173: Off to Jerk for Me

Well, I will do this bloggy post first, though. :)

I'm still feeling pretty stoked about the good ride I had yesterday.
It was quite a refreshing and much-welcomed change when I decided to do a couple runs through that neat-o pine forest section with the whoops.
That reminded me a lot of how my riding spots were back in the good ol' days, days when I could roll up to any one of half a dozen places, get my new YZ-250 out of my truck, and ride to my heart's content.
Those Phase 4 forks took the big whoops very well, and with the "aggressive woods" valving spec. that is in them, the bigger the bumps, the better they work.
I do wonder if I'd be better off with the "woods" specification, which would probably trade some big bump capability for better small bump absorption.
The way the fork performs over small bumps is still better than the stock fork, but I'm always looking for better, still, and if the parts are available to me to make it better, I just might do it.

One thing that I am very satisfied with is the performance of the rear suspension.
All I've had to do is adjust the spring preload in order for me to achieve the usual 4 inches of "sag" (the distance my body weight compresses the rear suspension) and fine tune the damping clickers to suit me.
I'm still amazed on practically every ride how well the rear performs - it is downright excellent.
I have no desire to modify or change a thing as far as how it works goes.
In fact, the only work I ever do or plan on doing is the required routine maintenance in order to keep it performing as it does.

This is, by the way, exactly what maintenance is:
Maintaining the performance.

You know, it seems to me that a lot of riders don't really understand (or, at least act like they don't understand) what maintenance on a motorcycle is all about.
If you ride, ride, ride without ever lifting a wrench and then realize you need to take your bike apart to replace all of the rear suspension bearings and related collars, spacers, and oil seals, well, guess what?
By that time, you're not going in there to maintain it.
You're going in there to make repairs, Bucky.

You see, you take the bike apart at specified intervals so that you can apply more fresh grease to those critical and high-precision parts, not wait until they're worn out because you didn't maintain the high level of precision the parts once had.
See?
That's what is meant by maintenance.
You are supposed to do what is required to maintain a high level of performance, not do nothing and let things degrade.

I know guys who fancy themselves as skilled dirt bike mechanics, and they will take the ride-it-until-it-wears-out route every time.
Yet, they will be ridiculously fanatical about another area of dirt bike performance that isn't as critical.
For example, I know a guy who is fanatical about having the proper-sized main jet in his bike for the current weather conditions.
On the other hand, this same guy treats the task of air filter maintenance as if it were something that you can do once a year.
To me, this is so ironic and backwards, it's like claiming you're an avid fitness fanatic and go running every morning, yet come lunch time, you fill-up on Big Macs and Twinkies and wash it down with soda pop until you're ready to barf.
Every day.

This basically removes much of his clout as being a whizz-bang motorcycle technical guru in my book.
Names shall be withheld to protect the guilty. :)

On another funny note (C sharp, maybe? :) ), I wrote a response on a message board where a guy was complaining that his brandy-new Yamaha WR-250X is a dog, and that he's basically sorry he bought it.
The WR-250X, by the way, is the street version of the WR-250R dual-purpose bike I had up until last month.

I wrote back a detailed post about how he needs to spend some dough on uncorking the bike from the ridiculous EPA regulations that bikes suffer from these green agenda days.
I told him exactly what guys are doing to cure this, so now we'll see what he thinks about this information.
If he's got a head on his shoulders, he'll do it and enjoy the strongest-performing 250cc street bike Yamaha ever sold in the USA.
If he's an unrealistic whiner, he'll bitch, piss, and moan and sell the bike.
We'll see. :)

Off to jerk,
-John