Loaner bikes from experienced rider course

I found an old flash card from my old camera. It has some digital pictures of the loaner bikes from the ABATE experienced rider course I took. I thought I'd post them for kicks.

This a a Honda Nighthawk 250. This is what I used. It was actually a cool little bike:


They also had a 250cc cruiser - I think it was a Honda Rebel:


And some Yamaha 230-ish CC dual sport:

I definitely think the Nighthawk was the coolest, but I *can* see the appeal of the dual sport - especially for someone who actually ends up riding offroad.

Winter biking blues

It's been a brutal winter. I've lived here for six years, and I've never seen it like this. Piles of snow that stick around and slowly become dirtier and dirtier snirt. The temperatures are pretty warm - for the planet Mars.

I can ride my bicycle the six miles to work in 40 degree weather in shorts, a T-shirt, and a windbreaker with no gloves and still get sweaty. If I ride my motorcycle to work in 40-degree weather in thick jeans, boots, a sweater, leather jacket, scarf, full-face helmet, and super-warm ski gloves, I am numb with the cold and have blurred vision by the time I arrive.

It has felt warm when a day's highs reach the 40s this winter. There haven't been many mornings where the temperature has even been close to 40 and there hasn't been ice all over the roads.

So, except for a weekend blast to a gas station to top up the tank, mix in some fuel stabilizer, and burn out the gas in the carbs, my motorcycle has been sitting dormant.

For a while I was thinking that it would be cool to make my motorcycle more cafe-racer-esque - replace the pegs with rearsets, replace the tear-drop tank with one that was more loaf-like, and put a sleeker seat on it. I got a tank from something like an RD400 from a guy in Denver from craigslist for $20.




I had to pound dents in the frame tunnel to clear the coils for it to fit, but once it was mounted it looked kind of lame. I don't know if I'll end up actually using it.

I also got some rearsets from a Maxim/Seca that should work for $20, on Ebay:




I haven't made up mounting brackets for them, but it doesn't seem like it would be very hard. I think it would be fun to try these out sometime. They're not very extreme. I'm not sure when I'll get motivated to actually do it, though.