Studio711.com – Ben Martens

If you live in the Seattle area, it’s probably not too hard to figure out that I love my motorcycle. I’ve been riding it every time I get the chance, and thanks to our incredible weather, I’ve had a lot of chances. Numbers always help to draw comparisons though. I had my first motorcycle for four years and I put 10,000 miles on it. The brainiacs among you will realize that I averaged 2500 miles/year. I bought this new bike in mid-Feburary. The odometer already reads 2700 miles and we’re not even halfway through the calendar year!

I found myself with a relatively free Saturday morning. It was such a gorgeous day that it would have been a crime to sit on the couch. I fired up the bike and left the house at about 8:15AM.

My ride took me up north on 203, east on 2, south on 97, and west on 90 for a 240 mile loop. Along the way I flew through Stevens, Blewett, Stampede and Snoqualmie passes. I’ve done this ride once before on the old bike but in the opposite direction. I love seeing how quickly the scenery changes as you head over the mountains. The west side is very lush and green. The east side is more brown and dry. The tops of the passes still have five or six feet of snow in places. On Saturday it was between 75-80 for the whole ride which is just about perfect.

This was the first long ride I have taken with the new bike. While I did need to make a stop every 60-75 miles to stretch, I think I could handle a 400 mile day which is good because I’d like to tackle the Cascade Loop this year.

Here’s a little tip if you make the same ride, skip downtown Monroe and look for Ben Howard Rd. It’s a beautiful ride! Tyla and I found it while trying to avoid some traffic. It’s longer when there is no traffic, but it’s worth a few extra minutes for a lot of extra smiles.

There are four photos in the gallery. I snapped them about 10 miles west of Leavenworth along the Wenatchee River. All the rivers are very full with all the melting snow and this one was no exception.

I was back home by 12:30. For the rest of the day I kept reminding myself of the things I had already seen that day!

I have completed my first upgrades to the bike (other than the ones the dealer installed.) I’m a big guy so the default setup is a bit tight for me. Over long distances I start to feel it in my back and knees. I ordered a peg lowering kit and handlebar risers from MotorcycleLarry.com. Two thumbs up for Larry. The products arrived very quickly and the instructions were decent.

The riser blocks were first for me. It was fairly nervewracking to pull the handlebars off my bike. I’m a keyboard jockey, not a mechanic. My Lego skills kicked in and I was able to follow the instructions and get everything assembled. The risers are the maximum change you can make without replacing the clutch, brake, and throttle lines.

Last night I started and completed the peg lowers. This one has a bit of a negative impact as it means I’ll drag my pegs with less of a lean angle, but I’m not a super aggressive rider so I’m willing to trade that for a lot more comfort. I was able to adjust the clutch pedal low enough to work with the lowered peg on the left side. The right side brake pedal is a bit more complicated. There was a brake pedal recall, and the new piece makes it pretty hard to get to the adjustment nuts for the pedal height. The directions didn’t cover that change. I decided to leave the pedal where it is. I don’t use the rear brake much (most braking on a motorcycle should be done with the front brakes), and when I do use it, I’m used to lifting my foot off the peg to hit the brake due to the size and angle of my feet. Also, I was a bit nervous about taking that much of the bike apart to make the adjustment. I can always do that later if I can’t get used to this.

I took a test ride and it’s incredible how much of a difference those couple inches make. It doesn’t look like much, but this is really going to extend my comfortable riding range.

The next item on the list is a communication system for Tyla and me that will allow us to listen to music and chat. It’s a bit pricey though so I’m still trying to work it into the budget.

One hour of a motorcycle mechanic’s time costs about $80. Coincidentally, that’s how much this set of nine maintenance DVDs costs. They arrived in my mailbox this week and I already feel more confident in doing some of these basic tasks. Doing maintenance on a motorcycle always makes me a bit nervous since there isn’t much room for error, but having these videos to show me the way helps a lot. Oh, and as the site says, these are for entertainment only. Right. They aren’t professionally produced by any means, but they do the job.

Here are some of the topics these videos cover:

• Oil change
• Front/rear tire removal and replacement
• Gas tank removal
• Valve adjustment
• Removing the fairings.
• Coolant change
• Brake/clutch fluid change
• Brake pad replacement
• Fork oil change

This actually seems like a great business idea. You could sell these for all the most popular cars and motorcycles.

I’m still working through the break-in period on my bike. I’m at about 750 miles of the 1000 mile period so I’m getting into the more fun range but I still can’t really let it go. It boggles the mind to wonder what kind of speed is available in those upper RPM ranges.

I have a hard time communicating to people what it feels like to be on a bike like this. Tyla gets a peek at it when she rides on the back, but I’ll never really push it with her on the bike. It’s hard to find the normal car test performance numbers for a motorcycle because motorcycles don’t get reviewed that way. Someone finally pointed me to the December 2007 motorcycle consumer news review on the bike. Now this is the 2008 model, but it’s almost a carbon copy of my bike minus a couple small tweaks.

0-60:  3.01sec
0-100: 6.79sec
1/4 mile: [email protected]
60-0:  121.9′

To put that in perspective, this list shows the fastest production car quarter mile times. This bike falls sixth on that list. Now I know there is a big difference between a car and a motorcycle, but I think it’s worth noting that if my bike (which lists for $14,299) raced a $650,000 Enzo Ferrari (pictured) in the quarter mile, I’d win by almost half a second. And for those of you that rode in my Mustang, that car was 30% slower through the quarter mile than this bike. And for 0-60 times? You almost can’t beat 3 seconds. My Mustang was around 5.5 seconds. This site would put my bike third on the list of all production cars.

Get on the highway and you can break the speed on the interstate in first gear. Second gear puts you over 100, and you still have four more gears to go through. So while it might look a little deceptive with the bags on it, I’ll probably never meet a car on the road that is faster than me (and not many bikes are either.) It also seems likely to me that I’ll never actually experience those listed speeds since I don’t have a death wish (or money to pay for the ticket/jail time.)

Like I said when I borrowed Simeon’s bike, I’m glad that I have the opportunity to ride a bike like this. Now I can be resolute in forbidding any of my offspring from owning anything similar until they’re out of college.

I promise the motorcycle posts will slow down once the rain returns, but the sunny days and shiny new bike in my garage have been dominating most of my thoughts lately. This past weekend I put a little over 250 miles on the bike with various rides. Tyla and I had our first adventure on the bike when we headed into Ballard to see Matt and Laura and then ran up to Everett and back down Highway 9.

I’m still in love with the bike, and I’m itching to get through the break-in period. For the first 500 miles I have to keep it under 4000 rpm, and then I can take it up to 6000rpm until I hit 1000 miles. After that I’m free to run it as hard as I want (redline around 11,000!)

I have a list on my computer of things I want to add to the bike and it is growing longer by the day. Here’s what I have so far in approximate order of priority from greatest to least:

• Saddlebag surface shields (already ordered)
• Tank surface shield
• Center stand dolly
• Handlebar risers
• Foot peg lowering kit
• Helmet lock kit 
• Two Brother’s slip on exhaust
• Maintenance videos

I’m doing pretty well at holding off on the purchases as the priorities of various items rise and fall in these first days.

I did get some new photos, but only one that I really want to share. I pulled over to the side of the road to shoot some photos, and when I lined up the shot below, I noticed a hawk on the fence post behind my bike! Unfortunately I only got a couple shots before he flew off, but this one turned out pretty well.