Re: another update on your greenhorn

c wrote:

Here's the link to the review which sold me:

http://www.webbikeworld.com/r3/heated-vest/battery-heated-vest/

I'll post back when i've gone riding in the cold with it on (should
get it next week).

It looks to me like the battery pack is good for about 44 watts for 4 hours,
22 watts for 8 hours.

If you can wear the vest underneath an outer garment that holds the heat in,
it should keep your back warm.

But the cold wind is against your chest...

Will definitely save my old pipes if i get new ones. I have a bunch of
idiot friends who dropped half a grand on a stupid iphone. I'd be just
like that, except with a louder bike. It's not quite the same, but it
just seems like ... what am i really getting? It sounds amazing, but
couldn't i just hacksaw my pipes shorter and not feel like a tool? Or
remove the baffles?

If you knew what a new set of stock pipes costs, you wouldn't think about
taking a hacksaw to your pipes.

Would i need a welder's help to do any of this pipe stuff?

Only if you're trying to make up some crude looking custom pipes that most
cruiser riders will laugh at when they
see them. To a cruiser rider, the exhaust system is sacred, it has to look
and sound good.

Yes, and that's what bothered me. Would you buy an american version of
a samurai sword? No effin' way, right?

If you are a collector of authentic swords, you would want an authentic
samurai sword with verifiable history
that it was owned by a samurai. And it would probably cost some money.

I was on a tour of Spain and the tour bus stopped at a sword factory. They
were making knock versions of every
kind of sword you can imagine, I could have gotten a samurai sword made in
Spain. Another guy on the tour told
me that he was going to wait until he got to Scotland and he would look for a
claymore there. I guess he
thought he would find a real one in a pawn shop window...

Why would you (anyone) buy a
jap version of an american motorcycle?

Because they are cheap, cheap, cheap. The only reason that we can get
motorcycles so cheap is because
of the lower cost of Japanese labor compared to American labor, and even the
Japanese are looking for
cheaper labor in Taiwan and Korea.

I actually posted to the volusia community on volusiariders.com, and
they ripped me a new one. Apparently my eye is not discerning enough.
I think they were overly defensive because they know it's true. Their
arguments to rationalize were (1) that everything is a ripoff of
something and (2) nothing is a rip off of anything, everything is
distinguishable.

Those guys are ridingthe best bikes they can afford. If they had more money,
they would buy a Harley.

In the meantime, they defend their purchase.

But in truth, who would want a HD when a suzuki is
technologically superior? You'd have to want it for the intangible
appeal of that brand, and buying into that would make you more of a
tool than owning a counterfeit (in my opinion).

When I went to the Love Ride in Glendale, CA, I was standing about six feet
from Jay Leno, Peter Fonda,
Gary Crosby, Sting, and Malcolm Forbes, who was worth billions of $$$$.

Malcolm Forbes rode Harleys all over the world, in Egypt, Thailand, and China.
He gave Harleys to influential
people.

Forbes' friend rode with him and they called their club, "Capitalist Tools".

So i don't want a HD,
i just want something that isn't a knock off of something else. It
seems though, in the 21st century, all motorcycles are a knock off of
something and are also their own animals if you look closely enough.

If you have enough money, you can go to a custom fabricator and he will build
you a "one off" chopper
for $50K to $100K. But the engine will probably be a Harley Davidson knock
off made in China or some such
place where the labor is cheap.

Whatever, a paradox. I love my bike. I don't like the idea that its
roots are in another company. I love that my used bike cost about 20%
of what a used HD would have cost.

I was just reading an article about the German philosopher Nietzsche and his
theory that equality was a "slave morality"
that originated in resentment and ended in nihilism.

Wrap your brain around that, and maybe you'll understand the mind of a biker
and why we usually have to take what we can get.

--
Message posted via http://www.motorcyclekb.com

.

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