Ain't No Pillion

Athletes have a full physical before every sports season. Why should high-performance motorcycles that are about to go on a major trip be any different? Starting out on a trip with motorcycles in excellent operating condition just made sense to us, so we send our motorcycles up to Max BMW to have the professionals give [...]

We sent the bikes off to Max BMW last week for service before the trip, and got them back on Saturday. My only prior experience with motorcycle service was when I sent my Ninja 250 to Riverside Motorsports in Somerville – and it was a BAD experience. (They broke the fairing in two places. They [...]

We’ve always planned to take the bikes in for a pre-trip service at a BMW dealer before we go. We enjoy doing our own maintenance and feel we’re pretty competent with most things, but we also believe an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We wanted to have the professionals do our [...]

More trip-planning minutiae – the bikes are off getting a pre-trip checkup. We’d always intended to have a BMW dealer look them over before leaving for the trip, but the timetable was moved up because we went to change the oil in Masukomi’s bike and had problems removing the drain plug – the prior owner [...]

For a complete motorcycle newb, I’m getting into the guts of my bike far more than I’d expected. When I dropped off the bike at the shop, I forgot to tell them to change the oil. So when I got it back, Masukomi asked if I’d had them change the oil, and I hadn’t. She’s [...]