[Clay Dowling]

They cowboy up or they sell the bike. Besides, who gets nervous about corners and turns? Those are the fun bits.

[Clay Dowling]

Doesn’t even need to be very pretty. Because you’re gonna drop it. Everyone here has.

A friend keeps a Yamaha xs400 around just for the purpose of teaching new riders. It’s been dropped a lot, gas tank is banged up and the speedometer is entirely optional. Doesn’t work a lot of the time. But it runs well and is easy to manage, so it’s what he taught his daughters and his wife to ride on.

[Clay Dowling]

I find that the flashing lights in my mirrors alert me to the presence of radar.

Reality: the roads I ride, they’re either too busy to speed, or so remote that the cops don’t go there.

That said, a friend of mine got nailed doing 90 on the back road I usually take to work.

[Clay Dowling]

is slightly cheaper.

Helmet: $128
Pants: $179
Jacket: $230
Gloves: $53

for a total of $590

I’m wearing boots I already had, which were cheap but very sturdy. I’ll probably buy a pair of proper riding boots at some point though, which will run me up to $750 or so.

[Clay Dowling]

carry full tool sets. For the price of their bikes, they should be providing nice tools too, nothing that resembles stamped sheet metal. And on older HDs, those tools were a practical necessity. Spare parts weren’t a bad idea either.

[Clay Dowling]

You can probably forgo the SAE wrenches. They’re called metric bikes for a reason.

[Clay Dowling]

I haven’t been riding with them, but this season I’m gonna start. I hadn’t thought about the noise fatigue, but yes, I do feel it. Of course, I have to wait until my morning commute won’t be right around sunrise. The pesky deer are on the move then, and there have been a lot more deer hits lately. I can even claim one of them for myself (in the cage).

[Clay Dowling]

Apparently girl money is pink or something, and not worth as much.

One of the neat little things I found out was that motorcycles and diesel engines take the same oil. Shell’s Rotella 15w40 oil is a perfect match for what Honda recommends for my bike and my riding conditions, and it’s available anywhere. Purolator makes an oil filter that’s also good for my bike, which I can pick up at any auto parts store. Since Rotella is also popular for large diesel engines, Tractor Supply Co carries it, and they seem to have the best price.

Send your money where you don’t have to deal with jerks. The smart salesman courts the minority customer (which I suspect women riders are). It’s a ridiculously small amount of effort to get a good payoff, because chances are if you go to a place where they don’t act like girls can’t use their products, you’ll spread word to other women riders you know.

[Clay Dowling]

Talked with a friend who convinced me to buy the Magna, he says there is a toolkit if I take off the right side cover. I’ll have to investigate. I suspect that I’ll still want to provide my own decent wrenches. Cheap wrenches are evil.

[Clay Dowling]

I’m pretty sure I would have been all over that blue rebel. Nice looking bike in blue. Folks might laugh at me, but I’ll be laughing as I drive by them at the gas pump.

For that matter, the rebel rider would be laughing at me, since magnas are not known for their ability to pass gas pumps. Good fuel efficiency, but tiny gas tank.

[Clay Dowling]

On my bike you’re expected to provide your own tools. Experience has shown that the following are most useful:

10mm wrench
12mm wrench
17mm wrench

A pair of needle-nose pliers is never out of place in any tool kit, so might make a nice addition.

[Clay Dowling]

I definitely like having mine. I’ve had one zero-speed drop, when I stalled the bike in a U-turn. The crash bars kept my chrome off the pavement, and my bike makes Elwood’s bike look light on the chrome.

[Clay Dowling]

Motorcycle engines are really easy to work on. Everything is nice and exposed. The only trick is to make sure you get a shallow drain pan to catch the oil. My bike, at least, sits fairly low to the ground and getting my drain pan under there wasn’t possible. I tried a bit of jury-rigging to direct the oil from the drain plug to the pan while the bike was up on my jack, but 15w40 oil doesn’t flow very fast, and it quickly overflowed my funnel. Made a hell of a mess and took a lot of kitty litter to clean up.

If you get a properly sized pan though, super easy to do by yourself. Do keep in mind that a filter wrench properly sized for your car might be too big for a motorcycle filter. Mine is just barely small enough, and I’ll probably grab a smaller wrench before the next change.

[Clay Dowling]

They did a cool mythbuster’s episode testing the whole red thing. Bull didn’t gave a rat’s posterior about red. Move in his territory though, and he cared a lot. But the bull was indifferent to a person standing still completely covered in red.

Although the whole “buffalo country” thing might be in dispute too. Yeah, we have them, but only because they wandered off a farm.

[Clay Dowling]

I’ve always been a little worried about my helmet, because I’m wearing a XXL, but per the video I have the right size. It pushed my cheeks in slightly, and there’s no risk of getting my fingers between my head and the helmet. Even my balaclava is a tight fit and gives me a headache after about an hour.

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