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Here's The Motorcycle Touring Made Easy eZine
August 07, 2009

Motorcycle Touring Made Easy

....the eZine
....inside this issue

We encourage you to email our eZine to your friends.
Welcome to the Motorcycle Touring Made Easy eZine
Our goal with our website is to provide motorcycle touring information to others that would like to get involved or know more about motorcycle touring. We've spent the last year gathering information and getting it together on the site and now with our eZine we're looking to bring you more and up to date information directly to you.

We hope that you find this information helpful and forward this eZine on to all your friends and if someone has sent this to you, please go to our home page and subscribe to get your own monthly copy. Just fill out the form and your there!

My appologies this month for the repeats but we've had a tough month so for this issue, we're taking a look back to some of the sections that we've brought you earlier for review and for those who have yet to read them.

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Knowing the Basics - General Motorcycling
Group Riding Most folks get their first bike and off they go down the road for a ride. It's great to get out and ride, but nothing is better than riding with friends. This brings on an entire new aspect of riding, group riding.

There are many thoughts to group riding, so we won't get into the details so much as we will just provide the basics. The basic idea of group riding is to be seen. Other vehicles on the road don't pay attention for motorcycles and with all those new distractions like cell phones, DVD players, navigation systems, etc. it's even worse.

The formation is fairly simple, there are two tracks in the lane where the car tires run, so we run those same tracks and stager left and right. This allows the group to maintain a tight formation so cars don't go diving in and out while still maintaining a 2 second following distance on the bike in front of you.

Communication is key, and if you have CB's or Chatterbox's that would be the best way to go, but if you don't, basic hand signals like we were all taught when kids riding bicycles work well. Just make sure everyone knows what they are before heading out.



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Out on the Road - Riding and Safety
Helmets for some reason stir up a lot of controversy so I am not going to go there other than to say, I won't ride without one. That being said, the next most important safety gear is eye protection. As I get older I value my sight more and more. The days of reading glasses are here and prescriptions are not far behind.

Your eyes are one of the easiest damaged parts of your body when riding. Just some small dust can scratch your eye and make a good day go bad quickly. And just because you're behind a windscreen doesn't make things any better. Dirt and debris can come up at you through the fairing fork tunnels and do damage as well.

If you wear a helmet, a good visor can help out. But there is still the possibility of debris coming up under the visor. A Full Face helmet helps to eliminate that. Even glasses can get debris past them so some glasses have foam on the frames to keep out dust and wind.

All in all, the best thing to do is to make sure that you have taken your eyes into consideration. Riding blind down the highway at 60 mile per hour is not my idea of a fun ride and I don't think you would feel any different.

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Keeping Garage Time Short - Maintenance Tips
Garage time is not only for your bike but for your gear as well. For us it's a helmet and communications upgrade. I have to admit, Judy and I have been skimping on the electronics gear and most of that equipment has been poor quality gear to get us by.

So we decided that after dropping our helmets one too many times and jury rigging our headsets to the point of totally rebuilding them once or twice, we would upgrade our gear. We've been using Nolan Helmets which we both like from thier lightweight lexan shell and ease of changing out the face shields to the removable and washable liners so we stuck with them and went with thier new N-42e model that is designed for communications.

Our choice on communications was to go with top of the line J an M headsets designed specificly to fit the N-42e helmet. We had a few rides with them so far and we're totaly please with the fit of the helmets and the clarity of the headsets.

If you are interested about installing headsets into your helmet, we have the complete procedure on our site so that you have an understanding of the process. It's all relatively straight forward and with the setup we used, can be done with minimal michanical skiills as everything is plug and play.

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Our View On Parts - Product Review
We've found a great way to mount accessories on to your bike. Most mounts tend to be bulky over sized and get in the way of both your vision and sometimes your controls. The best thing would be to have a mount that will allow you to place your accessories in a place that allows access to your controls and gauges while not being bulky themselves.

We've found that in SAENG. The pieces for the mounts are well made and designed for many different applications. You can add onto the mounts as you buy more "toys".

Support for the mounts is excellent. We purchased our mount and were having trouble with the metal ball swivel holding tight. One call and we were told that they had developed a rubber coated ball and they sent one to us no charge.

So for a clean and versatile mount for your GPS, MX Radio, etc. look into SAENG. If you don't see what you need, give them a call and they'll be more than happy to help you out.

Keep an eye out this spring as we test some mounting hardware from Leader MotorSports Accessories.

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If you have any information you'ld like to discuss, we have our new forum up and need YOUR input to get some great and current discussions going. Plus a new area to post "For Sale" items. See our Forum Here



Judy and I hope that you've enjoyed our eZine and if so, please send it on to your friends. If you have any tips that you would like to see posted on our site go to our tips page. We'll get them on our site and maybe use it in our eZine as well.

Also feel free to Contact Us with any questions or suggestions.

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