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Here's The Motorcycle Touring Made Easy eZine - for February 2009
March 07, 2009

Motorcycle Touring Made Easy

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

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!

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Knowing the Basics - General Motorcycling
Spring is making an attempt at a comeback with more and more bikes getting out on the road. At some point in time you or a friend may get the itch to either buy your first bike or upgrade to a bigger bike. And with the economy going the way it is, you just might be more inclined to do so just to save some money.

So, let's talk about bikes in general. I think most people think that a motorcycle would be difficult to handle. Well maybe for the first few traffic lights or so, but I have found that once you pick up the "feel" of the bike you should not have any problems.

Most people I have talked with after purchasing a bike have rather quickly wanted a bigger bike. Here are some of the reasons for that.
  • Smaller bikes make riders feel more vulnerable in traffic
  • A bigger bike runs smoother and will let you ride longer
  • There are more places to store your gear on a bigger bike
  • Bigger bikes are more easily seen on the road
There are other reasons but most feel that these are the most important.

So don't feel that a bigger bike would be a bad thing. Heck we have more miles on our bike then we do on any of our cars purchased around the same time.

For more on big bikes see our January Issue on our back issue page.

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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
Okay, so I have recently been forked!! As most Goldwingers know the GL1800 forks could have been done better and after two blown seals and a late night stop at a Honda Dealer with my wallet out it was time to replace them. We'll go into more detail about that later as right now my bike is all over the garage.

What I would like to go over though is something that I found in the process of working on my forks and that's broken plastic. As technology advances we find more and more plastics coming into play. And with the economy being tight you will find plastics being used more and more to lighten the load without lightening your wallet. So what can we do when they become damaged?

Well I have a 6" fender extension mounted on my front fender. And while removing it to swap out my forks I noticed that there were numerous cracks in the plastic around the mounting holes. After a bit of research we found a simple way to repair the plastic without having to go out for expensive replacement parts.

So we sat down last night and put together a quick procedure and posted on our website since the details are a bit beyond our eZine. You can read the full article and make any repairs you need on your bike for less than $10.00

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Our View On Parts - Product Review
This month is all about the BUTT. Our stock seat wore out at about 45,000 miles. We had a long ride coming up and the last thing I wanted to do was to spend a week and a half on what felt like a split rail fence.

We did some quick checking around and decided that we would upgrade to a custom seat made with leather and fabric. We had heard a lot of good things about Diamond Seats so we figured we would give them a try.

We called them up and talked with them over the phone. We were greeted by pleasant staff members at every call. They sent us a packet of swatches to look at and match to the colors of our bike so that we knew what we would be getting.

Once we had our colors we had to give up all the vitals statistics as to weight, height, inseam etc. and they went to work. In a few weeks (two weeks before our trip) we had our seat. The seat was really firm and we thought that it would be rough on the back side, but after a quick call we were reassured that it would be fine and that we would really need about 3000 miles of riding on it before it was considered "broken in".

One other adjustment we made before we left (and thing is for you Goldwingers). We found that the stock passenger backrest has such a huge lumbar pad in it that Judy was not only a bit crowded with my new backrest in front of her, but she was always sitting straight up and not leaning back due to the backrest. So another quick call to Diamond and they provided us with a backrest that was straighter and gave Judy an additional inch and a half of room.

So with all that going for us, we headed out on out trip, 2800 miles through all the New England states. At the end of the ride we were sure that our new seat was "broken in" and Judy's remark when we pulled into our driveway? "I'm ready to go again!"

Needless to say we have put another 40,000 miles on this seat and it's still going strong. We should certainly be able to put another 20,000 miles on it before even considering having to replace or repair the seat. If it comes to that, I will be going right back to Diamond Seat and having the work done there. Check them out online at www.diamondseats.com

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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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