Matthew Supert

View Ride Log: 09-23-12 - Starved Rock in a larger map

A little over a week ago I bought myself a new motorcycle. A lightly used 2012 BMW R 1200R Classic. The bike is gorgeous and is black with white racing stripes, spoked wheels and of course the great BMW boxer engine. I am turning 30 this year and starting to feel a little old, so I figured I would treat myself. 

To christen the new bike I decided to do an afternoon run down to Starved Rock. I am slightly ashamed to say this, but I have never been to Starved Rock before. I was in for a treat, for the ride was not only a nice one, but the state park is beautiful. I will have to make sure and go back there this fall to go hiking with the changing leaves. 

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A couple of weeks ago I had an opportunity to test ride a BMW R 1200R at a demo day. I came away super impressed with it. After following up with the dealer, they came into possession of a lightly used 2012 model with 6300 miles on it.

Despite my better judgement I decided to go ahead and buy it. I'm calling it my early birthday present to myself since I am turning 30 this year. It is such a sweet ride in so many ways and I am super excited to ride it despite my guilt. This does mean that my trusty ZR-7 will be trying to find a new home in the near future. If anyone is looking for a great commuter and weekend warrior bike, then let me know!

So I went on a really nice big ride last week up to the Grumpy Troll in Wisconsin with RTRC. I have come to learn that any ride lead by Martin in the group results in an all day adventure. I have no problem with that, but we were out riding from 9:30 until about 8:00 pm that night. Of course my GPS seems to have failed on me with dead batteries again so I did not get the route. I reeally need to keep a closer eye on that sort of stuff. 

Also my saga for a new motorcycle is slowing continuing. I am sort of actively looking for something and have calls into two dealers. We will see if something develops, but I can't say that my experience with either dealer has been stellar as of yet. I feel like I need to pull teeth to get any sort of information out of them. You would think they would be making more strides to get me content when they have a person approaching them with a potential sale. 

If it happens it happens, if not I will truck along perfectly fine on my ZR-7. Actually I suppose I should say I might. Even if this purchase through a dealer doesn't play out I have a real inkling to try and sell or trade my ZR-7 on Craigslist for a dual sport, likely a KLR. Something about the dual sporting really seems appealing to me and I figure at this point I will get a standard street bike again eventually so why not get the dual sport in the garage?

Again, I think we will just sort of see what happens. 

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to do a demo day at BMW of Countryside. I had a pretty fund time there and was able to ride two bikes. First up was the F 800ST. I really wanted to get on the F 800R, but it was booked and the ST did offer me the opportunity to check out its capability as a touring option. Overall it was a pretty nice bike, but even at 5'8" I found my legs a little bit cramped on the bike. I couldn't really see myself riding it for longer than a few hours.

Later that day I had an opportunity to get on the R 1200R though and as soon as my butt hit the seat I was impressed. Very comformtable, with a nice blended styling. The demo unit they had was the R 1200R classic which featured some additional chrome work as well a super nice blakc with white racing strip paint. Overall I came away very impressed with the engine too. The boxer engine had a great feel to it and the bike is a nice "do-it-all" platform that can easily accomdate luggage for touring. 

I actually stopped by the dealer last week to get pricing info. Nothing to speak for yet, but I hope I could possibly make pricing work out on this one. It was a great feeling bike all around. 

View Ridelog: 07-21-12: C9Y Iowa in a larger map

Yesterday I went on a very long trip with the RTRC group and a few others. We rode our way out to highway C9Y in Iowa. Approximately 543 miles round trip. The trip was a blast and everyone in the group was great.

No motorcyle issues with anyone, but I did have a spin out myself when we stopped on an uphill piece of road that was going to be chip and sealed and only had the chip down. It was basically gravel. It's trips like this one that really make me wish I had a GoPro for my bike as some of the views along the Mississippi River were quite nice.

View Ride Log: 07-15-12 in a larger map

This GPS track unfortunately is only about half of my ride today. I found out that my GPS died about half way through the ride. I am left now not knowing exactly were we rode.

This was another breakfast ride up to Full Moon and then northwest into the Kettle Moraine area of Wisconsin. Overall we had some excellent riding and the roads were great with some fun twisties. Unfortunately, about two thirds of the way into our ride one person in our group crashed in a turn. I didn't see the crash but it was pretty bad. Her bike is likely totaled and she may have a broken leg. Unsure at this point, but it appears she is OK. She was lucky that she did not hit any trees where we were, so count our blessings on that.

View 05-20-12 Ride Log in a larger map

The weather finally cooperated this weekend and I think just about everyone was able to get out for a ride. I finally had a change to ride with RTRC. We met up initally in Schaumburg and then road north to have breakfast at a resturant called The Full Moon Family Resturant. It seems to be quite the biker hangout. The ride continued on throught he Highland Park area where we at one point stopped at a nice beach on Lake Michigan. 

It has been a couple of weeks since I have had the opportunity to get out and ride. Last week I posted a status update on some of the upgrades I have been working on for the ZR-7. It was around that same time that I had been looking at the Powerbronze fender eliminator for the bike. To just my unluck I found this kit exactly one week after the manufacturer had decided to discontinue it. THe timing was truly remarkable and after following up with two different US distributors it seems I missed the boat. So in order to avoid a similar future fate I decided to bite the bullet and purchase the Competition Werks fender eliminator. 

Now this kit is stainless steel compared to the fiberglass of the PB kit. It has some advantages and disadvantageous over the other, but it seems it was my only option. It arrived this past week and I was not completely planning on installing it for a while, but I was planning for a nice bike ride up to Lake Geneva on Saturday (more on that in a bit) so I wanted to get it installed for the big ride. 

So Friday afternoon I went at it. Overall the kit was fairly easily to install once you figure out how it goes. The biggest problem was the instruction manual was absolute garbage. If anyone plans on getting this kit themselves, my advice is to just look at the photos and work your way from front to back on putting all of the screws in. I spent probably a good thirty minutes trying to figure out where the signal panels went before realizing that they went on the outside of the kit. Overall though the end results turned out pretty good. 

So the point of getting that thing installed as quickly as I could was to get ready for a large ride up to Lake Geneva this weekend with the Road & Track Riders of Chicago. Unfortunately my neighborhood got nailed by thunderstorms and I couldn't get out to meet up with the group and I was left with another weekend of no riding. Needless to say I was very disappointed.  

Made with Paper

After picking up my ZR-7 last year I was determined to learn a little bit more about motorcycles and wanted to stick with something that had a carburetor to do some fiddling on. So far this year I have accomplished most of what I intended to do with only a few items left to get on later this summer. Most of my focus for 2012 was to upgrade the lighting system to LED's, get a new seat and perhaps re-paint the bike. I haven't decided yet if I want to try reupholstering the seat myself or just go and purchase a Corbin.

My basic goals for the rest of this summer are to get the turn signals upgraded to LED, replace the flasher relay, install a fender eliminator and also install the Screaming Banshee Horn. All of this will probably happen together in one shot since the fender eliminator is a good time to replace the rear lights and I will also need to remove the tank again to get the Banshee Horn on. 

As I have been searching for fender eliminators several other ZR-7 riders over at RiderForums.com have been opining for a black fiberglass kit made by PowerBronze. After finally finding out the manufacturer we all found out that they decided to discontinue its manufacter litterally last week. 

ZR-7 Upgrade List:

• Clean Carbs
• New Tires
• HR Relay Kit
• LED Taillight
• LED Signals
• LED Instrument Panel
• Banshee Horn System
• New Seat
• Paint Job
• Jet Carbs
• Threaded Brake/Clutch Lines
• Wheel Stripes
• New Headlight and Bucket