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She doesn't have any eligible sisters, unfortunately, but I do know an asian chick here in town that rides a CBR1000RR.

Anyways, last couple of days, I've been sick as hell, along with the girlfriend, so not much riding being done lately. We did go on a date on Saturday to Macaroni Grill here in town on the bike. She's enjoying the funny looks we get walking into a nice fancy restaurant with bike gear on.

Oh, and to add, girlfriend's verdicts on being a passenger on the bike:

* Straight line speed is ok, so long as I don't get on the throttle too hard from 1st to 2nd. She doesn't like having to hold on tight, says she feels like she's going to pull me off the bike.
* That being said, shifting at high RPMs is smoother with her on the back, so she appreciates that more.
* Turns/Tight Curves at speed she no likey. Ground way too close. Hopefully she'll get used to them. I try to take them slower and more upright, but some of them are a little difficult to do that with. Need power on the back wheel...
* I've been letting her rest her weight on me when we're in straight-aways, and she says it helps the fatigue a lot. I tap her on the leg when we're about to go into a turn (she can barely see forward), so she moves her weight off of me by pushing on the tank and grabbing the back handle.


That's about all I can remember for now. She's loving the bike, and I'm loving the way she looks in the gear...

How goes it fellow E4 - granted you near triple my TOS, but I know how that goes USAF vs USA. I'm in Iraq now, spending the 2nd, and a bit of the 3rd year of my 4 year enlistment. In two months, I'll be stateside for R&R where I'll do essentially what you just did - buy a bike with the improved financial status the military, and OIF3 have afforded me.

I'm going with a new SV650 myself, as I see OIF6 in my future (or OEF(n+2)) and want something my father can ride for me on occassion during my next rotation through the war on terror before I ETS. I'll build a new section of my website for the bike, and much like you probably do some AAR's and LL's - may even start off with some Tasks, Conditions, and Standards

Happy riding man, be safe.

(btw, home station isn't far from your stomping grounds - 3BDE 3ID here - FBGA.)

Dude, have fun over there in the sandbox, and stay safe. Hopefully OIF3 is going well for you and the sledgehammers and you'll be home safe and riding an SV650 down the streets of Columbus in no time.

Stay safe, and keep your head down, bro. Er, well... depends on what vehicle you're crew on and what your crew position is, I suppose. Anyhoo, give 'em hell. Wish I were able, in my job in the Air Force, to come over there and tote a '16 with ya. *sighs* I hate having brethren overseas while I'm stuck in Alabama.

No vehicle crew here, I'm an Infantryman, but I'm stuck in the Brigade TOC. Somehow my technical skills beyond the expert use of my weapons system were leaked to the S3, and that's where I've been ever since. Kills me even more when we've got troops in contact, and the callsign reveals them to be the guys I went through OSUT/Aiborne/RIP with. Our first KIA - SFC Salie, happened on my shift. MEDEVAC took 2min18seconds, but that wasn't fast enough. He was my Jumpmaster in Airborne school.

All OK Jumpmaster - RIP Sergeant Airborne.

*shakehead*

Sucks beyond words, bro. He's up there watching over ya now, though. You know how instructors, and especially NCOs, get about their "crew", their "troops". He's up there watching after everyone one of ya.

AAR - 14June2005
Lagoon Park Rd. Montgomery, AL

A friend, we'll call him "Tim", recently bought a used 2005 GSX-R 600 as his very first street bike. The previous owner had installed flushmount turn signals, a hotbodies undertail, Yoshimura TRS can and midpipe. I also think the bike had been re-tuned for the track, as the suspension and dampening were as tight as they could be.

We'd taken Tim to the parking lot to run him around the islands and do stop&go practice, etc. once before, and prior to leaving the parking lot I'd gone over smooth shifting and had him running up and down the lanes in the parking lot trying to let him learn how to feather the clutch and control his power in curves. I felt pretty comfortable with where Tim was in his skillset before we left the parking lot last night. I and Josh, the guy who mentored me before MY MSF class, had gone over everything we could think of before we left, and I know Josh was comfortable, otherwise he would never have let us leave.

I was elected leader and told to "take it easy", and we were going to head through town, through some low-volume traffic to a Sonic nearby. I make sure everyone is geared up and ready, Josh has his wife with him riding pillion, and I make a nice, lazy U-turn to head towards the exit.

We're doing fine, he gets to the first stopsign and we wait on Josh and Kim patiently. Once we're all there, off I go onto Lagoon Park Rd. Lagoon Park Rd is an industrial complex road that runs parallel to a very nice park on the other side of the road. It's a long straight-away with a posted 30mph left-hand curve towards the end. I started up and set a pace of about 40mph (speed limit + 5) and braked going into the curve at the posted 30mph. About 1/3 of the way through the curve, I had to lean the bike over a little more and thought to myself, "Oh snap, this curve is decreasing-radius, and he's never seen one of these... !"

... right before I heard his back tire skid about 30 yds behind me.

I looked in my rear view mirror and saw the bike up on the curb on its side and pulled one of those MSF-taught u-turns, only I did it without thinking about it, sort of panicking at this point. I torqued the throttle and rode back to an inlet about 10 yds back from the entrance of the curve and dismounted. Josh was already standing over Tim, who was lying on his back on the shoulder of the road. As I walked up, about a dozen thoughts were racing through my head. "Oh my God, he's broken his leg or something worse.", "Did I take the corner too hot?? What could I have done to prevent this?!", "Aww hell, look at that nice new bike. DAMN.", etc.

Tim's leg is pretty scraped up, and his jacket had ridden up on his left side, so he had some road rash there as well. From piecing things together from both Josh's perspective from behind and Tim's perspective on the bike, here's what went wrong:

Tim had never actually been countersteering per-se through the curves in the parking lot. He was always able to simply lean his weight over the bike and turn the bars in the direction he was going, like a normal bicycle. Well, he tried to simply throw his weight over and turn the bars towards the turn. The bike, as would be expected, tried to lean the opposite direction he was moving his weight, with the obvious result of both forces canceling each other out and him careening towards the curb. At that point, he pulled a very common mistake to inexperienced riders and locked both brakes. He endo'ed the bike's rear end around to the left and hit the curb doing probably about 20mph. He rolled when he hit the ground and his jacket managed to save him from a broken clavicle (the padding and armor were torn away from the initial impact). He was wearing jeans, however, and his left knee was a little scaped up, but nothing too serious. He also suffered a little road rash on his left side where the jacket rode up.

The bike's left side is a mess. The frame slider is bent about 30 degrees backwards, flushmount turn signal torn off. The footpeg on the shifter lever was broken off and the mounting bent inwards slightly. All of the left side fairings including the tail and the front cowling are road rashed pretty badly. The mirror, clutch lever and handlebar cap are both scraped as well.

Josh rode the bike over to the inlet and pronounced it "ok to ride for now", though with a broken shifter, it was going to be a pain to ride. Tim decided that he wanted to get back on it and try that curve again, so we coached him about countersteering and not fighting the bike, and about keeping your back aligned with the bike in the curve. With no small amount of trepidation, I re-assumed the lead and we went through the curve again at low speed, and he did fine. We went to sonic and took apart the accident detail by detail until we all understood what had happened:

- I took the curve too hot for him. Had I braked more into the curve and slowed the pack more, he would have had more time to react and get the turn correct.
- We (Josh and I) should have noticed him initiating turns by shifting his weight instead of countersteering. If we had caught that before we left, he wouldn't have made the mistake on the road. All we'd noticed was that he was stiff in the saddle and needed to loosen up. *sigh*

Anyways, the bike is on base and he's going to be pricing parts for it today. Damn I hate the lessons experience teaches. The test comes first, THEN you learn the lesson.

One of the things we're going to be doing to help prevent this sort of thing from now on is that one or more of us are going to get certified as MSF instructors. With the increased experience and knowledge from that training, we should be able to catch problems sooner and prevent stuff like this from happening in our growing riding club.

No offense, but this is why I wouldn't let my friends teach me to ride. It's why I spent the $400 to take the MSF course, THEN had them coach me through street riding.

None taken. We'd been through 2 other new riders, myself included, with little to no incident, so we felt ok with adding someone else new. It just chose this time to come back and bite us.

Which is why I think I and Josh are going to see about getting certified as MSF instructors...

Also, let me go on record saying that I and the rest of the crew warned Tim about hopping on a Gixxer for a first bike. *shrugs* He knew what he wanted and that's what he got. Thankfully, he's not the spoiled brat type and owns up to the fact that the bike is about 70% too much for him...

Just a quick update today, nothing really monumental.

Starting to get a feel for where the performance rumors around this bike come from. As I've been getting more and more comfortable with her, I've been trying out different things and pushing myself and the bike further out on the envelope.

This weekend, I went to a quarter-mile track and got timed from 0-60 and got my first 1/4 mile time.

WOW.

I will say one thing: I am going to invest in a track day at Barber Motorsports or Road Atlanta soon. I want to learn how to control this beast at high speeds in the performance band she's built for.