Getting ready to tour (someday)!

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I ordered 40-liter hard sad­dle­bags and elec­tric heat­ed hand­grips for the Moto Guzzi today. I’m still unde­cid­ed about the wind­screen ver­sus tour­ing fair­ing ques­tion and I don’t have any long trips planned in the imme­di­ate future, so I held off on order­ing one of those. I’ve proven I can do an overnight trip just with bungee cords and web­bing on my fend­er and pas­sen­ger seat, and my mes­sen­ger bag, but get­ting the weight off of my back and elim­i­nat­ing some of the uncer­tain­ty of tying items down will be wel­comed the next time.

http://www.motoguzzi-us.com/accessories/stone/windshields.html

plus there are thou­sands of wind­screens not sold as “gen­uine Moto Guzzi parts” to choose from. I don’t like wind­screens or fair­ings but I sus­pect that the more oppor­tu­ni­ties I have to ride free­way speeds for hours on end the more I’ll want to have one of these things installed.

I may nev­er need the elec­tric hand­grips in the Bay Area, but my expe­ri­ence on the bicy­cle tells me that hands are the hard­est thing to keep warm and not some­thing that can be relo­cat­ed to a warmer loca­tion (pock­ets, armpits) while rid­ing. Call me an old man if you like, but the elec­tric hand­grips sound total­ly excel­lent to me.

And yes, this means that the Moto Guzzi is home from the shop, with a clean bill of health.

Published by splicer

6 Replies to “Getting ready to tour (someday)!”

  1. I’ve a lot of friends who
    I’ve a lot of friends who have motor­cy­cles in SF and they like the heat­ed hand­grips. They did­n’t exist in the days I rode but I would have loved them. And, I would have loved a fair­ing or, at least, a wind­shield. They had those but I was too stu­pid to buy one. 🙂

  2. I sure would like
    I sure would like hand­warm­ers on my bicy­cle! It has been a cold spring out here. I nev­er had fair­ings or a wind­shield, but sim­ply because they don’t look cool on the types of motor­cy­cles I had. In addi­tion to mak­ing the ride more com­fort­able (less wind buf­fet­ing, warmer, etc.) they also make your bike faster and increase your MPG.

    Dad

  5. Con­sid­er­ing that I’ve spent
    Con­sid­er­ing that I’ve spent as much on gaso­line for the Moto Guz­zler in the last two weeks as I did in three months of rid­ing the Vira­go, “increase my MPG” sounds pret­ty good.

    Yeah, bicy­cle hand­warm­ers sound like an idea wait­ing to make some­one a bezil­lion­airre. Prob­a­bly the best way to do it would be to build the warm­ers into a pair of gloves. They’d like­ly have to be chem­i­cal too, or else car­ry­ing bat­ter­ies could be a prob­lem. Attach­ing a gen­er­a­tor to a wheel would like­ly put too much drag into the mix.

    I don’t think fair­ings look par­tic­u­lar­ly cool, but it does depend on the bike, does­n’t it? I think I inher­it­ed some of my taste in bikes from you. I can’t stand to see a beau­ti­ful motor hid­den behind plastic.

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