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I haven’t been thinking of motorcycles much lately. The wife and I just had our first child. Kari was born on July 21st and measures in at 8 lbs and 21 inches. Both mother and daughter are happy and healthy.

But now my initial shock and amazement has subsided, so my thoughts have again drifted back to the fun we all have with two wheels. In particular, I have some thoughts regarding the very wet MotoGP race that took place at Donington Park.

1. Of the 21 riders that started the race, only 11 riders finished and received points. Well, the points system in MotoGP awards points to the top 15 finishers. (25, 20, 16, 13, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5,

As I was browsing around today I came across this find over at the kneeslider.com. I’m not going to rip his article off, so here it is:

Want your own 50th anniversary edition of the Yamaha MotoGP bike? Yamaha will give you one, sort of, at the Yamaha papercraft site. You can download a paper foldup model and build it yourself. Want a V-Max or an R1? You can have one. These look very cool. You might figure those folks from the land of origami might come up with something like this. You need the free Adobe Acrobat reader to open the files. They come in either white or color versions and there are many pages of

As I mentioned earlier, I don’t have all the answers. In fact, I haven’t followed a lot of my own suggestions because it takes a little time planning up front. I assure you that simply making copies of maps and cell phone numbers takes a lot less time then trying to find a person split from the group…ask me how I know!

Advice is always tough to author up because it tends to come across as preachy. That is not my style or the intent. I’ve listed all the rules below so that they can be easily read together. Please understand that the term “rule” is a figure of speech. There are no ‘rules’, outside

If you’ve decided to follow some of my suggestions by surrounding yourself with Humble and Smart riders, provided everyone with maps and cell phone numbers (for multi-day road trips), and ensure that everyone rides at their own pace, you’ve eliminated a great deal of the obstacles to having a fun and safe ride. I don’t have all the answers, but I have taken probably twenty or so multi-day road trips ranging from alone up to fourteen riders. Every time I ride in a group, I learn something new. Equally important as the good. is noting those things that didn’t work.

In a group ride, there are really only two options: Lead or Follow. It

There is a great article over at micapeak.com called Pace Yourself often referred to as “The Pace”, written by by Nick Ienatsch, June 1993 for Sport Rider Magazine. As the title suggests, its about keeping the pace on the street. I think its a great start, but I want to take a different approach as I think its too generic in a sense.

Everyone in a group needs to ride their own ride at their own pace. If that’s unacceptable, its time to find a new group. Instead of “The Pace”, people should ride at their own pace: MY PACE (say it with me…MY PACE). Yeah, its a little more soft science than

Riding motorcycles in a group is one of the best ways to experience the sport. The uniqueness is that while riding is a solo sport and everyone rides their own machine, a group hits the same roads and often ends up with the common bond that team sports require. While I do ride alone at times (especially in the dirt), nothing is more enjoyable then shredding some rubber and sharing the moment with buddies.

I have had great experiences with group rides and as well as logistical nightmares. In my opinion, there are two main questions to answer: What’s the duration of the ride? What are the knowns versus unknowns? Let me explain:

What’s the duration

This is Part 1 of a series dedicated to dissecting “Group Riding” with the emphasis being on sport bikes and sport riding. Please note that I am (now) sensitive to the growing female rider population and when I use “him”, “his”, or “guy” only, it is solely because I suck at typing. Please consider those terms not gender specific.

To kick off this series on Group Riding, I figure it makes sense to start with the most important: Choosing Your Riders. I use the word CHOOSE purposely because there should be a conscious choice made for the group you ride along side. In that are two key characteristics I look for when I choose

…Or how I came to feel that you don’t need to be annoying to be safe.

This is a response post to “Big Ben’s” comments to my loud pipes do not save lives rant.

So lets look at the truth about loud pipes and what help they might have on rider safety.

1. Pipes point out to the rear (in 99.9% of motorcycles, except for a few choppers made my OCC, but I digress), and as such most of the noise goes rearwards. So in my informal study of loud motorcycles, in general it is the people behind you that are hearing you.
- Unfortunately, the fact is that the Hurt report shows 76.8% of all accident hazards are straight ahead of

Overall I had an incredible time on this trip. There were really three parts: Riding to Monterey, The Races, and Riding Back. I absolutely have no complaints about the races, but wow were some of the riding issues hard on the head…mostly caused by folks that I brought including me.

We had a group of about 14 riders in total and the logistics were tough to manage. Yeah thats a lot, but proper planning on my part could have improved many of the FUBARS. I’ve had a ton of time to think about how I would do this again, just coming off a 1300 mile drive for work. That, and being one who

Over the years, I have ragged on California…hard. It’s the France of the US. I say that in jest really. Its almost a national pastime for the two countries to hack on each other, knowing that for the most part its not the citizenry, but the extremely different forms of government. Until the recall, Kalifornia was more of the ‘People’s Republic’ versus a state within a Republic.

I have spent ten or so days of the past two weeks in California for both vacation (one week trip surrounding MotoGP) and a business trip collecting vehicle data. I have paid much more attention these past two trips on what California has to offer versus what Kalifornia stands