Learning to Ride, all over again...

One of the things you need to be capable of doing, is to be able to pick up the motorcycle you are riding. It has been a long time since I have had to do that, as I made sure I could always ride well enough on the current motorcycle I had, so that I could stay UP on the bike.

But, with Adventure Touring, you have to assume that you will be offroad much more and that will put you into more precarious situations.

So, I went online, and watched some videos of some very small people, picking up some very large motorcycles. I took their lead and learned how.

First, I took the saddle bags and trunk off, just in case this went very bad, and I dropped the bike. I did not want to damage them. But also, the bags would keep the back of the bike at less of an angle so it would be an unfair advantage. I also did this on the grass. Again, so it would have a softer landing if needed. The grass also had the advantage of being more slippy than either gravel or pavment. I wore my street shoes so that I would not have any advantage of my Sidi motorcycle boots.

So, here goes.

A New Motorcycle Direction

Last summer I went on trip and it became apparent to me that I had the wrong type of motorcycle. I was heading South out of Salmon Idaho, and riding towards Sun Valley via Hwy 75. It is a nice twisty piece of road, and although my cruiser was nice on a highway, I would have been more fun on a sport-type bike. At the top of the Galena Summit, close to 9,000 ft in elevation, I pulled into a view area, and when I got close to the edge to take a photo, I saw what appeared to be the old wagon road winding up the mountian pass from the valley bottom.

That was one more indication that I had the wrong bike. If I had an Adventure Tour bike, I would have driven back down the mountain to the valley bottom and came back up on the wagon road.

So I put my Road Star up for sale this spring and bought the bike below. It is a Buell Ulysses XB12XT. I will be making some modifications to it where it will fit my requirements much better, which will be a 90% highway tour bike and 10% off pavement.  I won't be doing any serious off road riding with it, as it is too heavy for that kind of work, but it will work on fire, logging and some dual track roads

I am going to ride it pretty much as you see it here this year, and then spend the winter converting it to what I need.