Streetfighter Reveal

Stopped by the Ducati Superstore tonight to see the unveiling of the new Streetfighter.

They did a stellar job and even started the bike. This is why this is the shop to visit folks. Can't wait to try this bike out on the street!

Just Trying to be Recognized!

I am beginning to believe that their is no such thing as too much light on a motorcycle. For that reason and the the fact that I had light mounts on my bike that I'll no longer be using for the PIAA 910's I decided to try something different.

What you see here are what you would typically see mounted on the police light mounts of a ST1300, Whelen TIR3 strobes. The only difference is that instead of red and blue, which would certainly get me pulled over, I am using amber to double as turn lights, fog lights and possibly signal strobes.

I'll be integrating a few lights into the rear as well, but right off the bat I am happy with my decision and they actually do quite well lighting up the road ahead.

Since I already have the police switch mounted these will be easy to control, the fun part will be the integration or adaptation of these light to work both with the factory turn signals and independently.

Stay tuned for the final wiring and usability on my bike.

Follow Birdman on Twitter

Hmm, this should have been an obvious connection some time ago??

Well, thanks to technology and the ability to rss feed to Twitter you can now follow The Birdman Blog and the occasional Tweet os Twitter by following Birdman_H54.

URL is here - http://twitter.com/Birdman_H54

See ya soon!

Read More - Ride More

Well yes, this is a book about motorcycle riding, but in reality this is a post simply about reading in general and how it affects your ability to ride with better attention and perception.

Most people follow the logic of how reading a book about how to ride a motorcycle will help them ride better, but talk about reading in general and you'll get glazed looks.

Back in college I learned how reading helped my sight reading skills when it came to orchestra and other musical groups, but not until later did I find out why. It seems that conditioning your eyes to look ahead and scan while your mind comprehends what it is seeing and interprets the information not only works for a typed page but directly translates to anything else that requires a visual input to be identified, cataloged and then interpreted.

Written prose can be broken down into identifiable patterns, once those patterns are learned the mind will instanly identify that pattern in the future and predetermine an action or response. The more simular patterns are observed (or read) that have small fluctuations the better, as the mind gets better at anticipation and reaction. Whether the mind sees a phrase about what happened today in your city, or a car on the edge of the road ready to move, the more you use you visual to mental bridge the better your mind reasons.

And we all should understand that better reasoning skills applied to everyday roadway situations will yield more safety, as faster reasoning skills means more time to interpret and time and space are a motorcyclist most valuable resource.

There have been several studies regarding reading and its benefits, read up on them and you'll not only have better insight in the topic, but you'll get the added benefit the reading brings as well.

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/elementary/?article=whateffectreadinghasonourminds

The next time someone asks what your reading, tell them you just practicing your skills.

Sometimes We Just Need to RIDE!

Yeah, cones on a stick.....it is a metaphor to remind everyone that sometimes we should leave critical evauluation, training and testing our skills at home. Go out and simply ride completely within our limits.

I was sitting at breakfast this morning with a new friend of mine and the issue of riding with someone that had to always evaluate skills and turn every ride into a lesson came up. The comment was made that it just wasn't fun and sometimes just riding should be the goal. It actually stuck a nerve and I decided I might explore that comment in a written perspective just to first ground myself with the statement and to share it with others as well.

Let me go first in the fact that it just might be possible that I can fall into this category for some people. I know that I don't ride every ride as a lesson and when I ride alone or with others that I ride with a lot I don't tend to worry about it or even take inventory of things that could be better. But, throw me into a larger group with new individuals and one based off of the site I maintain and I do turn on certain parts of my "coaching" brain. Since I've completed my MSF RiderCoach training I have seriously learned the lesson of what over-coaching can do, so I do know I've backed off a bit in that respect, but introspection is always a good thing, yes?

That being said when on a group ride we all need to be aware of what the limit for the group should be and then not force others into the role of being a coach or offering advice by not pushing that limit. The vast majority of crashes on group rides comes from inattention or an attitude that the limit isn't being pushed, in reality when the incident is reviewed the reduction of speed would have always allowed more time and space to have avoided the situation (of course there are always plenty of more variable, but nothing can be controlled more by a rider than speed.) The burden of reduced speed should not always be placed on the actual rider who crashed or even the newest rider, when we enter into a group ride we all need to back things down to a common denominator. On SouthWestRides.com we always support the "Leave No Rider Behind" philosophy, that put simply means that others will always wait up and not force a rider to keep up, but in reality all riders need to balance their skills with the people they are riding with and not get near pushing their own limits. Sometimes that means a reduction of riding to 2/10ths of ones ability. I've been there on a group ride and even then still needed to wait up for another rider.

As with anything in life a balance needs to be achieved, but only if all riders in the group enter into a shared responsibility for all riders will safety become a priority without any individuals being forced into playing the role of "coach." Trust me when I say that being a coach all the time isn't fun, just as being coached all the time obviously isn't fun.

So, next time you feel the need to push yourself to learn, do it by yourself, or with someone with whom you want to be coached.

But, when you head out for a group ride with new individuals make sure everyone is on the same page in regards to pacing, top speed, stops and destinations so that no one has to coached or be a coach. After all, shouldn't rides be fun for everyone?

The Heat is On!

Well, there it is! The first 100 degree day of the year, and even though the forecast is not calling for more of them soon, we all know what is coming.

Well, all of us who have lived in the Valley of The Sun for more than a few years that is...

This year will be just as brutal as years past, but this year I'll be hosting a Hydration and Nutrition Clinic at my garage to help riders better deal with the heat. As the name implies I'll have a guest speaker who will address Hydration at the scientific level and then also we'll be talking about how gear can aid in dealing with the heat much better.

Look at swrides.com for more details soon and make sure to save the date when it is announced.

Arizona Bike Week - 2009

Today brings to a close a week of rides, festivities and events that are marketed as Arizona Bike Week by FX Promotions Inc. all centered around the valley and with their main focus being at WestWorld in the form of an Expo called Cyclefest.

Now as far as Bike Week on the whole, we as a valley don't really need it as year round we have great weather, great rides and even great events, so the real focus is the Cyclefest and what it does exactly for us as riders.

Above is a photo taken at 2:30 pm on Friday in the midway of the Cyclefest event...notice anything? I mean beside that fact that there are no people!?!

Forget the thing about people for a second and let's focus on just two items. One is the absence of motorcycles and the other is the primary sponsor of Cyclefest......yes, Jagermeister.

The first is actually the most surprising to me, the fact that an event called Cyclefest would not have a way for people to display and show off their motorcycles?!? I mean heck, I am pretty sure they could even make a little more if they sold passes to include riding your bike in the area. Now before I get some excited comments from the promoters of this event I am sure that WestWorld has limitations, but I do remember just a few months ago the place being full of cars moving around, yes?

Hold on, I actually know the real problem.

OK OK forget that as well, because once we focus on the real issue everything begins to become clear.

The real issue is a large bus sitting there on the right of the photo. It belongs to the primary sponsor of Cyclefest. Yes, Jagermeister is the key sponsor of Arizona's Bike Week and the Cyclefest specifically, good choice right? I mean since alcohol is the #1 killer of riders I guess they should pay for the show....(Um, yeah I didn't think so either.) of course since they need to sell alcohol at the event, you can't exactly have people riding their vehicles around, can you? Thus, no bikes in the Cyclefest.

I would think that if the show was centered on motorcycles and riding in Arizona the sponsors would be be either motorcycle related or heck even hydration centered, not something that leads to the deaths of motorcyclists directly.

So, let's back up and consider what this event is really about. Specifically for motorcyclist there were demo rides and I even got reports that sport bikes were available. That's a good thing. As far as vendors there were a lot of t-shirt, chaps and head accessories, but beyond non-DOT half helmets I didn't see a single helmet vendor. Also there were a good amount of other companies represented, even some in the sportbike realm, not a lot but look folks the vendor availability wasn't low.

So, what's wrong with this show?

Nothing, if you understand what the show really is all about.

Arizona Bike Week and Cyclefest is a 5-day concert series with a motorcycle cruiser theme!

Yup that's it folks, it isn't Daytona Bike Week, it isn't Sturgis, heck it isn't even a real rally. It is simply a decently put together Country Thunder for the cruiser crowd.

If you're a vendor and you were standing around wondering where all the riders or people were, they didn't show until later for the concert, so figure out a way to integrate into that or do something off-site during the days of ABW to drive traffic to your location specifically.

So, the next time you get upset about what ABW does or doesn't have just understand that $20 gets you into one concert and $38 gets you into 5 days of concerts and it should all make sense. Everything else that happens at WestWorld and is advertised around the Arizona Bike Week moniker is just additional marketing and money for the promoters.

Make sense now?

I'm not going to worry about it, or even try to change it...I'm just gonna ride!