swfarrar

Hi swfarrar, Thank you for your donation of 50.00 USD. We look forward to improving the forums with your donation. Thanks VFRDiscussion

Hi swfarrar, Thank you for your donation of 25.00 USD. We look forward to improving the forums with your donation. Thanks VFRDiscussion

Something I meant to add in my previous post - As marriedman said, the bag liners are for getting your gear to your hotel room or campsite without have to take off the side cases. Another very good reason to have them is to keep things from falling out of the inner side of the case into the outer side when you open it. The elastic bands will keep larger things in place but won't stop smaller things. It's so much easier to just take out the bag zip it open and find what you want rather than having to repack the case every time you need to rummage through it.

The OEM bags do look tidier and don't require installation of side racks but the Givis are of equal quality to the Honda bags. In fact Givi was making the bags for Honda at the time I bought mine. I commuted with my bags for several years in Seattle. Plenty of opportunities for leaks but never had a problem One small tip about packing for a long trip. Arrange your stuff as much as possible with the heavy stuff, your tool roll, your bottle of bourbon, at the bottom of the side cases and lighter stuff in the top box. It's amazing how top heavy you can make the bike if all your bags are full. I recommend these black reflective tape kits. They're almost invisible in the daytime but light up brilliantly when hit by headlights. http://www.reflectivelyyours.com/generic117.html

This discussion reminds me of a cartoon in the New Yorker some time ago. Two older women are sitting in a nice living room having tea. One of them says, "Well, at least he died doing what he loved, giving truckers the finger on the New Jersey turnpike."

Flat Stanley at Dawato Bay, Washington '04 VFR Ferry on the Sunshine Coast, B.C.

All good advice here and I won't expand on that except to say that you shouldn't take a flashlight, take a headlamp. Most of the things you'd need a flashlight for on a bike trip take two hands and unless you're comfortable holding a flashlight in your mouth for 15 minutes, a headlamp is the way to go. There are decent LED headlamps for as little as $20 (don't cheap out and buy a headlamp with an incandescent bulb. they chew through batteries and aren't very bright.)

I just moved away from 15+ years of daily commuting and touring out of Seattle. Here are a few things I found essential to comfortable riding: - Heated grips make a dramatic difference in your comfort and let you wear thinner gloves that give you more precise control. - A helmet visor with a pin-lock fog shield. Best investment you can make in your safety and comfort. If a pin-lock visor isn't available for your helmet the Fog City ProShield is an alternative but at some sacrifice to optical clarity and durability. - Heated bib or vest. The Kanetsu Warmbib from aerostitch.com was one of the best upgrades I made to my riding experience. - Waterproof boots and gloves. These might seem obvious but without good ones you're going to be uncomfortable. - A white silk scarf to bridge the gap between the bottom of your helmet and jacket collar. Adds just the right touch to your worldly persona, as well.

One of my skiing buddies calls advil (ibuprofen), "Old man candy."

All good information so far and I would add a few suggestions. - Carrying a flashlight is good but what you really want is an LED headlamp. A lot of things you might be doing in the dark, unpacking or packing the bike, pitching a tent or cooking require two hands and holding a flashlight in your mouth gets tiresome after a very short time. - Agree with the idea of a bigger tent. Most tents marketed as 'two-person' are barely big enough for one adult. A good three-person tent is minimum for one person and their gear and tight for two people. Remember, you're going to need to change clothes in there and that's really hard to do if you don't have the headroom to be at least in a kneeling position. The difference in weight over a smaller tent isn't going to matter to the bike. - A really handy thing to have is a small rectangle of ensolite or other closed cell foam, big enough to let you sit on a wet picnic bench or the ground and to kneel on when you're working on the bike in the gravel on the side of the road. It can also go under your hips when you're in your sleeping bag to make things a little more comfortable. Unlike the OP I've had very good luck with the REI brand self-inflating mattresses. If you're going to use a blow-up mattress have a patch kit with you. - I'm not a big fan of Starbucks but agree with the recommendation of the VIA coffee packets, especially the Columbia variety. I have them with me whenever I travel. Even if you're staying in a motel room the VIA coffee is likely to be better than the cheap coffee packets that come with the typical motel coffee maker. - And remember, you can fix anything if you're handy with a credit card.

I commuted daily for more than 15 years in Seattle, plus skiing every winter in the Cascades where conditions were often marginal. Riding in the rain was a fact of life. As one of my skiing buddies said, "There is no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing choices."

The EMGO brand of aftermarket mirrors are very well made, not too expensive and indistinguishable from stock mirrors. They make mirrors for almost every bike out there so be sure you're getting the one for the 6th gen VFR. I've had the stock, Givi touring and Zero Gravity Double Bubble screens on my 2004 and finally was most satisfied with the MRA Vario.

I used a Throttle Rocker for years on four different bikes and never had a control problem. There are two models of the Throttle Rocker, the original all-plastic one and the 'Mark II' model that attaches with a velcro strap. Definitely go for the original, once it's in place it stays there. I could never get the one with the velcro strap to stay in position now matter how much I tried to tighten it. https://throttlerocker.3dcartstores.com/ At $11 it's a great investment in comfort and not as fiddly as a cruise control or even the Throttlemeister, which I used for a couple of years on an ST-1100 but never really liked very much.

When I was a little kid growing up on the South Plains of Texas my grandfather would take me with him in his truck to the markets in San Antonio to buy watermelons in late spring when they first arrived from Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley. On the way back we would stop at grocery stores to sell as many as we could and then we'd park under a tree by the side of the road and sell them to anyone who stopped. One of the highlights of the return trips for me was getting to ride in the bed of the truck and, once in awhile, when I thought he wasn't looking, throw a watermelon over the tailgate just to see it explode on the pavement. Ten or twelve years later, when I started riding motorcycles, I remembered that image very, very well and never, ever rode without a helmet.

Thanks for the tip and please report back on how well they work. Several years ago I bought some aftermarket well nuts online and while the thread was correct the rubber body was just a tiny bit smaller diameter than the OEM version, making it very difficult to keep them from spinning in the hole when the bolt was turned. Can't remember where I got them, though.