Motorcycle riding blues downside
Filed under: Disappointments, Politics, Stupidity plain and simple
Harley dealerships are starting to drop like flies. Santa Cruz. Wilwert in Debuque. And in Cranbrook, the authorized dealer there refused to finance a multi-million dollar hole-in-the-ground boutique to sell dog leashes, suspenders, doo-rags and t-shirts, thus the mother company declined to renew their franchise. That was a smart move on the part of the now-former franchise owners, given present economic times.
I’d say the more pressing problem is a lack of short term funding available for these dealerships to maintain access to cash flow. With sales down 60 to 70 per cent, cash flow is a dominating factor in a dealer’s viability. No cash flow, no business. Oh, and did you finance one of those fancy new boutiques to sell trinkets? You know, the ones the mother company forced you to build beside a major access point on a freeway or lose your franchise? Kiss that idea good-bye.
Second, I suspect that over the past ten to twelve years Harley’s aging market share took a lot of cash out of their homes to purchase those expensive toys and branded clothes because they wanted to look like a bunch of bad-ass boys. Well, it’s crunch time, folks, and with the housing market in the dumpster courtesy of the Bushco fools and their deregulation, you can kiss your motorcycle on the fender and wave goodbye when it’s repo’d.
I’m hoping the management at H-D still has a faint memory of their takeover of the troubled AMF brand in the early ’80s and has some idea of how to survive the current economic downturn. I’m not holding my breath, given that a new authorized dealership in Cranbrook has appeared in an appropriately shiny and new edifice, and is fully stocked with suspenders, doo-rags and dog leashes.
Good luck with that.
Mexico bullshit, the true grit way
Filed under: Baja, Long trips, On the road, Stupidity plain and simple
Author’s note: I tagged this with the Baja, but it’s about travel on mainland Mexico. Same dif, just a more diverse part of the country. And yes, I’ve ridden the mainland too — in fact, those very same roads that this guy whines and snivels about.
While I recognize the need for some to embellish their tales of motorcycle derring-do, it disappoints me greatly the length to which some will go to provide false and misleading information. Over the years I have ridden to Mexico many times, and have never encountered one problem. However, that’s not to say that there aren’t any.
For a most enjoyable read on wintering in Mexico, fast forward to this post.
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I’ve been reading about a bike trip some clown on a bagger took from Victoria, Canada to Mexico. It’s titled “Mexico Standoff”. Apparently this guy had been planning his ride to Ixtapa for years, but when he finally started his online research, everyone he contacted cautioned him against making the trip by motorcycle “with a lot of negative and scary reports”.
Oh mommy, don’t make me go.
By the third picture of his motorcycle, and the eighth paragraph of his sad tale, somewhere by Ely, Nevada, he’s complaining about strong wind threatening to throw him off of “his steed”, and rain showers. You pussy. Why not take the opportunity to vist one of the whorehouses in Ely — say, the Stardust — and relax with a beer while talking up the girls? You don’t have to sample the wares; you can just sit there and bullshit. But I digress.
By Nogales, he’s gotten himself checked into a sleazy motel right by the border. Yeah, shure. I’ve been through Nogales a time or two, and let me tell you, there are no sleazy motels right beside the border, chum. The border is completely denuded of anything for quite a distance. Those pesky coyotes and the illegals have seen to that.
While crossing into Mexico at a major port of entry can be a bit of an adventure, it usually entails riding on past the marker and watching the light. If it stays green, you keep right on going. Only when it turns red do you pull over for an inspection. Nogales is one of the more benign ports, believe me. It’s pretty much devoid of the traffic hassles that you can get riding into Mexicali or Tj. There’s not much chance you’ll get run over by an impatient truck or taxi at Nogales.
Naturally, once across the border, this guy’s paranoia factor is wound up to 10 because the poverty-stricken are watching him on his Harley-Davidson. Well shit, that’s a given. You get people staring at you in Bumfuck, America when you ride through town. Take a valium, dumbass, because almost everyone wants to look and listen when you ride by. It’s human nature for the great unwashed to want to fantasize about being out on the road and on their way to nowhere while riding a motorcycle loaded to the gills. Furthermore, in Mexico your fat ass is sitting on more dollars than most of those people will get their hands on in a lifetime.
Before I conclude my whining about this loser’s life, let me explain one more thing that he goes negative on, and that’s the military checkpoints. He makes a point of disparaging the young soldiers and their commanding officers that man these checkpoints by suggesting that they might want bribes. In my entire riding life down Mexico way, never — and I repeat, never! — have I ever been asked for money from anyone at these checkpoints. That is complete and utter bullshit, and to even suggest that it might occur is beyond the pale, in my opinion.
There’s much crying about bad roads, bad roadblocks, bad policia, bad military checkpoints ad nauseam. To top it all off, a day and a half from this guy’s destination, the dumbass turns tail and rides back home.
Oh mommy, I miss you.
Now that’s true grit.
Tribute
Congratulations President-Elect Barack Hussein Obama
Here’s hoping the good will generated by his election continues well into the future.
They’re everywhere
Somewhere on the road
This was a complete surprise
Fingerprint finagling
I have had some good fortune.
A site was skimming my feeds and had successfully posted a feed article without attribution.
I complained to the host.
Site and posting have disappeared from the internets.
Good job * pats self on the back * but it wasn’t really all my doing.
Thank you, Digital Fingerprint plugin.
No fingers here
Somewhere on the road
No fingers here
Grey Power redux: You don’t drive like her does
The Trafalgar Insurance Company is yet again foisting upon us the screaming ninny characterized with such zeal by their Grey Power television commercials. I would have thought that by now, enough people with grammar skills, as well as women and men who take exception to being zealously characterized as horrible, screaming, angry and incompetent drivers, would have registered enough complaints that Grey Power and its grammatically challenged advertising agency would have been banished to the dustbin of bad television commercials.
Not so.
Thankfully, the television remote has been designed with not only an off or a mute button, but also with the ability to change channels to one that does not feature the Trafalgar Insurance Company and their ear-splitting, grammar-challenged Grey Power commercials.
Link to my previous entry on Grey Power and Trafalgar here.
Motorcycle boutiques
Filed under: Disappointments, Mechanical, Stupidity plain and simple
I almost forgot about this.
In an earlier post I proclaimed how great it was that H-D dealerships would take a long-distance rider in and do things like oil and tire changes without appointments. And yes, it still is a great accomplishment for most dealerships.
Well, subsequent to the oil change that I received at that dealership in Winchester, Virginia, I happened to have run another 5,000 miles, thus a requirement to change the oil and filter back in August. Lo and behold, the dumbass responsible for doing that oil and filter swap in Winchester managed to completely screw it up.
No, there was plenty of oil in the bag. I checked that out in their parking lot before I pulled out.
Lets make a list.
- After removing the magnetic plug on the oil pan to drain the engine oil, the maintenance tech proceeds to wrap Teflon tape around the threads and re-insert.
The stupidity in this is that there’s an o-ring on the plug to prevent leaks, thus negating the need for any kind of sealant on the threads. Additionally, Teflon tape isn’t a friend of oil, and it will dissolve due to the heat and composition, thereby causing possible blockage of an oil passage. There are proper compounds available to seal such plugs, but obviously the individual wasn’t aware of them, and whether they were needed or not.
- When installing the new oil filter, the filter was torqued on so tight that on removal, the filter was attached to the adapter plug and it came off with the filter. Red Loctite is used from the factory to hold the filter adapter in place, so you can imagine the torque that the tech used to hold the oil filter in place.
I had to use a power bar to remove the oil filter, and as noted, the adapter nut came off with the oil filter. Now, attaching an oil filter is not rocket science. Whether it be car or motorcycle, you screw the new filter on hand tight, then apply a quarter-turn past that. Can someone show me where it says to torque down an oil filter so hard that you need two men and a boy to get it off?
Nope, didn’t think so.
So, while happy with the Winchester dealership’s ability to get me in and out quickly for a basic oil and filter change, I must take exception to the competence — or lack thereof — of their service department’s capabilities. Obviously, competent professional motorcycle technicians aren’t something Winchester H-D is capable of employing.
I thought of sending an email or making a phone call, but do I really care if they screw up their local customers’ motorcycles in their shop? They’re a boutique, after all, and what should one expect from a boutique other than doo-rags, dog leashes, suspenders and fingerless gloves?
Tired tires
Last fall I replaced my rear Dunlop 402 motorcycle tire because of wear. The bike shop owner where I was getting the work done told me that the Metzler would last at least as long as the D402. A bonus for me was that the Metz was a bit cheaper than the Dunlop 402, so I told him to throw on the Metz.
Well, I should have known better when he also told me that mine was one of a very few motorcycles he’d seen with so many miles on it. In fact, I absolutely do know the following:
- not many riders put any miles on a motorcycle these days, and that is especially true of American-made motorcycles;
- many riders don’t maintain their tires at the correct pressure, thus negating their self-inflated (if you’ll pardon the pun) tire mileage statements;
- consequently, anything most riders tell you about motorcycle tires and their experience with said tires is bullshit, and not worth the time spent listening.
Why I didn’t listen to my own voice of experience, I’ll never know, but I do know this: I rode 5,000 miles less on the Metzler 880 than on my previous Dunlop 402.
Yes, that’s right.
Based on the 15,616 miles I put on my last Dunlop, I got 1/3 less on the Metzler 880 — a measly 10,432 miles.
I’m anticipating another 15,000 trouble-free miles with my new Dunlop 402 rear tire.
Here’s a link to a previous post about motorcycle tires.
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