Confessions of a Motorcycle Newbie

It was awesome. It was magical. It was invigorating. It was the most nerve-racking twenty minutes of my life to date.  But most amazing of all, it felt totally natural.  I finally felt ready to wrap up all the practicing for a while and actually ride somewhere today. To work. On an honest-to-G-d Houston freeway, at speeds up to about 75mph, with actual other cars going the same damned speed to keep me company.  And this crazy thing happened: I got where I meant to go with no trouble whatsoever. No cars not seeing me and trying to occupy my point in space (point of fact everyone was more than courteous to me in their driving), no crashing or sliding at freeway speeds. No organ donation. Just the most invigorating and pleasant commute to work I’ve ever had. It even felt like it went by faster than in a car, even though I averaged my normal speeds.  Even the curves – bane of my motorcycle existence up to now – seemed to just fly by naturally. I was one with the bike, on...

It happens to all of us: you follow the directions in your well-meaning shop manual and they tell you to take apart an assembly you don’t actually need to disassemble right now and before you know it you have air in your brake lines!  What? Doesn’t happen to everybody? Well, it happened to me. And should you, dear reader, find yourself with the dreaded air-in-the-brake-lines such that your brake lever or pedal has no effect whatsoever on your bike’s motion, you’re gonna have to bleed your brakes.  This sounds painful. In point of fact, I found it be a bit of a pain in the you-know-where. But here is an unorthodox approach I worked out by trial and error that might save you some grief… Tools needed:  Screwdriver (in my case Phillips) to open the brake fluid reservoir Box wrench (in my case 8mm) that will fit your bleed valve Assorted rubber tubings and vacuum fittings, available at your auto parts store One “vacuum gun” - essentially a giant steel string that can be used t...

It took me just long enough to figure out how to take the wheels off of my 2009 V-Strom 650 that I thought I would write this how-to for my own future benefit and for the benefit of any other new “strom troopers” out there.  Step 1: make sure you have all the tools you will need for this job before you get all greasy and have your bike disabled enough that you can’t ride it to the local auto parts store. (Can you tell that I need this reminder?) Tools shown in most of my photos are the tools that came with the bike, however these were not always adequate and I sometimes needed wrenches with more leverage and tighter tolerances to get the nuts off.  Step 2: put your bike up on the center stand if you have one. If not, find a reasonable alternative to get the back tire off the ground and the bike stable.  Step 3: note the chain tensioner marks on the two swingarms. You will presumably need this information when you reassemble the rear wheel after changing tires or doing wha...

So yesterday the lowering links (ordered about a week ago from Murph’s Kits of Hanson, KY:  https://www.murphskits.com/product_info.php?cPath=27_116&products_id=36&osCsid=MmHAaVLizzUPjKQYSgTll3 ) for my V-Strom came in and I eagerly trotted out to put them on the bike.  It seemed like it would be quite easy: just take off the two nut-and-bolt pairs that hold the suspension links in place, swap out the old links for the new ones, and bolt them back in place. Unfortunately, the nut that secured one of bolts was so badly threaded that even when I got enough leverage (by using the longest wrench I could find and then stepping on it!) to make it turn, it just turned the bolt with it. It took me the better part of fifteen minutes to find a way to steady the bolt head on the other side with another wrench braced against the side stand. I continued to work on that nut for what felt like a long time until I finally heard a sickening “crack” and the nut started to turn. Slowly. ...

I took Aurora out on one of our local twisty roads (see map below) today on the excuse that I needed to go pick up a few items from the local shopping center.  The road highlighted above is speed limit 45mph, but I found I could only keep that speed going in the limited straightaways. Maybe it’s my off-road-oriented tires or maybe it’s my newbie-ness, most likely some mix of the two, but I just couldn’t lean the bike over enough to stay between the lines in a sharp curve at 45mph. Which is a problem if I ever intend to commute to work at 70mph.  Actually, I had no trouble making the right turns – it was the lefties that had me in a spot. In fact, on one left-leaning curve I kept slowing and leaning and slowing and leaning and still ended up in the grass on the side of the road. Still upright, mind you – add another outing with no bike drops! – but wheels on the grass all the same.  Have other people had this problem getting the hang of turns? I think part of the problem w...

I took Aurora out for some turning practice today, ranging from slow-speed U-turns up to about a 20-mph figure 8 on a decently big parking lot. I am slowly getting to not be afraid of leaning her over, but between a bike that is about an inch taller than I feel like it should be and tires that don’t lean over well on dry pavement (and do worse in the wet) that confidence-building has been a slow process.  Still, I got better. I figured out how to make tight turns by leaning the bike way over while standing on the outside foot peg – a truck they tried to teach me in the RiderCourse but which I couldn’t get to work on the tiny teaching bike. On my big honkin’ v-Strom, however: it works.  Higher-speed figure eights still intimidate me. The bike is willing to lean over that far, but I still *feel* like she’s on the verge of falling over. But on the ride home I took several turns from one neighborhood street to another in second gear. And I’m still standing.  Which reminds me:...