I’ll admit that I felt guilty in buying the new bike but I’ve got all sorts of rationalizations for getting it. But the number one reason is that my wife really enjoys the comfort on the new bike and as much as I want to ride more with her, that is an important consideration.

My Burgman has been a blessing to me. I bought my 2008 Burgman 650 Executive soon after I moved back to the U.S. from the UK. I have nothing but glorious things to say about it and the experiences it has given me. From the rallies to the friends I have made, it is an amazing culture and ride.

In the time that I’ve had the Burgman I put 8,300 miles on it. Most of them were haul ass flying low miles that put a massive grin on my face. The longest ride to date was the trip I took on it last year to the Mentone Burgman ralley in Alabama. Read more about that here and here. But riding the bike around town has always been a lot of fun, especially when you put five bags of groceries in it at 50 mpg.

So what did I buy you might wonder. I stepped up the engine a bit and bought a Honda Goldwing. The local dealer had a 2008 demo bike with 500 miles on it. They had let me borrow it in the past and I put five hours and 150 miles on it with Pam. She was amazed by how exceedingly comfortable the ride for her was. With the economy the way it is at the moment, the deal on the demo bike was too good to pass up. I wrote about my buying experience here.

On many items, the Goldwing is less of a deal than the Burgman is. The Goldwing is less fuel efficient, the insurance is more expensive, and the windscreen is not electrically operated like it is on my Burgman.

I’m still going to operate this site and live in the Burgman world. I’d love to still go to Burgman rallies and hang with my Burgman friends. In fact this weekend a Burgman friend and I are riding to Myrtle Beach with our wives. I’m really looking forward to that.

My cousin Tom bought my Burgman, He is just now getting his motorcycle license and I think he caught the bug when we were in Bermuda riding scooters a few months ago for a family reunion.

Here is a picture of Tom leading my pack of relatives on a Bermuda scooter ride.

Tom lives in Pittsburgh and he is going to fly down to Raleigh and get the Burgman. I’ll then ride back with Tom as he does his first cross country ride. I know we will have fun, and stories to tell.

When he came down to stay with me for my birthday recently I even let Tom take my Burgman for a ride around the hood to try it out. We put about five hours on it with Tom riding on the back.

I’ve bragged to Tom about what great people Burgman riders are and how the participants of this site and forum are an amazing group of people. Everyone is always so kind, giving, and generous. I’m hoping that you will do what you can to help Tom learn how great the Burgman world is and welcome this new motorcycle rider in with open arms.

©2010 Suzuki Burgman Scooter Riders - 'Lovers of Fun'. All Rights Reserved.

This past weekend Charles and I headed out on a lovely Sunday morning for a two hour ride from Raleigh, NC to Wilmington, NC to have lunch. The ride down was great. The GPS took us on the back roads to Wilmington and it was a lovely ride without much traffic. Passing some of those farms was a bit rough on the nose. I swear in a couple of places, something must have died. Stinky! But better than the time were were riding and came upon a recently struck skunk.

We arrived a little early and waited for the restaurant to open at 11. Unbeknownst to us the lot across the street from the restaurant was a paid lot on Sunday. While Charles and I sat on a bench shooting the breeze, around the corner a meter person was lurking and left us a present we discovered when we left, pretty $25 parking tickets in pink envelopes. To add insult to injury, the parking tickets were issued five minutes after we arrived and the site to pay the ticket was ParkRite.net. I wonder who thought that was a good domain name. “Hey, let’s call it parkrite.net, people will find that funny.” For the record, we don’t.

Lunch was fantastic and we felt so refreshed that we decided to press on further to the nearest NC State Aquarium. You know us Burgman riders, we are a real outlaw group. Not everyone can do an aquarium ride, they have aquatic beasts there.

What was promised as a 23 mile ride, turned into 45 minutes, mostly due to the traffic on the beach front roads. Note to self, don’t go there when everyone is off for the summer. Traffic!

I should have taken it as an ominous sign when we pulled into the parking lot of the aquarium and some kid was pissing on the pavement. The parking lot is full kid, how about behind a car next time. “Whew, look at me. I’m three and can pee!” I suspect that there are going to be some drinking games involved in that child’s life.

The aquarium was a nice break and worth the price of admission for the air conditioning and restroom. Nice. Guess what we saw there> Yep, fish and other critters.

We left the aquarium to head home and when we got back to the bikes my GPS that had guided us all the way to the furtherest point on out trip into unfamiliar lands, decided that it was done working. Charles had his GPS but with only 30 minutes of battery left and the ride was 3 hours back home. We just decided we’d get home old school and point ourselves in the right direction and read signs.

As we headed out, the GPS thing had really pissed me off but I was soon not caring about that anymore, “What are those dark clouds doing up ahead?” The forecast was for a sunny day. I glanced at my iPhone and checked the radar image. No worries, it looked like a small shower up ahead. I braved it without my rain jacket. Not a problem.

After we made it back to I-40 and headed toward Raleigh the clouds got dark again. In fact we both thought we spotted the wisp of a little funnel cloud up ahead. At the last stop Charles had put on his rain gear, I didn’t. Guess who was the idiot? It gets too hot in that stuff just for a little shower. And what we hit my friends, was no little shower. It was a freaking wall of rain and in literally two seconds I was drenched.

Luckily there was a bridge up ahead and I made a straight line for that. Besides, I couldn’t see anything really in front of me except for the flashing light on the back of Charles’ Burgman. The underpass was already a parking lot with two church busses, two other bikes and us. Before we left, four more bikes joined the party. We almost needed valet parking.

Across the way, on the other side of the highway, another bike pulled over. Everyone was waving and laughing. Luckily I had another shirt under my seat so I changed the drenched one and put my rain jacket on. As the rain slowed down we headed back out into reasonable rain. I hate crowds.

Not long latter we stopped at a rest area since we were back in full sun and blue skies to remove our rain gear. As we stopped Charles was gesturing and just pissed off. “I lost my damn $600 glasses back there,” he said. Apparently he had taken them off to dry them and put them on his saddle bag. When he got back on the bike, he forgot they were there and took off.

At some point soon after leaving the protection of the bridge, Charles noticed his vision was a bit fuzzy. I’m sure he just assumed it was the rain on the visor. He cracked the visor and reached in to feel his glasses and “oh crap” they weren’t there. For a church going man I’m sure he was swearing like a sailor after that.

We totaled the expenses for the day. Let’s see, $600 glasses, two $25 parking tickets, a dead GPS, and I managed to scratch the display on my new little HD camera. Charles’ take on the day, “Nobody died.”

We both agreed it was a good day anyway, we were on our favorite motorcycles and having fun.

©2010 Suzuki Burgman Scooter Riders - 'Lovers of Fun'. All Rights Reserved.

Here it is. But I’ve been getting an increasing number of comments from people that use this site and forums, quietly complaining or expressing concern that another big Burgman forum on the web is becoming very political and aggressive in places.

That is one thing I will not tolerate on BurgmanRiders.com. I built this site for us to share our love, advice, tips, and friendship around the Burgman motorcycle, not politics or religion.

I don’t care if you have a liberal or conservative point of view in your life, but when you come here, please leave that at home.

This has never really been a problem here but if it does become an issue and I do block someone from the site, please understand that it was only to allow this to remain a safe and friendly place for Burgman riders, from all nations, to have a safe place to meet.

Ride on.

Steve

©2010 Suzuki Burgman Scooter Riders - 'Lovers of Fun'. All Rights Reserved.

Join the forum discussion on this post - (9) Posts

The first step to using the power button was just being able to locate it with my left thumb without looking. If you need the power button it is probably at a time that you don’t want to take your eyes off the road to find it.

So I spent about a half hour just riding down the road and getting comfortable with finding it by feel. Look, I’ll come up with any stupid reason to ride and that is as good as any.

Once I was comfortable I could locate it I moved on to test a couple of different situations of using it. The first was something that I missed from my old manual shift motorcycle, downshifting.

As I rolled up on a red light I pressed the power button and sure enough it did downshift the bike in automatic mode and help to slow it down using the engine compression. If makes the stopping distance much shorter but that’s probably not a feature that you want to use in traffic. At least give the car behind you a reasonable fighting chance of actually stopping.

I found that with the power button in that it was easier to apply the throttle in slow moving traffic instead of getting that lugging or rough shifting that happens from time to time at slow speeds.

When using the power button to accelerate, use it with caution because when you are cruising, it will light the afterburner. The biggest concern is going to be to watch your RPMs and make sure you don’t redline the bike. It would be easy to do since you are going to want to keep applying the throttle.

My friend Danny was riding with me as I was testing this and after he got off the bike he was complaining about my using the power button. His words, “Every time you press that button to stop and start, I get a wedgie.” I think that made me appreciate the power button even more.

I can’t really see an application when you would want to ride with the power button in for long periods of time, more than a minute or so. I tend to apply is as necessary in short bursts.

As far as launching from a standing stop with the power button in it was a bit better but it seems to make a bigger difference if you get rolling and then apply it.

So, if you have not had a chance to play with the power button, try it. And if you’re like I am and completely forgot about it, go use it and report back.

Steve

©2010 Suzuki Burgman Scooter Riders - 'Lovers of Fun'. All Rights Reserved.

Join the forum discussion on this post - (13) Posts

Now I think it is a good thing, her wanting to ride and riding a trike will probably give her greater confidence and that will make her feel more secure.

So I started looking around for a 400 for her. She says she likes the idea that it is a little smaller and lighter. I was surprised to see the deals that are available on used Burgman 400s right now. I guess it is true that people are dumping assets to raise cash. One Burgman I saw for sale was a repo by a credit union. Now that’s not something that you see usually.

Ironically, Bill Henson, from the site, wrote in today asking if we had a review of the Tow-Pac trike kit versus the Danson trike kit. We don’t and wouldn’t you know it, now I’m trying to figure out which trike kit would be better for Pam’s new trike. If you have any suggestions or feedback, that would be greatly appreciated.

You know, I wonder if riding with Pam will change riding for me? While I won’t be able to be the lone zippy rider anymore, I will have my wife with me to share the moments on the road. Has anyone else faced a similar situation?

First Incident Call

Yesterday I finally got my RAM mounts for the GPS from MotorcycleLarry.com. They fit like a dream. So my conversion to my photo shooting bike setup is just about complete. The only little piece that is missing right now is the electrical connection for the GPS.

So I heard the call last night for a nearby house fire. It seemed like a perfect first call to practice following the new GPS and listening to the scanner as I rode. It’s not tough stuff but it’s new in my riding routine.

I chased the GPS directions, making all the right turns, but by the time I got to the scene, the firefighters were leaving. OK, it was a false alarm, but the worst part was the house turned out to be two blocks from the fire station.

I didn’t take any pictures. If I had it would have been of firefighters getting in their trucks? But I was happy that I was able to get to the scene. Whenever I add new equipment on the bike I’m always a bit worried that until I get used to it, it might distract me. And at one point last night, it did.

I was looking at the GPS screen to see when the next turn was coming and the road was displayed as straight on the screen and someone evidently dropped a traffic circle recently in the middle of the straight road. I don’t know if that was a shovel ready road project or not but it wasn’t on the just downloaded GPS map.

It was one of those moments that could have turned out badly. It was night, the pavement was uneven and loose, and there was sand everywhere.

It’s those times that remind you to be ever vigilant when riding. I am happy to report that did mange to not be the first one to the scene of my own accident. A little gentle braking and some careful leaning let me just pass through.

I started taking the plastic off the Burgman to connect the electrical cable for the Garmin GPS but then I just said to hell with it and took it down to the dealer nearby for them to do it. Hey, I’m not lazy, I’m just trying to stimulate the economy a bit. At least that’s what I told myself.

I’ll pick the bike up in the next couple of days and soon I’ll make my way to the next police or fire call where I can take some photos and when I do, I’ll share them with you.

Steve

©2010 Suzuki Burgman Scooter Riders - 'Lovers of Fun'. All Rights Reserved.

If you are anywhere near Chapel Hill, NC, come and meet us at the meeting spot. Most of us get there around 9:30 to 10 am. It is going to be a beautiful day tomorrow.

©2010 Suzuki Burgman Scooter Riders - 'Lovers of Fun'. All Rights Reserved.

I figured I might be able to turn my love of riding my Burgman, photography, and warm weather into a side income.

I already shoot stock photos for some of the online stock photo sites. People visit these sites, like BigStockPhoto and purchase photos for use in advertisements, brochures, and other uses.

But it occurred to me that with the demise of traditional media outlets, like newspapers, that with my background in photojournalism I might be able to make some extra cash as a freelance news photographer.

Many years ago in college I worked as a police dispatcher in the small town that I lived in and did some photo work for the police department as well. I also did work of Associated Press and UPI. One of my favorite assignments was to shoot photos of some freshman representative on Capitol Hill for Rolling Stone. But then again those were the years that I owned my first motorcycle but didn’t have the motorcycle license. I was young, and foolish.

But let’s flash forward to today. These days I proudly ride a Suzuki Burgman, I’m fully licensed and insured, and after putting down my camera for a couple of decades, I’m getting back into photography again.

Photography in a way for me is a bit like riding the scooter. I didn’t realize how much I missed it till I got back in the saddle again. Now, I can’t imagine giving up either.

Okay, most of my favorite shots might not be your cup of tea, but hey, my photography is like my riding, it’s fun and I primarily do it for me.

A peaceful shot.

For a story I wrote on the local food bank.

Just because I loved the colors.

From a funeral I shot at Arlington National Cemetery for an old friend.

So here is the current plan to turn the scooter into a money making machine. I recently purchased a new police and fire scanner so I can monitor the airwaves for local ‘happenings” and I renewed my membership in the National Press Photographers Association, NPPA.org.

Just this morning I purchased my new press photographer shirts to wear when I’m shooting and as soon as I get the new GPS mounted on my bike, and it gets just a bit warmer, I’ll be ready to ride to shoot freelance press photos to sell to the local media and stock photo sites.

This is something that anyone that rides, and loves photography could do as well. You don’t have to be an experienced photographer. When shooting news events, 90% of the skill involved is just showing up. With the digital cameras available today, the rest is much easier than it was in the old days.

Here is the extra gear I have to let me do this.

1. Digital Camera – I have a Canon 5D Mark II professional camera. You don’t need anything like this. But you can’t use a low budget pocket point and click if you want to shoot stock photography images. Something that takes clear pictures that are more than 6 megapixels is good enough. And a digital SLR camera is better.
2. Scanner – After looking around I decided to buy a Grecom PSR-500 programable scanner. I think Radio Shack sells some cheaper scanners but choices at ScannerMaster.com will really open your eyes to what is available. The scanner I selected gives me audible and visual alerts for specific channels so I can tell at a glance what is going on. I can also easily program it with my computer.

   My favorite call of the day so far was for a stranger sleeping in a homeowners bed and a strange Volvo parked out back. You know the poor person probably came home wasted and went into the wrong house and went to sleep.

3. GPS – After careful consideration and discussions with some of my Burgman buddies I decided to get a new GPS and went with the Garmin Zumo 450. The ability to trade riding files for routes and the left hand operation for motorcyclists was my deciding factor.
4. Press Photographer Shirt – I could not find any shirts to identify me as a press photographer so I created and ordered a couple of bright Press Photographer shirts. I find that these are helpful when you turn up at a busy scene to help everyone know why you are taking pictures. With security alertness everywhere these days some people think you must be a terrorist just because you are taking pictures. In tense situations it is just better to let them easily see why you are there.

I also did my homework and contacted the local police public information officer (PIO) and made sure I was clear on what their policy was for incident photography. They gave me the watch commander cell number in case I get hassled on the scene by any officer.

Now, armed with my gear and my Burgman I can get to any scene as fast or faster than anybody else. The Burgman is a critical part of my gear and I can’t wait to start shooting incident photos, as soon as it gets just a bit warmer out.

©2010 Suzuki Burgman Scooter Riders - 'Lovers of Fun'. All Rights Reserved.

The part of the site that was updated was the forum section, not the overall site. The new forum can be found here. If you have not used that part of the site before it allows you to post messages, respond to others and communicate with each other.

I think the forum part of the site has been an often overlooked niche and I invite you to explore it now, register and start posting your messages.

The bad news is that even if you had previously registered in the old forum software, you will have to register in the new forum as a new user. And I was not able to import all the old posts from the old software which was a bit buggy. And for those of you that had problems with activating your account, you know what I’m talking about. You can still see the old forum posts online here but you will not be able to add to them.

The good news is that you can now upload images and pictures into your forum posts in the new forum. Link to new forum. They will appear as a thumbnail but when people click on them they will be shown full size. This will be very helpful if you want to show some sort of tech procedure or detail. Rather than having to be limited by the size of the picture you can use, the thumbnail will be used in the text so pictures of all sizes can be uploaded.

Please take a few minutes to register for the new forum and introduce yourself again in the forum.

I did leave all the same sections of the forum up and in the same order for those of us nearing or over 50. Not having to look all over for something in a new place is helpful. (And why am I in the kitchen?)

The only exception to this is that I have moved the recent forum post listings up in the right hand column so it is near the top of the column. This should make it easier to see the ongoing discussions in the forum when you stop by the site.

You will also notice that if you subscribe to the feed via email that you will now also receive notice of new forum posts with links to them in your daily email.

And finally, you will notice that the Burgman with wings logo is now on top of the forum as well.

Steve

©2010 Suzuki Burgman Scooter Riders - 'Lovers of Fun'. All Rights Reserved.

The forum software has been a pain for both you and I. Some people have had problems with registration or activating their account and I’ve had my share of behind the scenes issues with it as well.

On one of my other sites I have had great success with a different software that works wonderfully. I’d love to install it here on the Burgman Riders site but here is the problem. If I do, it will probably wipe out all the past forum posts.

So we are left with a buggy forum or a clean slate. Which do you think is the better way for us to proceed?

I’ll move forward based on the feedback received so please add your feedback and comments and let me know your vote.

Steve

©2010 Suzuki Burgman Scooter Riders - 'Lovers of Fun'. All Rights Reserved.