Fantastic Bikes and Where to Ride Them

Waiting for trackday photos to come out makes me feel like an irrational eight year old who gets told he has to wait a week for a toy. Every day and sometimes several times a day I go to the website and refresh it to see if they're uploaded, like a kid checking the mailbox at all times of the day.

I've been doing trackdays since 2011 and I still get the feeling. For that matter I still get the jitters the night before a trackday right up until I finish my first sighting lap.

When you were a teenager remember having a crush on someone? The pure distilled feeling of desire you have towards that person as if your life depends on obtaining love from them. Any moment your crush goes unrequited is heart wrenching to the point that you can't concentrate on anything academic.

Have you noticed that past your twenties those extreme feelings towards another person fade and go away? Do you miss that emotional high, even if you never got the person you crushed on?

Here's how to recreate that emotional high as an adult. Think of your dream bike and your dream trip (be it to the track, or tour, or whatever). Bingo, now you can't think about work and you feel like your life won't be complete until you obtain that goal.

I'm going to share one of my fantasies with you. This is literally one of the things that distracts me from work and gives me that emotional high of desiring something I can't have.

My fantasy starts with buying a new hot overpowered sport touring bike. For the purpose of this blog I'm going to go with the KTM SuperDuke 1290 GT. But don't worry, my VFR doesn't get jealous. The details vary but sometimes my fantasy includes flying somewhere to score an amazing deal on a new-old-stock bike from some nowhere KTM dealer.

Anyways my fantasy continues as I ride it to all the different national parks in the western US. Sounds pretty... vanilla, doesn't it? OK here's where it gets more interesting. In my brain I take the SuperDuke to all the tracks in the western US along the way and am the King of C group on my sport touring bike with my yellow touring suit.

When I put it on paper (electronic paper) it actually doesn't sound that fantastic or unrealistic. Funny how that works.

There's a joke that circulates motorcycle social media regularly that goes like this: All my friends are getting married and having kids and I'm like "Look at my motorcycle". That's my life now. I've seen no less than five pregnancy announcements among my friends and acquaintances in the last month. Meanwhile I've been on a short super-tour and gone to the track.

My life is a joke. An awesome joke.

Hey, look at my motorcycle!

Tool Abuse, Bike Maintenance, and Making Things Just a Little Better

Its no secret that I consider myself a disciple of Dave Moss. If you haven't heard of him, search youtube and facebook. He's a suspension tuner and racer, although his outreach goes beyond setting sag and twiddling knobs to trying to get all riders to take care of the basic ergonomic tuning and maintenance tasks that all too often get ignored.

The other day I was watching one of his videos and he was harping on brake fluid. So I paused the video and went to change the brake fluid in my special lady friend's 2012 CBR250r, which had probably never been changed.

Yucky.
Funny that after I changed that suddenly the brakes worked like they should. All this time I just assumed the brakes on it sucked (they felt sticky), but in fact the fluid was just awful!

I've bled the brakes on the VFR about four times this year trying to get the feel that I want. They were mushy as hell after I did a complete flush, I was thinking I was going to have to replace the lines. First though I removed the calipers and cleaned them thoroughly, then very carefully bled the brakes again, watching for tiny bubbles coming out. Voila, good firm brakes. Also my reservoir was weeping and as it turned out that happens when its over full, my fault.

I finally changed the coolant, which was a phenomenal pain in the ass due to the way Honda built the VFR fairings and where they placed the cooling system pieces. Two radiators and bits and pieces all over.

The fork oil on the VFR needs to be changed but that's a bigger job than I can do, and I don't have tools for it. So I'll let my guy do that for me before my big trip in August.

The baby CBR has much simpler forks where you can access the oil from the top, so I changed that tonight. I sucked out the 0W Honda fish oil and replaced it with 10W Repsol oil. Big difference, it no longer pogos.

Ironically Honda didn't see fit to put a place for spools on the swingarms. If you want spools you have to put on aftermarket pieces that go onto the chain adjusters, which ironically you need to lift the back end to do which you can't because you don't have spools. Using a paddle lift is a no go because it grabs onto the part of the swingarm that blocks the axle.

Tim the Tool Abuser Jensen to the rescue. Ladder plus rachet straps = motorcycle lift.

I also used this method to reassemble the forks.

While Dave would be happy that I'm taking care of my suspension and brakes, he'd probably be horrified at the way I improvise on things!