Tuesday March 15 was the day when I went to garage and took my Honda out (BMW is still waiting for the 1st ride).
I took a short ride to Lauttasaari in Helsinki to check one motocaching.net -cache someone had made during the winter. The place is actually not legal to ride with the motorcycle but it was in the middle of the day so there were not too many people around so I took the risk and rode my bike up to the small hill with this cannon.
There’s also a viewing platform very near from where you can see the south-western parts of Helsinki.
Wednesday 16th of March was much warmer so I even got 1 friend with me and we rode to Vuosaari to check 1 breakwater where you can also ride. Ocean is already without ice and there were few swans flying around beautifully!
Here’s my Honda VFR1200X Crosstourer with my friends KTM 990SMT at the Ruusuniemi breakwater in Vuosaari. This is also a cache at motocaching.net!
Then on friday morning it was below zero and some snow was in the ground (and on my Honda too!)
Now it seems that we’ll have to wait many days until we can ride again!
adventure bike
This strikes straight to my heart and soul! It was so close that I put my name in there right away… But it’s better to ride the the summer 2016 first before getting in to 2017. But I will remember this -Oh yes I will!
Over 1 month riding in the alps… UUh! http://alpenbutt.com/
…but I can’t find that corner!!
I went to my garage anyway to install new levers. They are beautiful red!
And then I took the bike out and started it first time in 2016 like this:
Sehe’s quite young girl from Melbourne Australia! And for some reason she desided to come to Europe and make a 3 months roadtrip here. And what a wonderful trip it was!!
http://www.bikergirl.me/
Here’s the route she made (or I think this is the plan):
Helsinki motorcycle exhibition 2016 started today.
Honda Africa Twin
KTM 1290 SuperDuke GT
Yamaha MT-10
These were all in the house! And there were few other bikes too!
Check all of my photos here!
What? Who is Vaune Phan? She is 27 years old blogwriter from Singapore. And she did quite a ride from Singapore to Mt Everest Base Camp (north). It was 7500 km’s through Malaysia, Laos, Thailand and China. And she did this with Suzuki 250ccm!! All I can say is WOW! Find the story and the blog from here: http://vaunephan.blogspot.sg/2015/06/day-1-beyondeverest-its-official-flag.html
This amazing piece of machinery is now aviable…. ok not in the stores yet but the prize is known for all and it’s 24701 euros (in Finland). That makes it pretty much the same than BMW S1000XR and Ducati Multistrada… and these are the main competitors too!
The finnish introduction here (language is still english!)
It’s very aggressive lookig bike and I’m wondering if 1290 Sper Duke is called “The Beast” then what will this be???
I bought the BMW original Engine Protection Bars long time ago and I was thinking to install them by myself. There was a manual with all the parts and when I looked at it…. I was thinking “Oh my God!” -this is many hours for me! So I waited until the season ended and now I did it!
First you need to remove almost all fairings from both sides of the bike. Ok, in the manual it says “first the right side, then the left side…” -Like this:
I’m already removed 1 bolt where the bar will be installed. Then you start to install the bar itself:
In the right side there is this triangle on the upper left that keeps the bar installed properly. I guess there must be some idea why they didn’t make the bar itself to go there?!
Then you remove the fairings from the other side and install the bar in its place:
Then you need to do some plastic cutting! From the left side you need to cut only a small piece -a kind of bridge from here:
Then there is a metal holder that needs to be installed (with the small hole drilled in to the fairing) and you put a screw (small silver one in the upper picture) to keep it all together without that small piece of plastic.
From the other side you need to cut a little bit more:
I had only a knife to do this! But it went well!
Then after cutting you can install the fairings back to the bike.
And when you’re ready, it should look like this (the right side):
And the left side:
It’s a little bit strange, since the bars are not symmetric it looks very weird from the certain POV:
But I guess the engineers in BMW know what they are doing?!
This is going to be introduced in one week! EICMA starts at 19th of november. It’s a mean machine! it’s supposed to have same powerful specs than SD 1290 but it has frames and panniers. There’s should be cruise control also.
What about how it looks? Well I think KTM is still going further away from being “ordinary”! This looks aggressive, killer, mean machine and I’m not sure if I like it or hate it!?
Actually it was already in june when I tested this. But I was so much waiting for my new bike (BMW S1000XR) to arrive that I just couldn’t make a review of this. Now I can.
The size of this bike is HUGE! I mean it is really big, it’s wide and it’s tall but luckily it’s not too heavy! When you take the seat you’ll notice that it’s actually quite easy to handle and the sound from the engine is not loud.Riding the bike is also very easy! For the first time for me (in KTM) the throttle is actually very much possible to operate. It doesn’t give that On-Off feeling! But still if you just twist the throttle it gives you acceleration that makes your wrists stretch a lot!
Off-Road riding is pretty much the same than in GS. The size of the bike is not a good thing in the middle of the forest.
Because of the size it feels closer to GS than XR (My opinion). And it was the first KTM that I actually liked!
GoZa Mite 