I don’t know this guy, but I know people who know this guy – and I’d like to become much better acquainted. My main complaint with the wealthy mostly centers on the ridiculous things they tend to do with their wealth: $450 mil for a DaVinci here, $200 mil for a Van Gogh there, a gold toilet… if all you’re looking for is a place to store your wealth, why not store it in expensive things you can completely destroy in the blink of an eye?

I always say shopping is cheaper than a psychiatrist.

Every once in awhile we get opened-end motorcycle loan agreements from manufacturers. What does that mean for you? It means we have a chance to really put a motorcycle through the ringer. We have the time to schedule overnight, long rides. We have the time to schedule track days. We have the time to really live with a motorcycle and give our best interpretation of what it would be like for a potential owner to, well, actually own the thing.

You’ve got a brand new Yamaha R3, and you want to share the excitement by teaching your significant other how to ride too. It’s a small lightweight bike that’s easy to handle, the parking lot is flat and safe – what could go wrong?

Really, $20,000 doesn’t seem at all out of line for the very bike Tony le Tigre won five Superbike races on last season, especially given that a standard GSX-R1000R sells for over $17k. This one makes 221 rear-wheel horses, according to the ad, and weighs 370 pounds. It’s only got 300 miles on it.

Today’s Butchered Classic, from the Facebook group of the same name, is this ex-Honda CBX1000, thrashed to within an inch of its life by Bad Seeds Motorcycles of Japan. Wait, actually they are in France, which explains a lot. What was once a beautiful motorcycle and the apogee of Honda engineering circa 1980, is now a moldering mess of mismatched appendages that appear to have been rear-ended by a deep-South Senatorial candidate.

The all-new 2017 GSX-R1000 is “a huge impact model for us,” Takeshi Hayasaki, president of Suzuki Motor of America, told us at the Gixxer’s launch earlier this year. As such, part of the new GSX-R’s media launch included tours of Suzuki’s three main facilities in Japan where we could witness the care and precision that goes into each bike’s development and its production.

You know you want a new motorcycle.

What’s the best first bike?

Electric motorcycles may be the future, but right now they are far from being price-competitive with their gasoline-powered cousins. But don’t worry! Even though having an electric motorcycle can cost you many thousands of more dollars, you may be able to even out the price difference.

Lane Splitting. That’s what motorcyclists and law enforcement call it when you’re riding between two lanes of slow-moving or stopped traffic. But can you do it without risking a ticket or worse?

Lane Splitting. It’s the practice of riding a motorcycle between rows of stopped or slow-moving traffic. You probably know that it’s been legal in California for many years, but what you may not know is that it’s explicitly or implicitly illegal in every other U.S. state.

Lane-splitting, as the practice of riding a motorcycle between lanes of stopped or slow-moving vehicles is called, is either explicitly against the law or is a riding style that will get you written up for violating some other law in every state in the USA except California – and even there, you can’t do it however you want. Ride smart or get a ticket is the rule, but if you get caught, what’s the fine for lane splitting?

We were so busy running around EICMA making silver screen magic with our own videos, we didn’t even have time to stop by actual movie star Keanu Reeves’ Arch Motorcycles display. Which is a damn shame, because you know that’s where all the cool people were and we could’ve maybe discussed our craft. It’s also a shame because Arch had two new models on display.

I don’t know if when Honda puts a motorcycle in a crate it expects it to stay in there for 37 years, but whoever buys this 1980 still-in-the-crate CBX1000 off of Craigslist will pay handsomely to find out how good the state of post-manufacture suspended animation was in 1980.

Entering turn one, the new Dorsoduro 900’s wide handlebar would allow me to easily point the big supermoto toward the apex and then quickly afterward, get it pointed toward the next. Out of the corner of my eye I saw coach Can Akkaya wheelie-ing through the shortcut on the track to make his way in front of me. Can would tap the rear fender of his KTM 450 supermoto shod with race slicks, indicating I should follow his lines closely around the track. As we made our way around the tight little Stockton 99 Kart and Motorcycle track, coach Akkaya would point to each apex and then up to the outside of the track and then back to the next apex while, in between, motioning to keep my eyes up and moving from corner to corner.

I see Comrade Burns has taken another page from John’s Little Red Book to hold forth yet again on his notion of making the United States a communal roadside bangles and holistic herbal healing stand. From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs or something. In the last episode, we discovered the reason kids aren’t buying bikes is because we don’t live in a worker’s paradise. Well I’d like to take a moment and interrupt John’s embryonic five-year plan to simply say, “Piffle.”

Today, Michelin announced a new sport-touring tire, the Michelin Road 5. Although the Road 5 supersedes the Pilot Road 4, the Pilot has been dropped from the name in an effort to differentiate Michelin’s road-going offerings from the more hard-core sporting Power line. The primary change between the Pilot Road 4 and the Road 5 takes place in the tread’s siping and the incorporation of ACT+ technology seen earlier this year on the Michelin Power RS.

We nearly panicked when we noticed Suzuki’s not scheduled for a presentation at the world’s biggest motorcycle show next week, but not to worry. They’ll be at EICMA with all their wares on display, they’re just not putting on the typical dog and pony show. Does that mean there’s nothing new and exciting beyond a new V-Strom 250? Not to worry: “Suzuki will display already announced 2018 models at EICMA in Milan, and may show some additional new product,” says Suzuki’s Avery Innis.

And now for my next complaint. The topic keeps coming up: Why aren’t more people buying motorcycles? When applied to Millennials, we conjectured a few Whatevers ago – after minutes of careful thought and some research including opening our eyeballs – that they’re not buying more motorcycles because they have no money. I’ll add to that today: In addition to not having any money, riders are also not buying more motorcycles because they simply have no damn time to ride them.

Kawasaki’s Versys-X 300 impressed us when we first rode it this spring, with John Burns reporting that it would be a good machine to “propagate your bigger adventures.” Then, after some time on it this summer, its versatility and affordability helped us decide to give it accolades as the Honorable Mention in our Best On/Off-Road Adventure motorcycle of 2017. To better put it to test, we assigned our newest editor, Brent Jaswinski, to load up the littlest Versys with camping gear and head out on the road for an adventure of his own. –Ed.

Meanwhile in the Old Country, the European Association of Motorcycle Manufacturers (ACEM) has released its third-quarter numbers. In Europe, they keep track of the bike population by counting new registrations, and for the first nine months of this year, new motorcycle sales were down 5.1%. If you include mopeds, new registrations are down just 1.6%.

Today’s first ever installment of I’d Ride it. You?, which I just invented, is an Ariel Square Four Chopper found on Butcheredclassics.com.

Bell Powersports invited us to tour its American R&D and design facility this week so we could see with our own eyes the care and dedication that goes into the creation and testing of its head-protection efforts. It was enlightening to learn all that goes on behind the scenes at its Scotts Valley, California, location.

Yesterday we reported Indian made great strides in Q3, with a claimed increase in retail sales of 16% – a day on which mothership Polaris’s stock (PII) jumped the same 16%. In that same third quarter, Indian’s cowboy, Harley-Davidson, saw its sales decline 8.1%. Unlike Indian, H-D actually breaks out numbers: 45,469 units sold domestically in Q3 2016 slid to 41,793 in Q3 2017 – and 161,658 units for the whole year. Domestically.

Say, did we miss the Suzuki GSX-R’s 30th birthday party? Sorry about that – but you know how it is when you have so many children running around the house. You lose track. The GSX-R grew so ubiquitous over the years – if you weren’t tripping over one in the garage, you were backing over one in a parking lot or crashing one at Willow Springs. Lately, however, there seems to be a lot of interest in the motorcycle that led Suzuki directly to the GSX-R. That would be the GS1000R, better known now as XR69.

Are we in the future, or what? We can buy groceries from Beijing while we video chat with family in Baltimore, carry supercomputers around in our pockets, and doctors can make new human body parts in a Petri dish. We don’t have jet packs or hoverbikes, but we may have the next best thing: practical electric motorcycles, motorcycles that ranges of 100 miles or more.

You aren’t sure if you’re making the right decision – about anything, ever. 

“Whiskey Throttle” happens when the instinct to hang on for dear life overrides the proper control input, which in this case would be to shut off the throttle. It’s hard to roll the throttle closed, however, when you find yourself running along behind the motorcycle.  Learn more in todays’s Video clip of the day, sponsored by Hatch Illustrations.

“I need more time, leave me alone, please!” Mascara runs down her cheek, shoaling in an alluvial, Revlon-delta at the base of her nose. This isn’t any way to start our New Zealand motorcycle tour. High on the twelfth floor of Auckland’s Sky City Grande hotel, my wife, Colleen, is sitting on the bed crying. Eleven suitcases must be condensed to fit inside the cramped storage space of our metallic-burgundy Victory Vision.

Our man Evans came back breathless about the new 2018 Honda Gold Wing a couple days ago. With its new ride-by-wire engine, optional electronic suspension, and overhauled electronics and entertainment systems, the long-running, long-distance ’Wing has definitely entered the 21st century. These five specs, though, are the ones that jump off the page as the ones that we expect are going to transform what was a touring bike into a truly sporty touring bike.

Stay in your own lane!

By now we’re all accustomed to Cadillac using classic Led Zeppelin tunes to hawk its cars, Taco Bell selling chalupas via Guns ‘n Roses, Beatles songs selling Nikes. It’s all fair game if the price is right, but it wasn’t always so. In a new biography called  Lou Reed: A Life, Anthony DeCurtis makes the case that it all began with a commercial Reed made in 1984 to help Honda launch its new line of scooters, the soundtrack being Reed’s greatest hit, “Walk on the Wild Side.”

My first crash on a motorcycle was a highside. I knew not as to why I had flung over the handlebars like a circus acrobat. I had never ridden a bike before, so my skills on one were very subpar. That was until I went to Coach2Ride, the school that gave me my first step into exercising my passion to become a proficient motorcyclist.

Triumph the Art of the Motorcycle

Today, Zero Motorcycles announced its 2018 model line, and while the lineup remains unchanged from a model name standpoint, that doesn’t mean the electric motorcycle company has been sitting still.

Have you ever dreamt of being able to ride your motorcycle anywhere and everywhere? Of course you have, as that’s probably one of the main reasons why you bought one in the first place – to adventure with! Motorcycles, simply put, are adventure machines. They’re obviously designed to take you places, however, motorcycles each have their own capabilities and limitations on where they can go and what they can do. For instance, you wouldn’t take your R1 or Gixxer down a long, rutted, dirt road or trail would you? Well, maybe you might, but it wouldn’t be ideal. A dual-sport or adventure bike would be much better suited for such a task. But even these bikes have their limits. However, one type of bike can do all the above while not only putting a giant smile on your face, but also on any onlookers who happen to see you too! I’m talking about minibikes here, people.

The clop, clop, clop of my steel shoe resonating through my helmet as I walked through the uncomfortable October heat at Perris Auto Speedway in my trusty NJK leathers as I headed toward the snarling motorcycle that was waiting for me.

I am a product of the 1970s, the decade of the UJM (Universal Japanese Motorcycle), what’s become known as the “standard” motorcycle. I come from a generation that gazed at Bol d’Or or Suzuka specials on magazine covers and drooled. I was a “standard” guy by any measure, and my meager means at the time made it so. Much as I once drooled over a new Ducati 900SS sitting in a shop next to an equally alluring Darmah, I could no more afford those bikes at the time, much less the upkeep, than I could an Ivy League education. The beauty of those bikes though was evident right down to the attention to detail and artistry of the controls and rear-sets. But I was a rubber footpegs kind of guy; I was woefully standard.

I asked around at the launch of the Dorsoduro (and Shiver) 900, why was this bike named “Dorsoduro”? I know what the Dorsoduro is and have visited the district in the Italian city of Venice on two separate occasions, but I was looking for an answer full of emotion and history which I have come to expect from Italian manufacturers (and their marketing departments). To my surprise, everyone began to tell me what the name was rather than why it was named as such. Well, after having ridden the 2018 Aprilia Dorsoduro 900, it is clear to me why the Italian manufacturer would look to one of Italy’s most iconic cities and why they would choose the sestieri of Dorsoduro as its namesake.

For a lot of us motorcycle enthusiasts, our obsession with motorcycles or even motorsports in general began sometime during our youth. I don’t know exactly what it was about motorcycles that sparked my fascination. Was it the fact that they’re loud and menacingly fast or was it because my middle name is Danger and I have an audacious propensity to make my mom nervous? All I knew was that I was hooked and nothing was going to change that. Sorry, Mom…

When Aprilia invited Motorcycle.com to the press introduction for the 2018 Shiver 900 first ride, I thought, hadn’t that model been announced at EICMA 2016 as an upcoming 2017 model? If so, the model had been selling for a while already, right? It had. But as is typical, those lucky Europeans got it first and we had to wait. After the bikes made their journey across the ocean, braving Hurricane Harvey, and worse yet, meeting homologation, the new 900s arrived state-side. A few weeks later, the introduction of the new 2018 Aprilia Shiver 900 would commence.

Dear MOby,

Who knew our favorite alco, er, celebrity chef, could ride a motorcycle? In this latest installment of “Raw Craft,” a series of profiles of people who build things by hand sponsored by Balvenie Distillery, Bourdain travels to Max Hazan’s Los Angeles custom bike shop. A really interesting 10-minute video ensues.

I stumbled into an interesting Facebook group a few days ago: ButcheredClassics contains some pretty interesting motorcycles, but it’s definitely not for the faint of heart. In contrast, Jeff Harrison’s tastefully modified KZ900 is only mildly egregious, but in a good, dirty way.

Just like dinosaurs, two-stroke motorcycles once ruled the earth but are now mostly a thing of the past (save for alligators and crocodiles, you can’t tell me those things aren’t dinosaurs.) Over the past 20 years or so, two-strokes have practically vanished from the streets due to the obvious environmental consequences and strict government emissions regulations. They have been replaced by cleaner, more reliable four-strokes however many people miss the sound, smell and sensation of a two-stroke hitting its power band… what a rush! We are left to nostalgically reminisce about a simpler time when you had to mix oil with your gas and keep a spare spark plug handy. Test your knowledge and see how well you remember the good ol’ days by identifying these two-smokers!

From the seat of eight-time Champion Giacomo Agostini’s pants, through Kenny Roberts and the introduction of computers into the paddock with Wayne Rainey, data acquisition has come a long way. This four-minute vid from MotoGP takes us on a quick spin through history up to the present day, featuring a cast of illustrious racers, tuners, and hoary old computers.

Upcoming Motorcycle Events: Oct 3 – Oct 31

Ever since Yamaha introduced its modern “Hyper Naked” lineup with the FZ-09, there’s been a bit of brand confusion. That’s because, to markets outside of North America, the FZ-09, FZ-07 and FZ-10 are known as the MT-09, MT-07 and MT-10, respectively.

Hitting the road (or trail) on a motorcycle can make you feel like a modern day cowboy chasing the sun into a horizon of new experiences and foreign places. I think just about every motorcyclist will agree with me in saying that there’s an air of adventure that is inherently built into every bike. Whether it’s on or off-road, motorcycles can take you places in a way other vehicles cannot.

I must have a prodigious amount of mind; it takes me as much as a week, sometimes, to make it up!

Here’s our weekly guide to the upcoming motorcycle events and rides that are happening within the next 30 days.

Oliepiel in the Netherlands has posted what are reportedly leaked shots of the new long-anticipated Honda Gold Wing, and what could be a new F6B-type bagger. The photos definitely have a legitimate look; the bikes appear to be finished products and ready to roll on October 24, which would mean these are what Honda was teasing with its “What Lies Beyond” video we posted on 9/11 (which features an original GL at the end).

A veterinary superhero by day and engineering extraordinaire by night, when Dr. Alan Cross isn’t performing orthopedic surgery helping animals, he’s in his garage at home in Atlanta designing and engineering his next creation. Pictured here is what he calls the ExoDyne. This is what you get when you cross a motivated doctor with an engineering degree and a passion for motorsports! And that’s not to mention the metalworking and fabrication skills he’s learned on his own.

Sena Technologies, Inc. will showcase its new range of communication units, helmets and accessories at the American International Motorcycle Expo in Columbus at Booth # 1311. Sena will be showing the Momentum smart helmet series and 30K Mesh Intercom communication system, which have both been revamped since last seen at AIMExpo in 2016.  

Don’t know about you, but one of my favorite ways to attempt to keep my personal bore-to-stroke ratio reasonably undersquare is to pedal around on my bicycle, and I know I am not alone. Many motorcyclists are also big on bicycling, which makes Yamaha’s entry into the US e-bike industry kind of a big deal. Correct, they’re not motorcycles, but we think we like Yamaha’s new e-Bikes anyway. It announced four new models this morning at the big Interbike show:

Lots of motorcycles now come with the full complement of adjusters on their suspension. However, even the most basic bike will let you, at the very least, adjust the rear preload. Let’s take a look at how you can set your bike’s suspension sag to get the most out of their damping capabilities.

Alpinestars Crank Riding Jean delivers a subtle, euro-styled, option for those looking to find a balance between safety and style.

Here’s our weekly guide to the upcoming motorcycle events and rides that are happening within the next 30 days.