7 thoughts on “Episode 199: You Want to Keep All of Your Bits”
You do realize you followed your “Motorcycles are safe, dammit!” rant with a segment about a medical info card you can where around you neck on a lanyard? Awkward…
It was more like “motorcycles are not instant death”. I’m not sure what the awkward part is.
I’m with you James, I get pretty “ranty” when I hear the sheeple bleating about “murderbikes” and “donorcycles”.
Hey, I KNOW they’re dangerous – in the wrong hands. In MY hands, I feel pretty damn safe, thank you very much. I’m careful, attentive, educated, trained, practiced and mature (ok, 95% mature). Even when I’m being slightly immature, it’s still within my very broad spectrum of safety, leaving room and time for the unexpected.
I think if you choose to ride, you’d better make sure you know what you’re getting into, and do the bare minimum groundwork (which is a fuck of a lot more than an MSF course IMO), or be prepared to face the possibly – strike that – LIKELY fatal consequences.
The typical North American marketing of bikes as “pretty jewelry” infuriates me, it really negates them in the public eye as a real, practical and economical form of daily transportation. Additionally, the fact you can strut into a showroom at 16 years old with basically no idea what you’re doing and leave on a superbike makes no sense to me, and will continue to provide fuel to the haters with the inevitable “tragic” deaths. (and don’t get me started on bad advice from salesmen).
My bike’s a workhorse, and I take measures – mechanical and personal – to mitigate any risk I can. When somebody (especially a non-rider) treats me like I haven’t considered the danger, I can barely restrain the head-butts.
Ahhhh… dammit, you got me started.
Anyway, thanks for the continually great content, I appreciate all your hard work.
Peter
I love the old Katana’s as well. Early/mid 90s 750s and 1100s were great bikes (600s always looked slightly “off” to me, but still not bad).
I don’t know what Suzuki was thinking with the “Power Rangers” look of the late 90s/2000s. Way to ruin a great bike and a classic name if you ask me.
Then again…every manufacturer seemed to get their designs from anime cartoons for the last decade or so in my opinion. It’s only been in the last year that I’ve really seen some designs that I like.
(Mark, age 40, 3 years of riding, bike: 1993 Yamaha XJ600 Seca II)
Thanks guys I really enjoyed this Podcast! I agree with the outrage of equating drug abuse to motorcycling. Why doesn’t anybody use Crop Dusting in this comparison.I believe it’s the world’s most dangerous job.
My trick for bug removal at a gas station is to grab the window squeegee out of the hanging bucket. I rub vigorously with the sponge side and then use the squeegee side to remove the water. I don’t worry about scratching my visor because the sponges are so well used they are very soft. Kind of a bootleg method but faster than opening my cases and getting out my cleaning fluids. I wait until I’m parked and give it a good once over.
A note on used bike tips. They bike I just bought was parked in a garage and blocked in with junk in the dead of winter so I could not test ride. It started right up and ran fine. I checked all the blinkers, emergency flashers high beam, low beam, kick stand switch, I even rolled the bike in neutral just a bit to test the brakes. What I didn’t check was the clutch! When I went to drive it home the clutch would not disengage. I should have put the bike on the center stand and put the bike in gear to test the clutch. Test riding would be optimum but sometimes as in this situation I was not able to do a test ride. Live and learn!
Another one for the Used Bike checklist:
Tire date codes. Check them! The tires on my new-to-me used bike looked great. No age cracks and plenty of tread. But the problem is that they are 8 years old! Anything past 5 is considered dangerous. If the bike is inspected by an inspection station and they catch this, it will fail. New Pilot Road 4s for me…
no test ride is a sore spot, i would also pay the days insurance to test ride and that is how i started with BMWs and have stayed there ever since, ill consider a Japanese bike when they start allowing real test rides.
great Podcast guys
You do realize you followed your “Motorcycles are safe, dammit!” rant with a segment about a medical info card you can where around you neck on a lanyard? Awkward…
It was more like “motorcycles are not instant death”. I’m not sure what the awkward part is.
I’m with you James, I get pretty “ranty” when I hear the sheeple bleating about “murderbikes” and “donorcycles”.
Hey, I KNOW they’re dangerous – in the wrong hands. In MY hands, I feel pretty damn safe, thank you very much. I’m careful, attentive, educated, trained, practiced and mature (ok, 95% mature). Even when I’m being slightly immature, it’s still within my very broad spectrum of safety, leaving room and time for the unexpected.
I think if you choose to ride, you’d better make sure you know what you’re getting into, and do the bare minimum groundwork (which is a fuck of a lot more than an MSF course IMO), or be prepared to face the possibly – strike that – LIKELY fatal consequences.
The typical North American marketing of bikes as “pretty jewelry” infuriates me, it really negates them in the public eye as a real, practical and economical form of daily transportation. Additionally, the fact you can strut into a showroom at 16 years old with basically no idea what you’re doing and leave on a superbike makes no sense to me, and will continue to provide fuel to the haters with the inevitable “tragic” deaths. (and don’t get me started on bad advice from salesmen).
My bike’s a workhorse, and I take measures – mechanical and personal – to mitigate any risk I can. When somebody (especially a non-rider) treats me like I haven’t considered the danger, I can barely restrain the head-butts.
Ahhhh… dammit, you got me started.
Anyway, thanks for the continually great content, I appreciate all your hard work.
Peter
I love the old Katana’s as well. Early/mid 90s 750s and 1100s were great bikes (600s always looked slightly “off” to me, but still not bad).
I don’t know what Suzuki was thinking with the “Power Rangers” look of the late 90s/2000s. Way to ruin a great bike and a classic name if you ask me.
Then again…every manufacturer seemed to get their designs from anime cartoons for the last decade or so in my opinion. It’s only been in the last year that I’ve really seen some designs that I like.
(Mark, age 40, 3 years of riding, bike: 1993 Yamaha XJ600 Seca II)
Thanks guys I really enjoyed this Podcast! I agree with the outrage of equating drug abuse to motorcycling. Why doesn’t anybody use Crop Dusting in this comparison.I believe it’s the world’s most dangerous job.
My trick for bug removal at a gas station is to grab the window squeegee out of the hanging bucket. I rub vigorously with the sponge side and then use the squeegee side to remove the water. I don’t worry about scratching my visor because the sponges are so well used they are very soft. Kind of a bootleg method but faster than opening my cases and getting out my cleaning fluids. I wait until I’m parked and give it a good once over.
A note on used bike tips. They bike I just bought was parked in a garage and blocked in with junk in the dead of winter so I could not test ride. It started right up and ran fine. I checked all the blinkers, emergency flashers high beam, low beam, kick stand switch, I even rolled the bike in neutral just a bit to test the brakes. What I didn’t check was the clutch! When I went to drive it home the clutch would not disengage. I should have put the bike on the center stand and put the bike in gear to test the clutch. Test riding would be optimum but sometimes as in this situation I was not able to do a test ride. Live and learn!
Another one for the Used Bike checklist:
Tire date codes. Check them! The tires on my new-to-me used bike looked great. No age cracks and plenty of tread. But the problem is that they are 8 years old! Anything past 5 is considered dangerous. If the bike is inspected by an inspection station and they catch this, it will fail. New Pilot Road 4s for me…
no test ride is a sore spot, i would also pay the days insurance to test ride and that is how i started with BMWs and have stayed there ever since, ill consider a Japanese bike when they start allowing real test rides.
great Podcast guys