Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
I was sitting quietly in my office this morning when a familiar
face appeared in my door. It was Todd, the person who bought my Ninja
250 back in September.
I'd followed along as he reported a few snippets of his trip this last month to a mailing list we're both on. I didn't realize the full extent of it, though, until he stopped by this morning. I just knew that he'd ridden from Seattle to Daytona Beach, Florida in a week, which seems like madness regardless of which bike you're on.
In fact, he had ridden for a month, from Seattle to Florida, and then very circuitously back to Seattle, spanning 8000 miles. I didn't get a lot of details on the trip, but it sounds like it was a lot of fun.
I was interested in some technical details of the trip, and he was happy to discuss them with me. In particular, he said that when he'd run out of electrical power with the driving light on, he had been riding at about 7500 RPM. That was the only extra load on the electrical system, so I now know that the Ninja 250's electrical system needs to be spinning above about 8k RPM to support a 55w extra load. There's not a lot of headroom in that electrical system, to say the least.
He also said that the bike didn't really burn oil unless the motor was turning around 10 or 11k RPM. That's no real surprise to me, as I always found that riding on the freeway would burn a lot of oil. Freeway speeds are usually over 9k RPM if you want to keep up with traffic.
His actual goal in coming and talking to me was to offer me the chance to buy back the bike. I refused without any hesitation, since I know that I want a new or nearly new 250 for my next bike, not one that's already lived at least half its useful life. However, I asked him what he thought his next bike, and with a similar lack of hesitation, he said, "K1200S."
If you're not familiar with the BMW K1200S, the very brief rundown is that it's the most insanely powerful motorcycle BMW has ever made, producing 167 HP. That's about the same as a mid-size car. Yet it weighs 550 lbs. It's about 5x more powerful than the Ninja 250, for a moderately small weight gain. It's also a very expensive motorcycle, at $15,800 list (figure $1000ish for options you'd want, plus about $1000 for freight, setup, and license, and 8.8% tax brings it out to a solid $19,366 by the time it's on the road).
He didn't seem to have any qualms about going to a motorcycle that costs 10x his current bike and makes more than 5x the power. After hearing about the 8000 mile trip, it seems like a better choice for him than the Ninja 250, I have to say.
Posted at 20:27 permanent link category: /motorcycle
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater