New wheels for 2012

The 2012 Kawasaki Ninja 650R had me hooked from the first video I saw of it. According to the head of Kawasaki Canada (that I had a chance to meet at the motorcycle show), the bike has been redesigned from the ground up. It's not just a couple of nice additions, and is a real overhaul of the machine.

So I did what any sensible person did and decided to just go for it. The deposit is down, and one of the 2012s will be mine to take when it's riding season once again.

I hadn't been totally sold on making the jump from my 500 to something else. This is a beautiful and solid bike. I'm looking forward to the snow clearing out in... oh, four or five more months. I'll have to make a day of the un-crating. It's my first new bike purchase, and it's going to be so new that I'll be the first one to even peek at my bike on this continent. Very exciting!

Last big ride of 2011

Here it is, a video. I suggest going to the youtube video directly to see it in HD:

It's part of the 3 hour ride. The fall colors here are gorgeous. Too bad the bikes will sit for another 4 or 5 months.

Learn your reserve tank.

Originally this was going to be a post about people manhandling strange bikes, but after an evening of riding I have something else to write on. The reserve tank.

In a perfect world, you'd know exactly how much fuel you have remaining and would never be put in a situation where you're far from a known fueling point. If only this always happened.

Lots of older bikes (and even most of the newer ones) don't have any sort of a fuel meter. Unless you have a fuel-injected bike and don't have to make the switch yourself, you should learn where this switch is and how to use it in motion. You should also learn how much your bike holds, and how much fuel you burn through. This can help you establish a safe range of travel before you need to fuel up. The Ninja is pretty decent on gas and has a reasonably sized fuel tank. I don't worry about stopping to refill as often as some people.

My best tip for being on top of things is: determine your travel range, and always reset your trip meter when you've topped off your gas tank. If you know you can go 230km before you start getting the telltale sputter and needing to switch to reserves, try and find yourself a station at least 15km in advance of that. That way, should you come up short, you do at least have the bit in your reserve tank to go on. You can largely avoid issues this way.

Failing that, you should be able to easily handle your reserve switch, if you've got one. They're often kind of sticky and can be a little awkward to grope for when in motion. But it helps a lot to practice turning it on and off safely at slow speeds.


I totally failed to reset my trip meter the last time I filled. I then failed to remember what it was at when I had my tank full. What happened, in short, was me failing miserably up a hill and needing a time out. The reserve tank was unfortunately not very useful at such a steep incline. After a break (mental as much as anything) the gas managed to sort itself out and I made it the few kilometres to the nearest station.

After cooling off a bit, it was back to riding. Sunny days have been a rarity lately. Even when it's summer here it's not always nice. Gotta get it while you can. Make sure you've got the gas to get you around!