nklr sad news

[Istvan Sz]

Hello Everybody! I haven't sent out an update of my trip since I stopped riding my dear Csardas. Now I am in Hungary, almost settled in, and I'm in desperate need of finding an almost complete rear wheel to be able to ride my bike again. As you guys all know, I have gone through some very rough roads in South America, and my bike barely took me home. So far I could find only one KLR 650 in Budapest, and that was one made in 1984. That's an A1, right? So I managed to get some addresses from this guy, and from a Suzuki store a friendly guy tried to help me finding some scavanged used parts from Germany (estimated price about 250 CAD for a whole rear wheel, used tire included. Well, these are good news, but still promisses only - so far. That's why I thought I'll send this message to the Collective, maybe somebody out there knows a great source or have a spare that it is not needed. You guys are a great bunch of riders, you all were very helpful while I was on my way to South America, I'm sure there will be many of you who can come up with some kind of solution. Please, if you know anything or anybody who can help me, or maybe can, drop me an e-mail. Cheers, and take care on/off the road! istvan and Csardas _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com

[monahanwb@yahoo.com]

--- In DSN_klr650@y..., "Istvan Sz" wrote:

> Hello Everybody!So I > managed to get some addresses from this guy, and from a Suzuki

store a

> friendly guy tried to help me finding some scavanged used parts

from Germany

> (estimated price about 250 CAD for a whole rear wheel, used tire

included.

>

Jeez, he just missed Jim Jackson's wheel set; would have done him well.

[Susan Moorhead]

gtx, Try to picture this scenario, take your DS bike, strip it of all lights, ride it at night with no moonlight in an unfamiliar area cross country, no real roads and cattle roaming loose over thousands of acres. There were 20 or so of us riding single file about 20 meters apart. All you could really see of the bike in front of you was a silhouette. One of the guys in the middle of the group fell, going slow so no real injuries (except maybe his pride), by the time he (and the rest of the group) got back going again, the front of the group was nowhere to be seen. The guy who fell thought he saw one of us ahead and proceeded to catch and follow that silhouette. Turns out he was following a stray cow. We weren't riding fast, just putting along in 2nd gear about 10 or 12 mph. When the back part of the group realized what had happened, they shut off their bikes to try and locate the rest of us by following the sound of our bikes. Taking off in the direction of our sound, the leader of the "lost" group rode his bike into a ravine and crashed hard, turns out there was some "junk" concrete left by one of the local ranchers in the bottom of the ravine, he hit his head on the concrete and his CVC helmet split down the middle and came off with the chin strap still intact and fastened. The guy immediately behind him saw the first rider just drop out of site, so he laid his bike down right at the edge of the drop off. The second rider got off his bike at the top with his bike perched at the edge, the third rider bumped the second guys bike and pushed it over the edge right on top of the guy laying under his bike at the bottom. Keep in mind that all these bikes had been crashed many times in the dirt, and most of them had the rubber ends torn off of the grips, leaving a bare steel end sticking out. When that second bike landed on top of the first, one of the handle bar ends went right into the rider's eye socket. End of story for his career and a normal life. The whole idea of Masters Testing programs when I served in the Army was to try and put one years worth of wear and tear on a piece of equipment in only 90 days, to try and get an idea of reliability and maintenance costs. It was the opinion of most of the people in my unit, myself included, that had we been equipped with real helmets, the rider most likely would have remained conscious after the impact and would not have been laying unconscious under his bike after a seven foot fall.

----- Original Message ----- From: gtx To: DSN_klr650@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Saturday, July 14, 2001 6:38 PM Subject: Re: [DSN_klr650] Re: NKLR Sad News > Sorry to hear of the loss of you're friend, but in the interests of other > riders myself included, how did the other guy lose his eye? > I think it is this kind of injury that makes people sit up and take > notice,road rash in my opinion is an acceptable risk to take[in moments of > madness] on severly hot days[ t-shirt,vest,etc], however I just never ride > without a helmet,and it depends on the type of riding you're doing > ,challenging offroad or you're favorite bit of tarmac . > But when it comes to sight I for one am very safe,or hope to be! > The worlds a shitty place sometimes! > with one eye shittier > To be blind, well you get my point > Gary > ----- Original Message ----- >