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I wanted to ride from my home in the Bay Area to Santa Cruz by way of Watsonville to visit my son, who lives and works there. I've done it many times before -- the Almaden Valley is really beautiful this time of year, and Hecker Pass is a fun ride, with decent twisties and spectacular views of...

Well, it started shortly before sunset and ended about an hour after sunset so I guess part of that counts as nighttime :). I'd wanted to see what the differences were between daytime and nighttime riding for some time. That's easier to do in winter with the short days so when I did a quick...

Yesterday I was riding I-280, killing time and having fun until I needed to be at Ray Mueller’s meet -and-greet in San Carlos. The traffic was going maybe 10 MPH more than the speed limit but no one was going bizarrely fast. All of a sudden, though, it slowed down even more. The source of the...

Took a quick run up to Stinson Beach, through San Francisco and over the Gate. Fabulously clear blue sky the whole way! I asked the hostess at the place we had brunch at how many of these days they usually see. She told me this time of year they normally get only about 5 a month...but recently...

Good advice. Particularly when one is riding alone, and the only person who can be embarrassed by whatever you do is yourself :)

I thought that's what you meant. But I'd think >>any<< braking action with the wheel cut sharply would be problematic. Of course, one is less likely to hit the rear break when you're first taking off.

I don't think I touched the front brake in these situations. But why is that particularly an issue?

Thanx infrared. I can flat foot the bike -- I lowered the seat when I bought it. And I was going forward. But the road was narrow, so I started out in too tight a turn and voila! Next time I'll do one more back-and-forth to point the bike a bit more in line with the centerline so the initial...

Thanx for the kind words, "Old Guy" :). I am -- oddly -- relieved to hear that other, more experienced riders (I've only been doing this for about six years, and had an eight month layover in there as a result of cleverly going down in a way which broke all my right-side ribs) also drop their...

Cool! Lol!!

A little story from a recent motorcycling trip I hope you'll enjoy. https://pursuit.olbert.com/2021/08/the-kindness-of-strangers-towards-white-haired-guys/ - Mark

I got the torque curve from the web, a dyno run by a testing outfit for an article in some riding magazine. I think you missed the disclaimer in the post :) . You are of course correct that things like air resistance aren't included. Not to mention the contact patch friction being broken by...

BTW, I updated the files and images on that post because I realized the dynamometer data I was basing everything on were measure at the wheel and not the crankcase (which makes sense since you'd have to disassemble the bike to measure it at the engine). So my applying a drive train loss factor...

I won't claim this write-up I did is definitive (or even correct :)). But I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I had putting it and the Excel model it's based on together. https://pursuit.olbert.com/2021/06/bring-the-antimatter-injectors-back-online-and-rig-for-warp-drive/ - Mark

Finally getting around to replacing the horn on my 2017. This one looks interesting: https://www.fjrcatalogue.com/catalog/item/7379389/9589221.htm Thoughts?

A week or two as I recall. 

Thanx, Bounce! I hadn't thought of that...and it probably would've saved me some time in creating routes before I wrote GeoProcessor :) - Mark

Nope. All three recalls (transmission, brake switch and something else) were paid 100% by Yamaha. 

I like to include Google Earth (kml/kmz) files with my trip reports so people can view the route I took in detail. However, by default most GPS trackers simply record a sequence of GPS coordinates which aren't "connected" to the actual roads. The resulting route display often cuts off corners...

...after four days (!!) in the shop! Must be nice to be a wealthy global corporation so you can afford to spend all that money fixing design problems... Zeb rides at least as good as he did before he went in (probably because he's was due for a tune-up soon anyway). I didn't notice any change...