billgreenman1

I was either smart or lucky (or both) and, through the advice of other riders, went through the ABATE riders course, which also passed me for the riding portion of the motorcycle license testing. 250cc bikes in a parking lot over two weekends in beautiful Bloomington Indiana. Upon graduation we slalomed the columns of the IU football stadium. My first bike was an '81 BMW R65, a good size for me, not too powerful but not a slouch either. Learning to ride in the hills of southern Indiana was a wonderful thing, and even 35+ years later, I can hear my instructors voices in my head:"Smooth on the throttle progressive on the brakes, LOOK THROUGH THE TURN!" I always advise the rider course to anyone who is interested in riding.

Yep. Had a 122 2-door I should have kept and drove all the 140 series. Two things I truly miss are the size of the doors and the seats. Made for "normal sized" people like me!😁

Grew up driving Volvos. My dad taught my brother and me to drive manual transmission by putting a pack of cigarettes on the dash and making us start on a hill without knocking down the cigs. Ist car: 1962 Volvo PV 544. Still have dreams of driving her..

I'm interested, but I also have some trepidation about another "project" I might never complete...

A little straying from the conversation, but it is-3F right now and I walk into my local watering hole (they see me in the summer on my bike not drinking),and they ask "are you on the bike tonight?" And attempt at humor I'm sure, but after 14 bazillionth time I'm like; "Yep ".

If "a picture is worth a thousand words", then we "sinners" are way ahead!🙃

Yep I put it together wrong once also, thinking "what is wrong?" Then feeling both silly and victorious once it went together properly. The rear fender also was a bit of a struggle too.

Straying slightly from the topic, I recall from some kind of click-bait, that overall, sales and registration of motorcycles in the U.S. have declined & there are fewer new riders coming up from "the youths". Even considering the shaky economy and the deadly increase of mindless 4-wheel cages on the roads, there seems to me less interest in motorcycles and riding and it even felt that way strolling into dealerships. I know that I'm probably not their target demo, but even observing other customers I didn't get that vibe of adventure romance and excitement that existed even 5 or 6 years ago. Maybe it is just me getting older and more cynical, but I feel like motorcycling and even motor sports in general really are on the path to eventual extinction, soon to be seen more in videos, game simulations, and glam commercials than in real life. "The kids riding in Mom's 'Musk-blob' hear a growl outside their windows. Looking up from their screens they see a man dressed kinda like an astronaut filtering by on a vibrating 2 wheeled beast. One asks 'What's that Mommy?' She just sighs 'The past'. The others don't even look up, their eyes locked up in their games. The auto pilot clicks and moves on..."

Not going to watch the video, but I'm kinda surprised about the Kawi. That model seemed stupidity overpriced in my neck of the woods (Indiana), and they didn't seem to budge until the season was over...Same thing with its bigger sister. Could have scored a BMW F900R for 2k less....

Beautiful machines and I'm reminiscing about the glorious sounds i heard them making at the vintage events at Mid-Ohio some decades back. Always and forever out of my range...

If Jaguar is "going back to its roots", will that include Sopwith" (their 1st carriage frame factory), maker of Snoopy's famous Camel and the infamous Snipe?

Virtue signaling is more important than reality for many. I've heard that in the UK critical comments on social media can get one in trouble. Not just "hate speech" from the reprehensible morons that spew it, but also one of the oldest English traditions: sarcastic humor! Oh well, sunshine and lollipops; we all end up loving Big Brother in the end. Enough of my silly rant.

Looks more like a perfume commercial than a car ad. And in true "post-truth" 21st century projection fakery "copy nothing" is definitely a copy of--well, something. Hope that they have some plastic laid out when they "break the mould" because I imagine that the excrement will run everywhere. Pretty sure that sledge hammer was styrofoam anyway. Best of luck with a re-brand of a car that was often bought through a sense of nostalgia attempting to sell to an audience stuck in a video.

The romance vs. the reality. I don't even want to imagine how much it will cost. It would have to be really really good, and with all the other iterations in the recent past, I'm kinda having flashbacks to seeing the stuffed "Trigger" at the Roy Rogers museum...

Yep, great food at Bonge's. I've ridden by, but the times I've eaten there ( a long time ago), cars were necessary to drag our bloated carcasses home. I used to work with Tony, the original (reconstruction) owner and chef. Tailgating is encouraged!

From all the stories I've heard, I kinda feel lucky that I got to do the backpack/railpass/hostel thing in Europe in the 80s back when I was just a 20 year old jackalope. My college roommate and I traveled in the fall and hardly had any crowd problems that I can remember. The wall hadn't come down yet, so Berlin was a little creepy, and Geneva was tight because Ronnie Reagan was meeting Gorbachev, but most everything else was fairly relaxed. Even Neuschwanstein was a walk up thing, and there was enough room that I could have stashed some of my own stolen art there, had I been carrying any of my niece's finger paintings!

The red does kinda look cool though the little sight window 🙃😜🤞

As much as I love looking at BaT, it often seems like a hugely inflated "price tag justification" network. Sour grapes aside, I suppose that if you want to get your best payoff, this is the place to go. With motorcycles, it seems slightly less of a gouge, and sometimes I see a true auction win; (love out to "ultramotorsource" always fun to see what they find and flip). My brother is only into cars and guys in his club have even speculated some money laundering as a running joke. For me, I think I'm in the majority; guys that want to look at pictures and daydream. I've bid twice, one time losing by only $100, and was more terrified than excited watching the timer count down...

Got to see it here in Indiana. Made my life problems seem insignificant for a few minutes...

Alternative tuning? How about Richard Thompson...

+1 on the RE 650's bang for the buck I really like my 350 classic (& will not likely part with it) but a few extra horses would be nice to have out of town. With the Meteor and the new Shotgun it looks like they can make quite a few riders happy...

I'm gonna imagine that they keep trying to get the balance of "gelande" and "strasse" satisfactory for the majority of their customers. Soon, for me they will have to include a wheelchair ramp or a booster of some sort. And I know; I spent 8 years and 90k mi. trying to kill a '95 GS which still lies nearly dead in my garage...

+1 on preferring the narrower tire. To me it almost makes the bike feel lighter and I don't think I've ever gone so hard as to think that it needs "more skin" out back...

I've been fairly lucky with Harper's in the past, and if they didn't have something they would let me know within a week. I think we're lucky to even have a Guzzi retro part store at all...

Good thing the marketing department rejected the moniker of "wet market pangolin" for the sidecar-free version....