June 07, 2010
Motorcycle Touring Made Easy
....the eZine
....inside this issue
- Welcome to the Motorcycle Touring Made Easy eZine
- Knowing the Basics - General Motorcycling
- Out on the Road
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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 two years 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. Feel free to 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!Back to the top
Knowing the Basics - General Motorcycling
Sorry for my absence last month, it has been a rather trying month so let’s get you up to date with the cracked frame I spoke of in the last issue. Our bike was looked at by our dealer and yes they did verify that it was cracked, now for the interesting part. A week had gone by and I had heard nothing. I even met with the area Honda rep and still, crickets. So I made a call to Honda corporate office, stated my issue that I haven’t heard a thing in over a week. That is when things got interesting. The customer rep asked me to bring my bike to my dealer the next day and that he would call them. I dropped off my bike in the morning and the following morning had an approval to have the frame changed. Within 4 days, I had a frame.Honda provided the dealer with 16.8 hours of flat rate time, I was told that I would have to pick up the difference so I pulled out my Goldwing Shop manual and started to remove parts. I had the bike stripped down to almost nothing in a couple days and they came to pick it up with a trailer. Since then it has been three weeks due to the shop not getting parts such as bearings and soft goods ordered and every couple of days the customer service rep from Honda Corporate has been calling the shop for me to ensure work is progressing.
The shop opens tomorrow and with luck they should have it back to the condition I have given it to them. So another week or two to get all the new parts I ordered installed and I should be back on the road. It’s been a long month and a half since we first noticed the cracked frame but hopefully we’ll be in New Hampshire this July for a long needed vacation.
Lessons learned so far….. Get Honda Corporate involved in this if you have to go through it. Stay on top of the service department to ensure parts are ordered and work progresses as it should. Help out your shop and yourself by removing as many parts as you can (Besides it will give you something to do while waiting for your bike to come back) Take the time to clean, fix, update and upgrade your bike with new parts while it’s in the shop.
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Out on the Road
We lost a dear friend a couple weeks ago, a fellow Goldwing rider, Harry Singleton. Harry use to ride with us in Delaware until he moved to Florida a couple years back. He was back in the area visiting relatives and while out riding, an oncoming truck turned left right into his path. There were no skid marks, he had no time to stop. He died on the way to the hospital. We’ll miss Harry and hopefully we can learn from him too.One of the most common accidents with a motorcycle is an oncoming driver either not seeing you or not paying attention will turn left in front of you crossing your path. See and being seen are the two means to help reduce this. Seeing and anticipating what others will do on the road. Judy and I sometimes even make a game of it. We’ll guess if someone will change lanes or make a turn without stopping first. You’ll be surprised at how good you can get at this. The other is being seen. I recently added driving lights up front which I think help out but now I’m looking at even another set of driving lights and even a headlight modulator to dim the headlights. I always thought that this was a bit obnoxious but now I’m beginning to not care so much about that.
Even though it would not have helped in Harrys situation, take refresher courses. Getting better on your bike will greatly increase the ability to maneuver it allowing you to better control your bike in emergency situations. Parking lot practices are great! MSF has some really great instructional products you can purchase and put together classes. Also check with your state’s DMV to see what they have to offer. We’ve had instructors come out to the local DMV course and show us what to practice and how to run through their parking lot course so we could teach ourselves. Do anything to teach yourself more about the bike you ride and how to ride it.
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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