Wilsons Sandbox

--- In DSN_KLR650@yahoogroups.com, "Michael Silverstein" wrote:

> Yeah, Honda's marketing team seems to have missed the idea that there's > a lot of middle-aged, long time riders out there who don't want to be > crouched over on sport bikes or stretched out on cruisers, but want > practical, comfortable, capable, sporty bikes.

Honda already has one "old people" bike -- the GoldWing. And another -- the ST1300. Both of which are gigantic overpowered overplastic'ed monsters, but old farts buy them by the drove. I suppose Honda thinks old farts don't want teeny bikes, citing their experience selling the TransAlp and Pacific Coast here. But we were younger back when Honda was selling those bikes here, and we're older now. A Wee-strom or VerSys with ABS would make a fine bike for my daily commute -- small enough to be easily handled in city traffic (unlike the ginormous Honda tourers), nice pleasant well-balanced engines, comfortable riding position, etc., but with the brakes to handle rain. As it is right now, during the rainy season my KLR spends most of its time in my garage, except during the limited periods when it has rained enough recently to wash all the car droppings off of the street and into the food chain. The roads around here are just too darned slippery in the rain for me to be comfortable riding a non-ABS bike in the rain here, the roads get like ice with all the congealed car droppings liberated to ooze around like some monster out of an old horror movie... my truck's ABS brakes activate regularly when the roads are wet here during normal braking, and that doesn't bode well for a bike without ABS. -E