Nice bait there, Mark. That ought to be a nice bonus incentive for the boy to achieve a successful matriculation!
To the OP and any others who are on the fence about a Russell. Just do it! You will never regret it. Like some otehrs, I ride 2-up a lot. We did a 6500 mile vacation ride this past August and I can tell you with 100% certainty that would not have happened without the his n' hers Russells.
I actually have owned both leather Russell seats (on my '05 and now on my '14) and a vinyl one on my VStrom, all of them in the half moon stitching pattern. The leather is definitely more comfortable. It conforms to the shape of your butt and retains it, where the vinyl returns to its own shape after every use. The vinyl also makes your butt sweat more than the leather.
The amount of care I gave my now 7 year old and 85k mile used leather seats on the '05 was very minimal, and it still looks great. I would occasionally try to sweep or vacuum any sand or dirt out of the stitching, and maybe twice a year I'd spritz it with some Lexol leather conditioner and rub it in with my hand, then wipe off the excess. Total time is a couple of minutes.
I do not leave the bike parked out in the weather very often, but when traveling I don't always bother covering the bike at night. And of course it gets ridden in the rain. Never had a soggy seat cushion even though it sometimes had water pooling in the bucket of the seat. I credit that to the minimal stitching ion the half moon pattern and keeping the leather fairly supple with the Lexol.
The dual full leather seats that I just got for my new 2014 (just arrived last Friday) set me back a total of $745 plus shipping. I thought that it was going to be more, but that was all they charged me. Maybe because I'm a repeat customer? You should be able to do at least that good if you get in on a group buys this winter. Most years there will be one somewhere, you just need to keep your ears and eyes open.
I didn't wait for a group buy because I knew I wanted it ASAP and paying an extra hundred or more for the seat that I know I am going to love is insignificant, especially when you just dropped 16 large on the bike itself.
Here's a photo of my new ones:
Some folks might say they look weird. I think they look comfortable, and I know I am right.
The supposed inability to move laterally on these seats is overblown, IMO. You can still shift your but to the inside if you really want to, but you can get nearly the same effect by leaning your upper body to the inside of the curve. A lot of the butt sliders I see will lean their upper bodies back toward center after they have slid their lower body to the inside.
Your upper body (torso head and shoulders) is most important as it is higher up and so affects the total center of gravity more than your lower body (butt cheeks and legs) do. Try it sometime. Just leave your *** planted and shift your head and shoulders to behind your inside mirror. You may be surprised how much that reduces the required lean angle for any corner.
