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The odo now reads 541 km, and I'm having a blast... and some difficulties. I trained myself to judge my speed based upon engine noise, and memory of what gear I'm in. The speed of the single piston tells me about how fast I was moving. Now I have 4 pistons, so it sounds like I'm going a LOT faster. Subsequently I find myself panicing through some corners, as it sounds like I'll be coming out of it doing over 100km/h. Even though I know that I'm only doing 10 or 20. Most of the time I'm okay, but once in a while... This, however, has not diminished my enjoyment of the bike.
I'm finding it remarkably easy to accelerate and take twisties, I find myself countersteering less and less as most of the roads are pretty straight, and just moving my body from side to side will literally turn the bike instantly. Me leaning in the direction I want to go will do what I need. Coming through the occasional tight turn still necessitates countersteering, and I do try to make an effort to do so as much as possible. But lane changes, and such... it just doesn't happen anymore.
I'm finding myself to be a lot more content to just wait it out at the back of the car pack, with a fair bit of distance between myself and any vehicles ahead. I know that if I chose to I could just go FLYING by any car on the road. And knowing that is enough for me. Thus I've been taking it pretty easy for the most part. I've yet to top 8000 rpm except for in neutral to see what it sounds like.
I'm mostly working on efficient and smooth gear changes, and still trying to break in the engine. Lots of stop and start riding, shift up, shift down, slow speed, then slowly working my way up to faster and faster roads. 30/50/60/70/80/90/100-120, basically running the engine through everything it will have to do, as much as possible.
I'm enjoying this bike a lot more, high speeds are less noticible, as the upright seating position coupled with something... I don't know what keeps more of the wind off me. There's no windscreen on there yet, but I've ordered one that I hope will be here on Wed. Of course I'll take pictures.
Overall, I'm loving the honda599, the seat can be a little... hard after a long ride, but it's soooo worth it.
Next Sat I'm taking a friend shopping, she wants to look at leather jackets (this is the same young lady I managed to throw off the back of my old bike), she's decided that she wants a motorcycle, and I'm going to make sure that it happens right. MSF course etc etc etc. So I'll pick up a yellow helmet to make BuzZz happy. Of course considering the purple bike he rides.... I'm not as inclined to care about his opinion

Oh, I'm getting 20 km/liter and have a 17 liter tank. HAHAHAHA, this rocks. Way better then the 10 my savage could hold, and mileage is the same. Plus it has all of these nifty new features: tach, signal indicators, trip meter, low fuel light, oil pressure light. I don't know what to do with myself!

Right on, Skooter. Glad your enjoying that new bike. And good call on the yellow lid.... there's hope for you yet.
I saw it coming ever since you drooled all over that very same bike in January. Just go easy on the chrome, eh?

And now the g/f wants her own bike..... gotta love that. A passenger can really mess with the fun on a livelier bike. Much more fun to ride with someone if you both have your own ride.... except under special circumstances, if your lucky.
Maybe she will want a cruiser and you can get your glitter-jollies by chroming that.

BuzZz wrote:Right on, Skooter. Glad your enjoying that new bike. And good call on the yellow lid.... there's hope for you yet.
I saw it coming ever since you drooled all over that very same bike in January. Just go easy on the chrome, eh?

And now the g/f wants her own bike..... gotta love that. A passenger can really mess with the fun on a livelier bike. Much more fun to ride with someone if you both have your own ride.... except under special circumstances, if your lucky.
Maybe she will want a cruiser and you can get your glitter-jollies by chroming that.

Friend, not GF. I got dumped back in Feb, and despite trying to sort it out (I was willing try, she wasn't) it turned out that I couldn't stay there. She wasn't willing to be close, so I left. I didn't want it to happen, but she was... so caught up in not getting hurt if we broke up a second time that she wasn't willing to be close to me.
This is the young lady who was with me the night I crashed (april 4th). Amazing friend, to say the least. But not my GF.
I've directed her to this site to look around, but she's yet to find the time. I'm hoping she'll introduce herself soon.


As to chrome, I'm thinking that I'd like to run some black piping around the gastank, and keep the metal on this one polished. Yellow helmet (maybe get some decals made up like hornet/bee stripes cause I think it would be really cool and funny). Other then that, I'm still in my leathers, I'm wearing my chaps now, which looks a little funny on a sportier bike, but who knows.

***NOTE*** My request for a bike blog was pushed through in record time. I've copied over all the posts I've made about my bike into that post, which can be found here: Sev's 599
I will continue to update it as I encounter more runs and get more km on my bike.




I've just applied to start a motorcycle blog on this forum, so I'll be transfering over my posts from here to there if I get approved. In the meantime, I want to get my thoughts down on paper... erm, word editor... yeah while they are still fresh.
I'll apologize for the lack of pictures, my brother was given specific instructions to get the camera back from my mom before we left. He failed to follow through, so I've only got the pretake off shots... I'm asking around for pictures from some of the other riders. I'll post any if I get them.

Yesterday was the Retreads Annual Venice run. For those that don't know Retreads is a 40+ motorcycle club (gang?) that has chapters over much of North America. Meetings are held on the 1st and 3rd sunday of every month, on nice days planned rides are availible to go on. My Aunt and Uncle are both members, so I've been allowed on occasion to go as their guest. I think I've been on 4 or 5 trips total. Everyone there is really nice, and there are some great ride leaders. Every one is careful and there's no hotrodding, thank goodness.
You've all heard the Hells Angel's motto, "Live to Ride, and Ride to Live." Well the Retreads follow a slightly different philosophy... "Ride to Eat, and Eat to Ride." All of the planned rides have an eventual food related destination. On this particular trip we were to head from Edmonton to Venice. A small town about 2 hours, or 200 km North East. Every year there is for lack of a better word a pasta cookout at the local church, $8 for all you can eat spaghetti with meat sauce, BBQ chicken, salad, and deserts. The money raised is used to fund any church events for the whole year. If they have a good year, they have a lot of events, if they have a bad year, well they don't do a lot.
Apparently the Retreads have been going for years, as we had a spot reserved for all of our bikes 14 in total. Though we all had to pay for parking... we ended up fitting 14 bikes into a space where only 2 cars would fit... and payed $2 per bike But that's beside the point.

It's been a really crappy couple of weeks, competing low pressure fronts and winds out of the North have created a cloudy, windy, rainy, miserable past 5 or 6 days. And it was with some trepidation that my friend, brother and I geared up for the trip. The skies were foreboding to say the least, lots of dark heavy clouds hanging above our heads. It definately looked like rain was to be the order of the day. Undaunted... well slightly daunted I overcame my fear of riding two up, and threw my brother on the back. Off down the yellowhead we shot 30km to the breakfast meeting. With clouds overshading us the whole way. Fortunately for my nerves my brother was to switch off to the goldwing upon arrival at breakfast. I would be free for the vast majority of the trip.


Faced with the comment "chains need to be oiled?" I was forced to slap some on his. *note* he had just had his chain replaced and was told it was o-ring sealed and that it shouldn't need oiling... damn techs, anything to make a buck.


Here I am getting ready to back off the driveway


And we're off
After refueling for the true trip we pulled into the area that was commandered by the rest of the riding club. I've never felt so small in my life. Confronted with a handful of goldwings, v-star 1100's, valkyries, a shadow 1100 and everything else you could think of... all fully outfitted for touring hard bags, windshields, and everything from CB radios to hand warmers... my '04 Honda 599, and my friends '82 Yamaha Maxim400 felt dangerously outclassed.

Honda 599 with my Bro in the background, he has leathers on under the rain gear

My friends Maxim with him on the left and me on the right


However Russell did summon the nerve to supply the comment that "this was motorcycle parking and even two wheeled cars, like that goldwing were not allowed to park here."
Inside for breakfast and to wait for my aunt and uncle to show up. Riding a v-star 1100 and an 05 goldwing (I think it's 1800). Both beautiful bikes, though they make me feel small, lol. There was a 50/50 draw that none of us won, and some fun jokes. Apparently two tablespoons of picklejuice will cure leg cramps brought on by motorcycling. Yelling, Russell, "what do you rub it on?" No, you're supposed to drink it, straight out of the jar. Russel under his breath, "or you could just try not being old."
As we sat and ate my view of the window proved to be most fortuitious. For it appeared that something was changing. The only way I can describe it is to say that it appeared as if the hand of God had swept down and lifted the clouds away as a person would lift the soap bubbles off a sinkfull of dish water. Over the course of 45 minutes the cloud cover burned away and we were left with glorious sunshine. Much thanks were given to higher powers.
We went outside for the standard milling around talked bikes for 10 or 15 minutes and slowly got everyone kitted up. We fell into a loose line, and our leader took off. At the speed limit of course. I have to say he was an absolute pleasure to follow, good route, and he made a point of using hand signals to let us know what was going on. He'd hold his hand out at his side when we should be slowing down. Pointed directions, left or right as well as using turn signals, and would hold up a hand with 1 finger straight up to indicate we should switch to single file (for big trucks). He made a careful point of discussing the route with my friend and I as we would be the limiting factors as far as speed and range were concerned.

I cannot be sure of the final route as I spent more time just enjoying the view. But I can say that there were a lot of wide arching turns towards the end as the road wound around hills. It was a TON of fun, and the 599 outhandled even my wildest imagination. I had to actively restrain myself from taking the turns to tight, as the bike was just made to turn.
The seat though... was pretty bad, a 1/2 inch of padding is not designed to accomodate a rider for 5 hours on a bike. I spent a lot of time shifting around. I would huddle up to the very front of the tank sitting straight up and down, then after 20 kliks I'd move to the middle making me lean forward a little, then I'd move to the back of the riders portion leaning forward. I'm starting to think an OEM seat might be in the works, but I'll wait and see if I can get used to this one first.
Sunshine, twisty roads, good food, and good riding mates, the day was a blast. I put exactly 441.8 km on my bike pushing me to a total of just over 1200. And my 1000km tune up isn't scheduled until the 15th... Uhoh. Guess I'll have to take it easy until then.
The windscreen that I ordered didn't make it in for the trip so I got to experience high speed windblast over an extended period of time, but it was worth it. One of the best rides I've ever been on.
Everytime I get back on this bike I become more and more amazed at how it handles, what it can do, and how much fun it can be. The entire trip I was actively taking care to not accelerate to fast, either my bike pulls a lot harder, or everyone else didn't want to go like I do . It's got excellent range with a theoretical distance of 340km, though I don't care to test that. It seems to be even better when I'm doing highway riding, as I was getting about 22km to the liter instead of the 20 I was getting for city riding. I'm loving this bike.[/i]