without giving the syntax or the purpose of that idiot question a second thought.

I can't. I won't.

I have absolutely no reason to care what my friends are doing unless we're hanging out together and I can see what they are doing. I don't need a $1000 device with which to watch micro-movies, wherever I might be. Of course, I prefer to watch movies at home in my entertainment room or in a theater where the sound system is property aligned, the screen is large enough to make the experience entertaining, and where nobody is able to ask me "what r u doing" because I'm not taking a telephone into a movie theater.

Lucky for us, Apple doesn't make motorcycles. What passes for "design" in Appleworld wouldn't impress most Harley owners. In 2010, a New York kid pulled in $100k making white covers for the new black iPhone, because Apple fans couldn't wait for the official white version. Some people have infinitely more money than brains, even if they don't have much money.

There are some Apple-like approaches being taken to motorcycling, though. Harley and the designer 50's cruiser crowd made a stab at that lifestyle marketing tactic for a successful 20 years. Boys and girls bought expensive bikes they wouldn't ride and clothing they rarely wore, just to be one of the cool-kids'. Particularly BMW, but also Honda, Ducati, and the rest of the pack are coming out with bikes that have all sorts of doo-hickies that the average rider needs at least as much as an iPad. Traction control, automatic transmissions, adaptive headlights, rider-selectable control/throttle map modes, linked ABS brakes, air bags, electronic keys, electronically adjustable suspensions, iPod, MP3, USB, Bluetooth and satellite radios, sophisticated screens that rival home entertainment systems, and features that I can't even imagine are getting tacked on to motorcycles that are becoming more complicated than NASA space vehicles.

All these attractions are intended to make you and me think we're getting lost in the technology race; falling behind, not keeping up with the neighbors, or something equally depressing. An upside to being old is that I know I'm not keeping up with anybody these days. I'm still running WinXP on my laptop and my Mac is permanently stuck at OS 10.4 because it's not an Intel machine. My cell phone is a minimally-featured, dirt cheap Nokia that can probably text but I haven't bothered to investigate that feature. I use the phone about 100 minutes a year and only turn it on when I want to call someone. So, I'm on a 500 minute, $50/year pay-as-you-go plan and, when I remember to do it in time, I recycle about 400 minutes a year. I usually forget about the annual cell phone bill and, when I do want to make a call, discover it's been disconnected for a couple of months.

My main motorcycle is a 2008 WR250X Yamaha and with only 10k on the odometer, it's barely broken in. My back-up long-haul bike is a 2004 Suzuki 650 V-Strom . My back-up carbureted 2000 Kawasaki Super Sherpa hasn't been ridden for a year because of its refusal to start when the mercury drops below 30F. Fuel injection is my idea of technology worth chasing. Style is for kids. About 30 years ago, I discovered that--if I keep wearing jeans, long-sleeved t-shirts, denim and plaid work shirts, hiking boots and running shoes, and cheap watches--I'll be back in style every half-dozen years. That's good enough for me. 

RIP, Sooner or Later

In early June, an attractive, young (22) woman crashed her motorcycle and died. This Minnesota story made the news in a lot of places: England, television, more television, the press, and pretty much every motorcycle blog in the country. She was not wearing a helmet or any other motorcycle gear) and died of head injuries.  She was a new motorcyclist and a new motorcycle owner. Now, her mother is on a campaign to make helmets mandatory in Minnesota. I say "good luck" to her. Our legislature is too gutless to take on ABATE in good times. Without our Republican majority state house, courage is out the window and the sight of a few dozen stringy-haired Village People on Harleys would be enough to stampede the state House into full flight. They might try to figure out where the Wisconsin Democrats hid during the Walker anti-union debacle and hide there until doomsday. (According to Fox News, that will be pretty damn soon.)

Too much of the motorcyclists' response has been hysterical and irrational. Characters like Todd Riba, legislative ABATE's director; are claiming "It's a freedom issue." They don't have a problem with the Patriot Act's raid on the Constitution, but putting on a hat really bothers them. I know, it's a big deal having the wind blow your hair (as in the one hair left on their bald heads) around and they plod through the countryside trying to see where they are going through the wind-inspired tears. The stupid crap so-called motorcyclists are saying in the comments sections of the articles is embarrassing for all of us. 

Paul Hoffer's response to the discussion was, "I just cover what I don't want to lose." I've been using that phrase in a lot of my MSF classes lately. It pretty much sums up the whole story. It appears that a fair number of motorcyclists don't need to worry about losing their heads. It's not a vital organ.

California, the Exception?

One of the silly arguments I get often during lane-splitting and lane-sharing discussions is "Californians are different. They're used to it." A recent CalTrans survey beat that horse to death this spring. The Office of Traffic Safety sent out a short-form version of the 733 participant survey, in case statistics aren't your deal.

It turns out that only 53% of California's cagers know that lane splitting is legal (with younger drivers being more clueless than older) and 86.8% of them have experienced lane splitting, 87% of the state's motorcyclists lane split, 5.3% have had their vehicle hit by a lane-splitting motorcyclist and 34.6% say they were "nearly hit," 19.1% claim to have seen a motorcycle hit a car while splitting, and 7% of the cagers admit to having attempted to prevent lane splitting. Most important, 63.1% disapprove of motorcycle lane-splitting. Not surprisingly, more women disapprove than men.

In an Orange County Register article on the subject and the results of the survey, a police officer said, "It's legal to split lanes but you can't do it if it's going to be in violation of speed limits or if you're going to be going at a speed that's significantly faster than the traffic through which you're trying to move." That's an accurate summary of the law as it was explained to my by a CHIPs officer in a 1984 California Traffic School. If you watch YouTube videos of idiots splitting lanes at high speed, it's no wonder that most people think this behavior is illegal; it is.

The Depressing Horn Test

Back in 2007, Pat Hahn and I tested the "effectiveness" of motorcycle horns. I, finally, got the test posted to my own website after the MN state website decided to purge all of the Hi-Viz history. The results were somewhere between startling and depressing.

Click on the picture of the webpage and a link will take you to the test results.

Simple Concept, Complicated Execution

I had a sniper school dropout in my BRC this past weekend. When we were talking about emergency brake use, he said the sniper mantra is "Slow is smooth, smooth is fast." I've been fooling with that phrase for a MMM column since Sunday. It is actually clear and brief enough to use as a constant reminder while riding. Apparently, it's even becoming something computer programmers think about (although not where I work).

I suspect, I've heard this phrase before. Now that I'm on to it, I discovered there are more than 1,000,000 Google hits to the complete phrase. A movie, Shooter, used the line and Stephen Hunter's original novel, which I read, was the source for the screenplay's reference. This is another of those things that everybody else gets but that takes me most of my lifetime to notice. There are some disadvantages to being clueless, as my wife keeps pointing out to me.

To those of us who practice these skills at a remedial level, it is obvious that this tactic is not easy to implement. In fact, it is an act of overcoming ever panic reaction we humans possess. Every time I ride, I practice smooth, controlled, quick stops at every stop sign and any stop light where I don't have to worry about freaking out drowsy cagers. On dirt roads, I practice front wheel skids, trying to haul the front wheel to a complete stop while keeping the bike going straight ahead. When I was young, flexible, brave, and less fragile I was a lot better at this skill than I am today. When I watch the close-ups of Rossi's hands on Faster, I am always impressed by how deliberate his throttle and braking movements are. He is a target to shoot for and a role model to emulate.

Pick A Grudge

A while back, I wrote about my bias/grudge/allergy to a couple of motorcycle brands (Call Me "Doubting Thomas"). A while back, in a conversation with a group of college students about customer service, consumer awareness, and who has leverage and when, I was reminded of that bias/grudge/allergy. During that conversation, I realized that I have a few more things to say about this issue. More to the point, I discovered that a lot of people have taken strong biases toward brands and people and it appears that more intelligent people seem to hang on to these positions a lot longer than do . . . let's say "less complicated people."

So, for the fun of it, I decided to list a few of my never-do-that-again biases (in no particular order) and see if readers are interested in joining in:

1. Hyosung -- Not only was the Hyosung GV650-Avitar I reviewed in 2008 a near-perfect pile of crap, but my reward for holding back my real opinion of that poorly assembled bucket of parts was a hysterical temper tantrum from the company's marketing asshole. I probably won't live long enough to forget that experience. I do react poorly to being burned.
2. Sony -- Way back in the 80's, I owned, my employer owned, and several studios I worked for owned Sony CD players and Sony's inability to build a slide-out drawer that didn't jam up or fall off soured me on all-things-Sony for at least 30 years. Five years ago, I bought a Sony camera on recommendation from a friend. It lasted less than a month before the Mini-DV tape door motor began to fail. I thought the memory stick option would be a backup, but that route only recorded low-res video and is useless. This product models everything I expect from Sony. The company is very good at electronics and absolutely miserable with mechanical devices. This is a really old bias/grudge and I was more than a little surprised to realize that I've hung on to this one so long.The camera experience will extend that bias to the end of my life.
3. General Motors -- My father was a dedicated GM customer his whole life. From the 70's on, I don't think he had a single vehicle that wouldn't have been classified as a "lemon," and he traded for (and got screwed on) a new one every couple of years. Normally, my father was a conservative person, but mechanically he was a radical liberal. I drove a series of company trucks, all GM, for a decade and they were no better than my father's collection of junk. I was almost ready to change my opinion based on a California friend's experience with a leased EV1, when GM's corporate brain-tumor decided to trash the whole project. I haven't taken GM seriously since. 
4. McDonalds -- I do not like bullies. I'm not a big fast food fan, but I am not even close to being a food purist. I have not bought or eaten anything from McDonalds since 1997. The company will never see  a dollar of my money again.
5. Presonus -- Disappointing, really. This company ought to be my kind of people. They make cheap, reasonably well-engineered products that pretty much do what they claim to do. Their engineers are a collection of high-tech wizards who are also true believers. However, Presonus is trying to become the next Peavey and that is a whole 'nother world of customer-hostility. I have been disappointed, repeatedly by their products and their customer service is vicious. Been there, done that, won't go back.
6. Harley Davidson -- I suffered an Italian Harley-labeled 250 in the 60's, but that didn't make a mark on me. Years of experience with HD's customers did that job. There is something about a Harley that appears to lower the IQ of anyone who owns one. If you think I need more evidence to make an opinion, you might be permanently damaged. Look around you and see how many wizards you find riding Harleys. I've ridden at least a dozen HD products (not counting Buells) and there is nothing there for me. I may be old, but I'm not that old.  I don't play golf, either.
7. Polaris/Victory Motorcycles -- I hate having this grudge, but it might be one of my most rationally based biases. Several years ago, I bought a Pure Polaris Electric Scooter directly from the company, through one of Polaris' marketing executives. As you can see from the review, I liked this product a lot. As you can tell from the postscript, Polaris' attempt to disavow any knowledge of the Electric Scooter has put them into the grudge category and I've avoided their products since. In fact, when I was asked to do a review of the Polaris Victory Vision, I blew it off until other victims ended up doing the review. There was simply no chance that I would be able to ride one of Victory's hippobikes without being constantly reminded of the beating I'd taken from the company over my little electric scooter. Polaris/Victory is sort of a Minnesota/Wisconsin company and I'd like to like them. But I don't. Screw me once, shame on you. Screw me twice, shame on me. 
8. British Engineering -- This might be my oldest and least rational grudge. I owned an MGA in the 60's and there was nothing competent about that vehicle. It, also, drove me bankrupt the first and only time. Since, I have helped friends overhaul MGs, Triumphs (cars and motorcycles), BSAs, Nortons, and Jags and I have not seen any evidence that it is time for me to change my opinion. In the 1970's, the company I worked for bought a half-million-dollar "high tech, heavy duty gas welding" rig that was controlled by British electronics and was almost by itself the reason the company soon laid off 1200 employees. Everything from Vox to Marshall guitar amps and from Trident to SSL consoles has taught me that the Brits are willing to do anything to stuff electronics into a box and sell it for inflated prices. Finally, I rode some of the way to Alaska with a friend on a Tiger and his problems were familiar sutff. As a side note, I was convinced that Top Gear was a comedy show, until a couple of my students set me straight. A British television show that criticizes automotive engineering? WTF? (Sorry, Paul.) I have not ridden a new Triumph, though. Guess why?
9. FRAM Filters -- For years, I heard other people complain about FRAM's oil filters but I kept using them until one fell apart and nearly killed my V-Strom a couple of years ago. 
10. Non-Stick Cookware -- I've had it with this stuff. Talk about a product that breaks your heart. From the cheapest crap to a $90 omelet pan, the non-stick part starts sticking after about 10 uses. It's enough to drive me back to cooking with lard.

Buying Direct, the Indirect Way

Being the lazy, cheap, often gullible fruitcake I am, I decided to check out the incredibly cheap body armor I found on-line with DXdealextreme. For $54 delivered, they appeared to be selling upper body armor similar to the expensive spread. Since practically everyone in the US is selling the same crap from the same Chinese factories, I "reasoned" going direct to the Chinese distributor might be a pretty quick and efficient way to get my upper body protected. After two weeks of waiting for delivery (which put the gear in my hands exactly two days after I last went dirt riding), I got a tiny package in the mail from DXdealextreme. I ordered XL and they shipped a tiny thing they labeled "medium." I haven't been this "medium" since I was 12 years old.

I fumbled around the DXdealextreme website until I found the customer complaint area and sent them a note describing the problem and asking for a right-sized replacement. The following is what I have received from the company in the last month:

Dear customer, Sorry to hear that. Would you please go to our forum and search for related information? Sometimes the issues that customers raised could be resolved by topics in our forum. Thanks for your assistance. Best wishes！ Anna

Response from Customer 5/4/2012 5:49:17 AM HKT (UTC+8) It's hard to imagine a response that could resolve your company having sent the wrong size. Again, I ordered extra large and you sent medium. The problem is unresolvable without a replacement.

Request   (Responded) from anna 5/6/2012 9:48:55 PM HKT (UTC+8) Sorry but please return thw wrong item to DX. Please accept our apologies for the defective item. In a DOA situation a reimbursement for return shipping fees is available. Please return the item(s) using the least expensive shipping method preferably with tracking number to the address below. If you choose to return the item without a tracking number, please keep the shipping receipt. After your shipment, please take a picture of the proof of shipment (shipping receipt, certificate of posting, tracking number stub, etc). We will arrange the replacement and reimbursement for your return postage after the package is received and processed. ATTN: STONE BRIDGE GROUP 1941 Davis Street, Ste. B Unit 31 San Leandro, CA 94577 UNITED STATES Please note, an RMA confirmation letter was sent to your email address, please check the mail contents, print out the attached RMA label and affix the label to your returned package. If you cannot print the label, please write down the RMA code number on the outside of the package. Return shipping fee reimbursement is up to 60% of the item's price to a maximum of $40 USD; we will cover the actual postage (according to the receipt you provided). IMORTANT: Please use the least expensive method to ship the item(s) back. Courier services such as EMS, UPS, FedEx, TNT, DHL etc are NOT eligible for return shipping cost reimbursements. IMPORTANT: Please remember to include a note in your package indicating the following items, this note will help us to expedite the processing time for you. 1. Your order number, 2. SKU numbers returned and quantity, and 3. A short description of the problem(s) of the defective unit. If there are any further inquiries, please feel free to contact us at anytime. Thank you for your patience and understanding. * Incorrect usage excluded. ** The order shipment date and order notification are provided to you by email.

Response from Customer 5/28/2012 6:40:02 PM HKT (UTC+8) The unit was returned and received by the STONE BRIDGE GROUP on 5/21/2012. Has the replacement and refund for shipping charges ($9.13) been sent yet?

Request   (Responded) from anna 5/28/2012 7:53:00 PM HKT (UTC+8) Sorry.After your shipment, please take a picture of the proof of shipment (shipping receipt, certificate of posting, tracking number stub, etc).

Response from Customer 5/28/2012 9:10:07 PM HKT (UTC+8) FedX 763502915000134

Request   (Responded) from anna 5/29/2012 12:58:10 AM HKT (UTC+8) thanks,would you please show us how much the postage?

Response from Customer 6/2/2012 8:41:41 AM HKT (UTC+8) This cycle is becoming depressing. I sent the armor, along with the original receipt and shipping receipt, to your US office, Stone Bridge Group. They obviously have it now, but you've chosen to ignore your own shipping instructions and pretend to be ignorant of the whole transaction. A month after ordering the armor, I have nothing but expenses to show for my experience with your company. You haven't even bothered to replace the item with the correct size part. The only upside from dealing with DX dealextreme, for me, is that I have something to write about in my magazine column and blog. Since the blog gets 100,000 hits a year, that ought to be interesting advertising for your company. When I finish with this note, I'm going to contact my credit card company and begin working on reversing the charges for the product you have failed to deliver. Thomas Day Minnesota Motorcycle Monthly Magazine http://http://mnmotorcycle.com/ http://geezerwithagrudge.blogspot.com/

So, now me and Paypal are going to wrestle with how I get my money back from DXdealextreme. From here out, I am going to save my money and avoid anything that appears to be shipped from China.

It just gets better. Finally, DXdealextreme's representative has agreed to send a replacement for the original screwed up order, but . . .

Request   (Responded) from anna 6/4/2012 2:31:01 AM HKT (UTC+8) Ok, thanks, we will arrange the replacement for you, are you OK with that we keep the postage $9.14 as store credit; you may use the credit immediately to get something else. Or, you can leave the credit and use it later at a time you like. Please let us know which way works the best for you. Thank you for your understanding. Have a nice day Anna

Response from Customer 6/4/2012 7:04:03 AM HKT (UTC+8) I would prefer a refund of the return shipping. This experience has been miserable enough that I can't imagine doing business with DX again. And I would warn anyone away from doing business with a company that can't get an order right and, then, throws up a dozen obstacles between the customer and fixing the company's mistake.

I will spare my gentle readers from the rest of this transaction, no matter how it transpires, but I'm going to consider this a lesson-well-learned and try not to stumble into the Chinese money pit again.

Thinking Big

I almost got to test ride a Yamaha Super Ténéré this weekend. Short notice, lots of complications, and tiny availability made it impossible. The point in a momentary ride on a $15k 1200cc multi-purpose bike probably evades me, anyway. I'm sure the motivation from Yamaha is to get as shiny and surface a review as possible. The purpose for the magazine is to be able to say we touched it. For me . . . I'm still thinking about it.

The Ténéré is a really cool idea about 10 years too late (for me). Yamaha tried something like this in 1992 with the TDM 850 and that bike is still one of my all-time favorite motorcycles. It would have been much cooler if it had all of the adventure touring stuff the Ténéré sports, but the TDM was also lighter and skinnier. It was also the right bike at the wrong time. Yamaha is smarter now. They know the US economy is trashed and isn't likely to recover in my lifetime and they aren't bringing in a lot of their new bikes; hence, the sparse test ride opportunities. The TDM was oversupplied at every Yamaha dealer from 1992 till Yamaha started dumping the bike in 1994 for pocket change.

I was looking forward to seeing if there is a reason for 1200cc's in an adventure touring bike. For all of my dirt bike racing life, I rode a 125 two-stroke. I never considered the possibility that I needed more motorcycle than a 125. I played with (and sold) 250's, but they were boring. The slightly bigger bike didn't suit my riding style and almost seemed like cheating on most motocross tracks. However, just before I quit racing a mid-Nebraska dealership offered me a ride on a YZ400 and to seal the deal, they cut me loose on the bike in a big field behind the shop for the afternoon. From that day on, my make-a-wish dream has been to be given an open class motocrosser and a couple of hours on a golf course. Man, I shredded that field. You can dig a trench on a YZ400 way faster than with anything Caterpillar makes.  In the end, I passed on the "opportunity" to break myself into dozens of tiny pieces in an open class motocross event and went on my with life.

Still, what could you do with a 1200cc "adventure tourer?" For one thing, you can spend a ton of money on fuel. Yamaha brags the Super Ténéré's 40mpg, but that means the bike has a 240 mile range and that is cutting it close for most adventures I know of; including most of western Canada, North Dakota, Wyoming, Montana, and a few other places where having some serious power might be fun if you could make it between fuel stops. One big reason I went for the 650 V-Strom and didn't consider the liter version was mileage. At $4-9/gallon, 40mpg is unacceptable. I'm still pissed that my WR250 only gets 55mpg (the same as my V-Strom). My Ford Escort is more efficient than the Ténéré considering carrying capacity and ignoring comfort and practicality. This is the wrong world to be hustling a 40mpg motorcycle.

However, I'm not going to find out if the Ténéré delivers the same visceral kick in the ass that I once got from the YZ400. You can forgive a lot of faults when you're tearing up the road and flinging it 40' in the air. I'm probably too old for the Ténéré, anyway.

Postscript: 

And the review is back on. I am picking up the SuperT this Saturday (June 16)

 Follow-Up: 

 I did get to ride the Super Ten this past weekend (June 16-18). All of my usual bitchiness aside, I liked the bike a lot. I put almost 400 miles on the Super T, with at least 200 of those miles on gravel and wet clay. The bike performs well under all conditions. Stay tuned for the review in September's MMM.

All the News That Didn't Fit

Aurora Motorcyclist Recalls Going Airborne in Intersection

If you Google this item's title, you can see one of the most convincing arguments for going AGAT (all the gear, all the time) ever presented. The Denver Post website article includes the video from a traffic-cam recording of a motorcyclist being broadsided by a car that ran a light into heavy intersection traffic. The motorcyclist, Greg Edwards, suffered "a fractured femur, fractured ankle, chipped teeth and a gash on his lip that required six stitches," but he survived flying through air, landing on his head, and is healthy enough to talk about the experience.

MSP Gives Up on Motorcycles, Again

The Minnesota State Patrol has, for the second time in sixty years, to give up on its motorcycle fleet. The two-wheeled unit was revived in 2007, 58-years after the last time Minnesota had a MiPS squad. The state patrol Chief said, "We decided not to put motorcycles on the road this year due to increased training costs, a concern for trooper safety, and a lack of troopers interested in volunteering for the unit." The first of five bikes went up for auction April 21 and sold for $13,100. The ad read:

2008 HARLEY DAVIDSON ELECTRA-GLIDE, 20207 miles

MOTORCYCLE, 100TH ANNIVERSARY POLICE EDITION, 103 CI MOTOR, 6 SPEED TRANSMISSION, ABS BRAKES, SINGLE SEAT SADDLE (AIR ADJUSTABLE), HARD SIDE SADDLE BAGS, TOUR PACK AND SETCOM PUSH TO TALK COMMUNICATIONS, DUNLOP RUN FLAT TIRES, 6 GAL TANK, 1 OF 5 2008 BLACK CHERRY PEARL COLORED ELECTRA GLIDES IN EXISTENCE (SPECIALLY PAINTED BY HD FOR PATROL, VERY RARE COLLECTABLE, RESERVE $8,000 

Motorcycles in Traffic

A recent TML (Transport & Mobility Leuven NV, a Belgian transport specialist organization) study argues that if one-in-ten motorists converted to motorcycles, traffic flow would be substantially improved in Europe's already-more-modern transportation system. In an article titled "Why commuting by motorcycle is good for everyone" in the London Telegraph, Kevin Ash explains the conclusions of the study and does his bit to promote motorcycling, lane sharing, and filtering to a society that has already joined the 20th Century (You read that right, the US hasn't even evolved to the last century's standards, let alone the current one.) and encourages all of those activities. Ash's article refers to substantial reductions in commuting time, vehicle emissions, and efficiency due to the estimated effects of increased (to 10% of total traffic) motorcycle use. I was not able to find the original study, so this is all second hand information. (Thanks to Ian for the heads-up on the study.)

Unfortunately for US motorcyclists, the US EPA would not be able to confirm either the increased inefficiencies or the lowered pollution contribution of motorcycle use in any state other than California; and pollution numbers don't look better by much, even in CA. Part of the problem is the EPA is hobbled by rules that force the agency to look at pollution-per-gallon of fuel used, rather than emissions-per-mile driven. This idiot rule limits the efficiency of any US-sold vehicle, motorcycles included, since manufacturers are forced to work at eliminating fuel exhaust output in unrealistic conditions (on a dyno with no regard for miles traveled). The oil companies have to love this (and, undoubtedly bought the necessary politicians to keep this stupid rule in force), but the rest of us suffer 1960's efficiency vehicles to keep oil use and profits high. As always, we have the finest government money can buy.

Can Your Bike Do This?

To meet the demands of the Indian and Asian markets, KTM's Duke line has to pass some interesting tests in water.

Smacking Home

On the way to an MSF class Wednesday, I got stuck behind a big-ass clubcab pickup and witnessed the cell phone abusing retard wobbling all over Rice Street until he rear-ended a guy on a cruiser. The cruiser guy didn't get much "protection" from his loud pipes, even though I could hear him two vehicles back, through my helmet, with ear plugs solidly in place. Adding noise to the already unhealthy noise levels of the world is a pretty passive-aggressive tactic and passive-aggression is well known to be ineffective.

The definition of "bimbo." Evidence 

that drivers' licenses are handed out

in Cracker Jack boxes. 

It looked like the cell phone douche was planning to duck out, so I made a show of scribbling his plate number down before I parked to look at the damage. There was a lot of damage, but the biker's injuries looked survivable if disfiguring. His face was pretty messed up. A nurse from a car on the other side of the road was doing first aid and she'd already called 911.

Two of my top five warning signs of 

driving incompetence. A baseball cap

and a cell phone.

Ten minutes, or so, later, a Ramsey County Sheriff's Deputy showed up and started collecting information. That's what I was waiting for. We had a brief conversation during which I called the truck-cell-phoner a liar (He'd claimed not to have a cell phone in the truck.) I offered to testify against him, if the cop searched his truck for the phone (which he found and confiscated). Supposedly, smashing into someone while jabbering on a phone is at least $500 over the usual fine, so that ought to be an expensive phone call.

Back to Basics

All Rights Reserved © 2012 Thomas W. Day

When I got back from Alaska, I'd had enough of riding a touring bike on dirt roads. Going upside down and backwards at 50mph with 500 pounds of motorcycle and gear grinding up the roadway in front of you will change you that way. I had regretted selling my XT350 Yamaha from the day I sold it and had been watching for something like that bike ever since. I got more serious about that search in July of 2007.  One of the guys in the local dual purpose motorcycle group advertised a 2001 Kawasaki KL250 Super Sherpa on the list and I took it, sight unseen. The price was right, the size was right, and I knew this guy's word was good, so if he said it was in good condition, it would be in good condition.

The picture at left is of my 2000 KL250 Super Sherpa just before I sold it. The picture at right is the Australian version, called the "Stockman." Aussies get a lot of the coolest stuff from Japan and I think we should give up on getting anything useful out of Iraq and Afghanistan and immediately invade Australia to get their motorcycles. Everything about the Stockman is what I hoped to get with my own Super Sherpa. I was a little disappointed.

A friend drove me across town to pick up the bike. I took it for a test drive, swapped money for motorcycle, and drove it home through city streets to get a feel for the bike's character and problems. It turned out to have plenty of problems. It had been ridden hard and put up bent a few times and some of the bent bits bothered me more than others. When I got it home, I took it apart and began to straighten out the things I though desperately needed fixing. A couple of levers, a new front fender, new handlebars, new grips, new tires (yanked the knobbies and replaced them with street-oriented Bridgestone Trail Wings), a new chain and sprockets, a new air filter, a serious carb cleaning, and the bike was ready to ride.

I rode often it for three solid years; to work, on errands, on meandering trips into the countryside, and anywhere I would ride a bigger bike as long as the trip total doesn't exceed a few hundred miles. The bike is comfortable, insanely fuel efficient (70-90mpg!), fun to ride around town, lightweight, mostly easy to work on, and an absolute blast off road. The Sherpa is no motocrosser, but it's a fun trail bike. It's not powerful, but it can get out of its own way. I've even played trials with it, going up a staircase at work and hopping logs in my back yard. The 10" of ground clearance makes for a pretty versatile off-roader. 

As a local commuter, the KL250 was a pleasure and real budget saver. When I was careful with the throttle, I could squeeze around 90mpg from a 1.4 gallon tank of fuel. If I was hammer-handed, the little guy still gave me 65-75mpg and a lot of fun. The bike is easy to park and, if you can't find a normal parking space, the Sherpa is enough of a Sherpa (you Bultaco fans know what I mean) to climb some stairs and park where the bicycles park. Top speed is about 70mph, according to the speedo. I mounted a GPS  but didn't get enough time with the touring rig to double check either the speedo or the mileage accuracy, but the bike seemed to keep up with normal freeway traffic. It's wailing at top speed, though. If there were a tach, it would probably be near redline.

My used bike came with a KLR's high fender in front. On the highway, I noticed some front end weirdness that seemed to be linked to that big fender flailing around in the wind. I dumped the high fender for an old, ugly red Acerbis low fender that I had lying idle in my garage for 15 years. The bike became more stable at speed and I lost a little mud clearance off-road. For my purposes, the trade-off was a good move. I had the Kawasaki low fender, but never bothered to try to make the KL look pretty while I was riding it. I prettied it up just before I sold it. 

Replacing the knobbies with street-aimed "trials tires" was a good move. The knobbies made the bike absolutely terrifying on grated bridges and rain grooves. The Trail Wings are a great improvement, but real street tires would improve mileage, highway stability, and street traction. I may keep looking for the perfect DP tire for this bike. Since the KL is so light, I'm unconvinced that I need knobbies to get me out of the kinds of dirt and mud situations I'm likely to experience. So far, this has been true in deep sand, muddy dirt roads, and all sorts of rock and gravel single-tracks. If trials tires do the job for Dougie Lampkin, they would probably work for me and they did fine for as long as I owned the Sherpa.

The Sherpa was a work in process. To make the Sherpa a decent touring bike, I expanded the range of the 1.4 gallon fuel capacity to about 3 gallons. I added Acerbis Rally Guards, a tail rack, Eclipse bags, a small MotoFizz tailbag, and a GPS mount and electrics.  The bike was ready to go on a long North Dakota tour when it blew the countershaft oil seal and dumped all of the engine oil in a few feet. It took a season to put it back together, but my confidence in the bike was too low to trust the little guy for anything seriously adventurous. Before I sold it, I pulled off all of my mods and sold them independently. 

The seal seat design is retarded, at best, and the oil seal problem is a well-known issue with the 2000 Super Sherpa. Kawasaki used a seal that, apparently, doesn't grip to the cases and is easily pushed out. It's possible there was a breather problem, but I found no evidence of that. After replacing the seal, it still leaked; slowly, but surely. I replaced the seal, again, and it still leaked. I couldn't figure out the carb problem from the last time it gummed up and I gave it to a friend who discovered the oil seal seat stops just before a beveled bit of the case housing. If he tapped the seal flush to the outer case, the seal got bound on that bevel and leaked. -Not an intuitive or impressively secure design. It turned out that I managed to lose the anti-backfire spring during the last cleaning and that's why it gave me so much trouble starting and running smoothly. I gotta get a bike lift. Seeing all of that stuff would have been a lot easier if I wasn't crawling around on my garage floor to do maintenance. I'm too old for lying on concrete.

The Super Sherpa is about the only modern DP bike with a reasonable seat height. However, that low seat height has a cost. One price paid is the slight difference between the bottom of the fuel tank and the carb fuel inlet. This close relationship means the fuel pressure is barely enough to push fuel past the float needle. Add a fuel filter and you might not be able to get the last half-gallon out of the tank. When I put a small ceramic fuel filter on my stock tank, I lost about 30 miles of range due to this problem. The gas was there, I just couldn't get it into the carburetor. Even worse, the reserve petcock position wouldn't give me much more than a 1/4 mile before the bike sputtered to a stop. With all of the tiny anti-pollution jets and air passages, the tank filter isn't enough to keep particles from stopping up the carb and an accessory filter isn't a possibility. That means regular carb cleaning is part of owning a Sherpa.

After a year  of messing with the Sherpa, I decided to return it to mostly stock form. I went back to the stock low fender, not as effective as the Acerbis fender, but less color-jarring. I re-installed the stock tank, removed the handguards, and cleaned it up to sell. After all that, I rediscovered how much fun this little bike is to ride. For its intended purpose, urban commuting and light weight off-roading, the Kawasaki Super Sherpa KL250 is a decent, well-behaved motorcycle.  Since I replaced  it with a fuel-injected Yamaha WR250X most everything I liked about the Sherpa will still be in my stable. The one thing I will be losing is that great mileage. The WRX squeezes 60-65 miles from a really carefully managed gallon, but more typically turns in 55mpg consumption.

Since I didn't need it anymore, I kept a little hope alive that my grandson might want to go off-roading with me. He expressed exactly zero interest in motorcycling last summer and, again, this summer. So, I put the Sherpa on Craig's List and it went in a week to the first caller.

KL250 Specifications

Engine

Four-stroke, DOHC, 4-valve single cylinder

Bore x Stroke

72.0 x 61.2mm

Fuel System

Single 34mm Mikuni BST34 carburetor

Transmission

Six-speed

Frame Type

Semi-double cradle, high-tensile steel

Front suspension/wheel travel

36mm telescopic fork / 9.1 in.

Front Tire Size

2.75 x 21

Front brakes / rear brakes

Single hydraulic disc / Single hydraulic disc

Overall width

30.7 in.

Seat height

32.7 in.

Ground clearance

10.6 in.

Curb weight

282.1 lbs.

Kawasaki KL250 Accessories

Air Filter

From my experience, this is a no-brainer. I replaced the stock filter with a K&N. I have had K&N filters in every vehicle I have owned since my 1973 Rickman 125 ISDT and my 1973 Toyota Hilux pickup. Call me "superstitious," but I think those filters have added something to the incredible reliability I've experienced in my vehicles. I don't consider a K&N filter an aftermarket "accessory." I think the lack of a K&N filter is simply an incompetent motorcycle design that has to be rectified before the bike is a reliable vehicle.

Kawasaki's Rear Luggage Rack

This is a middle-of-the-road piece of equipment that isn't great but is far from bad. Like many factory racks, the Kawasaki piece has a 5 pound recommended max load capacity. Obviously, that is close to useless, so I'll be exceeding their recommended capacity by 2-4x. I plan to take the Sherpa on a trip or two, so the ability to carry some luggage is going to be critical.

Eclipse P38 Saddle Bags

I've had these bags since my 1st Yamaha TDM. On the Sherpa, they work well, minimally affect handling, and hold a fair amount of junk. Like a Colorado neighbor who'd used his P38's for years of commuting, my bags are severely bleached out but they still work flawlessly. I had to build a heat shield to keep the exhaust from baking the right side bag, but it was fairly simple and seems to work fine.

Motorcycle Movies I Love to Hate

Anything with Tom Cruise is enough to set me off, but the Mission Impossible crap is intolerable. Between the magic all purpose tires and the movie's suspended reality that asks us to believe that motorcycling is just a simple hobby that any super-spy excels at, I about toss my popcorn at the screen when this crap appears.



Top Gun is, obviously, another example why Cruise needs to come out of the closet. I don't know if the wimpy-assed motorcycle gayness pissed me off more than the despicable 80's soundtrack, but it was the only close race in that POS movie. It's hard to remember Cruise as a competent physical actor, but I sort of remember him fondly in The Color of Money. Although, it's possible that Paul Newman just made everyone around him look cool. Some guys have so much hipness it just spills on the surrounding territory.

Cruise isn't the only guy with magical motorcycling powers, though. Wall Street: The Money Never Sleeps put me over the top, too. When Shia Lebouf and Josh Brolin duke it out on Dukes at a level that most MotoGP riders couldn't match, I was banging on my chair hoping at least one of them would catch fire and die. No such luck, though. These two corporate shill douche bag 1%'ers just rip through the countryside as if that kind of useless maroon could actually have some kind of skill. Fat chance.



A while back, I wrote about how much I liked the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo because of the motorcycle scenes. The opposite effect is more often true. In the good Dragon Tattoo, The balls-to-the-wall riding style of the main character created a credibility for her that nothing else could. The fact that she was willing to toss herself into riding that rat bike and let the winds of fortune decide her fate made her someone I completely believed could do everything else she did. The earlier version's Lisbeth rode so conservatively that I took her for a wimp and didn't buy one single moment of her sudden toughness.

Stuff like Wild Hogs barely deserves mentioning as a motorcycle. For starters, there aren't any motorcycles in the movie, just a pile of two-wheel tractors. Four in-the-closet douchebags run into a pack of Village People and . . .  everyone gets a new hairdo and shoes? I get enough of these people in real life. I'd rather get my gums scraped without sedative than spend a couple of hours watching them survive crashes that should have turned them into jelly. Ideally, napalm jelly. There are generations of this Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man drivel and it makes everyone but the Village People look bad. My advice for movie producers wanting to make one more biker motorcycle movie, "Do us all a favor and kill yourself. Do it now. Seriously."

The Tron duet is so non-motorcyclish that it was work to put in the Amazon link. Freakin' video game generation drivel for the mindlessly boring virtual-life set. On the science fiction shelf, is it hard to imagine a multi-tasking, indestructible robot riding more gayly than roided-up biker-face Arny in Terminator? (Yeah, I linked that one. Nobody can fault me for consistency.) Why would a robot pick a 1940's hippobike? A real motorcycle is too fast? Any real robot could outrun a Harley, so riding one would be  . . .  What? An act of sporting-ness? Giving the enemy a fair chance? What kind of robot would do that, some freaky doomsday robot infected with Azimov's Three Laws of Robotics?

In an attempt at reminding myself of the totally forgettable, this giant douche of an insurance salesman put together a list of the lamest "great' motorcycle movies that is almost perfectly filled with total crap. Let's all take a guess at what he rides before we look it up. Did you get it right? At a recent visit to my local library, I scanned this POS book,The Big Book of Biker Flicks: 40 of the Best Motorcycle Movies of All Tiime. Practically everything I hate about movies about motorcyclists and motorcycles was listed in this waste of paper. If you managed to watch more than two of these godawful cinematic disasters, you'd either be driven to run over every motorcyclist you saw or join the Hell's Angels just so you can wear a leather jacket drenched in piss. The book could be right, though. The bar was set incredibly low for "best biker movie" was set pretty low from Brando's The Wild One right up to The Wild Hogs or whatever the most recent low-budget POS "biker movie" might be. There is something about hippobikes that lowers the IQ of everyone involved with them: from the riders to movie makers.

Robert Redford knew enough to be in a good motorcycle movie when he made Little Fauss and Big Halsy, but instead he made a ridiculous piece of crap. At the time, 1970 (one year before On Any Sunday), dirt riders had nothing on screen.  So, we were willing to give Hollywood a break just to exist. A dozen years passed before we made the screen again with Timerider, another movie with possibly good intentions but an idiot screenplay. Ex-Monkey Michael Nesmith was/is even an off-road motorcyclist and should have known some decent guys to do the stunts, but . . . drivel prevailed and the movie is barely watchable from an exercise machine in retrospect. No way I could sit for either of these disappointments. Hell, Fauss and Halsy are only available as a shirt-less Redford poster, that movie was such an embarrassment. 


The more I write about this the more it becomes obvious to me that the key to doing a great motorcycle movie is to get closer to motorcycling. I'd put Faster and Fastest and Dust to Glory up against any screenplay. As a fact/fiction story, The World's Fastest Indian was pretty cool and that is another key to a great story, start with a great life. I'd put my money down to see the Kenny Roberts, Bobby Hannah, Roger DeCoster, or any number of motorcycling's great stories done as well as was Burt Monro's movie. In all of these cases, truth was grossly weirder than fiction. And more interesting.

Taking Names and Doing Something about It

Last week, I was at a meeting in Minneapolis at the Metrodome Holiday Inn. I rode my bike to the meeting. As I tried to fumble my way into the hotel's parking structure, a guy ran up to tell me motorcycles aren't allowed in the hotel's parking area.The guy ran me through the usual reasons why the hotel didn't allow motorcycles entry into the structure, but it summed up to the fact that the hillbillies who designed the ticket gate are using 1945 technology to sense the presence of a vehicle and when that badly-designed system fails it often drops the gate on the bike or biker. So, for "liability reasons" the gate manufacturer stamps a "no motorcycles" sign on their crap and the parking garage owner complies with that instruction rather than look harder for a piece of equipment that wasn't designed by Fred Flintstone.

After a few cars backed up behind me, he "remembered" that the hotel had a designated motorcycle parking are just to my right (the drainage slope designed to prevent cars from going around the gate). For $4, I could park my bike where most anyone walking into the parking structure could mess with it and where it took some near-off-road skills to maneuver the bike into the space and even more skill to get back out of the parking lot. The exit route was to ride up that slope, make a hard left turn (while still on the slope), dodge between the gate and several concrete barriers, and make a hard left out of the lot into other exiting traffic. Getting on and off of the V-Strom was a little tough, but the riding part of this parking and exiting exercise was no problem. For other bikes, like big touring bikes or hippobikes, the parking and the exiting would probably be exciting. 

A couple of days later, I received an email about some kind of political boycott over some mildly obscure issue and it struck me that we're a pretty substantial economic group. If, for example, all 180,000 Minnesota motorcyclists decided to stay away from all businesses that don't allow us access to parking we could do some damage. I don't mean just when we are riding but for all business activity. If, for example, all 180,000 Minnesota motorcyclists took their business out of downtown Minneapolis and St. Paul (where pretty much every parking garage has one of those damned signs) we could cause some folks to revise their "liability reasoning." Now there is something for ABATE to sink it's teeth into that would actually benefit motorcyclists.

There are options, too. There are companies that use technology that will not only sense a motorcycle but pedestrians. This was a choice made by the management of these facilities and one that should cost them some cash as a result. Just for laughs, I'm going to start taking pictures of the parking signs and the buildings and businesses that ban motorcycles. I'll post those here and if you want to contribute (not just Minnesota, but let's put all of those businesses on notice). Send them to me and I'll stick them up here, too. Power to the people, as long as the people are us.

I'm Back

Ok, I never really left. However, I did leave a few bits of me somewhere in a hospital trash can five months ago and I've been working toward today ever since. At 7AM today, I started my first MSF BRC class for 2012. I've been doing 50 deep squats, a variety of leg lifts, pushups, setups, physical therapy, and flinging 10-20 pound dumbells (the weights, not the people) around every day for four-plus months aiming at today. It was just a single, but according to my Fitbit that amounts to 4.5miles walked today and 2400 calories burned before 1PM. Not bad for a 65-year-old under-achieving fat man with a bad attitude and low self-esteem.

I lucked out and it was a great class, full of over-achievers and it is good to be back on the range.

All the News That Didn't Fit

Marlon vs. Harley

When Harley Davidson named their designer boots "The Brando," they thought they were taking advantage of the Johnny Strabler badass biker culture Marlon Brando made famous in the movie “The Wild One.” So did Brando Enterprises, the organization that controls the marketing of Marlon Brando's name, face, and any other Brando reference that turns a buck. Triumph motorcycle jackets, Dolce & Gabbana $265 shirts, and MasterCard have hyped their brands using the Brando image and name. Since Strabler was riding a Triumph in The Wild One, it was a stretch for Harley to put Brando's name on their boots, at best. Supposedly, the Brando organization and H-D have come to an out-of-court settlement. This will be the second victory in a month for Brando Enterprises, since Ashley Furniture Industries settled a similar suit for $356,000 and renamed the sofas "Brody." Adrien Brody?

Rent A Cop and Help Save the EU

Greece is going down the tubes and being a civil servant in that country is worse than being a public school teacher in the US. In an effort to earn a little cash, Greek cops are renting themselves out to individuals and corporations. The rates are low: $39/hour (€30) for a cop, $20/hour for a motorcycle escort, and $1,960/hour gets you a police helicopter.