It's Raining Cats & Dogs ...

... for quite a while now. Yeah, I know we need the water, we need the rain. But damn it, it's raining most of the time since I got the new bike. Getting really frustrated here.

At least I received a few goodies which I will install when I find a bit more time when it's not as cold in the garage as it is right now. Got a rear hugger (piece of sh..), front fender extender (not yet checked), Triumph gel seat (nice, but only tested around the block so far), rear paddock stand bobbins, Triumph radiator guard. Also still have to mount the heated grips and this seems to be a longer task, quite a few bits and pieces to be done for this.

Still on order: Tiger XC handle bar risers (+30mm), R&G bar end weights. The bars vibrate quite a bit at the moment but I guess that will settle down once the engine is properly adjusted. Will have to see when I find time to do this.

Other than that, the top case mounting plate from AltRider didn't fit, I've sent it back to AltRider, awaiting their re-designed one. Not sure when this will show up, but hopefully soon, so that I can use my top case again. I plan on getting a smaller top case, too, don't want to ride around with the large Givi V46 all the time when I mostly only need one third of the space.

Reviews for all those items coming, but I plain didn't have enough time even riding the bike plain as is - still only have 300 miles on it. Just too rainy at the moment.

Not Enough Photos ...

Tiger 800 on Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, CA

Touratech Pricing Again

By chance I stumbled over absolutely insane Touratech USA pricing again. Somehow they must be completely nuts. It's unbelievable.

For a Kahedo tankbag:

Touratech Germany (before tax): $198 (USD after conversion from EUR)
Touratech USA (before tax): $372.30 (USD)

This is ridiculous. I can only recommend to never ever buy anything from these guys. I will certainly not buy anything there again. It's plain too crazy.

The price in Germany is high, but it's not completely out of this world. The US pricing is a joke. And a bad one, too.

Private Blog Moved Here, Too

After realizing that the last entry on our private blog was from about a year ago (vacation on Maui), I decided to just point www.event-s.net to here, too.

Makes no sense keeping a Mac Mini running at home all the time and having it just idle around for nothing. We'll likely replace it with a 3rd generation AppleTV sooner or later and keep it around as the "desktop" computer. Seems that the hard drive is also making trouble, the poor guy takes forever to boot and do anything with disk IO.

Therefore - don't be surprised when you get redirected here.

Tiger Farkeling

I ordered quite a few things for my Tiger already and some of them arrived. So far I have been seriously underwhelmed.

For now, I'm not going to name the products I am disappointed in to give the manufacturers a fair chance to respond first, but to be clear: so far only the Triumph OEM accessories have fit properly. I have bought a few aftermarket parts and so far was not able to make one of them fit. And I don't mean "fit properly" I mean "fit at all".

To give the manufacturers and retailers a chance to respond I have written emails to all of them and will see what comes back there.

So far - very happy with the Tiger and the Triumph parts, very unhappy with all aftermarket parts I have bought.

Domain Switch Done

This morning I switched over to the new sub domain. The best thing: it should all "just work". Even links into posts should continue to work.

Let me know if something broke for you.

Attention: Domain Will Change

You, yes, you - if you link to this blog, be aware that the domain in the next few days, so links will likely be broken for a while.

What I will do:

• use blog.event-s.net as the domain for this blog
• redirect r1200gs.event-s.net to blog.event-s.net (to at least bring links to the right place, if not the right page)
• redirect www.event-s.net, too

As you can see, it'll be more generic, I'll redirect existing domains here. Part of the effort is so that I can turn off that Mac Mini that hosts www.event-s.net currently and to have a more generic entry point. 

Downsizing

Maybe I shouldn't have done that test ride ...

2012 Triumph Tiger 800

In short, this is the most exciting motorcycle I ever had. It's incredibly easy to ride, an engine that is the best I have ever experienced in a bike, easy handling, unique sound.

Yesterday we rode up to Concord, CA, to trade in my R1200GS for this black 2012 Tiger. We rode back on small B roads along Mt. Diablo and through Morgan Territory - a nice ride and perfect for breaking in a new engine. And what an engine that is ... you could put in 4th or 5th gear and ride it all the way home if you really wanted to. Insane.

More to come ...

May have to change the blog address ...

Black Tiger - Yes, They Exist

Tiger 800

While looking for a more light weight bike, I wanted to compare four different bikes:

• Ducati Multistrada 1200
• KTM SMT 990
• Triumph Tiger 800
• Triumph Tiger 1050

To evaluate these bikes I headed North to Concorde to ACE Motorsports as this is a combined dealer for Ducati, KTM, and Triumph. 

They didn't have an SMT on the floor, but as I knew this would be the least interesting for me, it wasn't a deal breaker. 

Heading up on my BMW reminded me again what a wonderful touring bike the GS is - as long as it isn't windy. The buffeting from the windshield was again hitting me as soon as there was a slight side wind and I had a headache when I came home after two hours straight highway riding. It isn't too bad, and normally I can deal with it, especially as my normal touring consists of roads that are closer to 60km/h (40 mph) max than to the 105mk/h (65mph) I rode most of the time yesterday.

Nevertheless, the GS is just an effortless tourer, power en masse, comfortable riding position, nice big presence in traffic, good wind protection, noise not too bad. 

At the dealer I was greeted right away by the sight of the three bikes I wanted to sit on again. The Multistrada was really just out of curiosity as I have ridden one and decided back then that this isn't the bike for me. It might shorten my life too drastically with it's super bike like power, 150HP in touring and sport mode, the hooligan inducing handling and so on. It's also right around 20k, so quite expensive.

The Tigers were right there, one next to the other, they had the 1050 in my favorite color, diablo red and I really, really like the looks. On the floor was also a custom painted matte black Tiger 800 which I really liked, and they had a white 800 Tiger Roadie for test rides.

After going back and forth between the Tigers and the Ducati a few things are clear:

1. The seating position for me on the Ducati is the best. 
2. Tiger 1050 (2012 model with slightly lower handle bars) and Tiger 800 are about the same. They are close to perfect, a set of handle bar risers would make them perfect.
3. All three feel lighter when handling them while off the bike than my GS. This isn't all too surprising as the heaviest, the Tiger 1050, is still lighter than my GS and considerably smaller.
4. The Ducati and the Tiger 800 felt the lightest, with the Ducati having a slight edge due its perfect ergonomics for me.
5. The 800 feels quite a bit lighter than the 1050, which is probably because it is lower, has a narrower seat, is about 30kg lighter than the 1050 as it was on the floor.
6. The 800 doesn't look or feel smaller than the 1050. It just feels lighter. 
7. When sitting on the 800 the tank seems to go on forever, but when riding it, it's not noticeable for me.

I took the 800 out for a spin and was reminded again how much I like that engine when I test rode it last year. It's insanely smooth and also quite torquey for such a "small" engine. I accidentally pulled away from a stop light in second gear and only noticed when glancing down after the first upshift, seeing that I was in third by now. Ooops. Didn't even notice. Speaks for an easy to control clutch and for a strong, smooth engine.

Riding it around, two things became immediately apparent: the steering stops kick in really early, the bike has a turning radius that feels like twice that of my GS. Not a huge problem but would definitely take some getting used to. The next thing was that insanely smooth engine. Pulling away from the dealer, it was such a weird feeling - no vibrations, an easy spinning engine, that typical Triumph Triple noise, I loved it as much as on my first test ride.

The bike I rode was a white 800 Roadie, I like it quite a bit, but still think that the black one looks slightly better, what do you guys think (click for larger images)?

Black Tiger 800

White Tiger 800

It's certainly a very nice bike and would fit the downsizing idea I was rolling around lately. But there is that red Tiger 1050 spooking around, too:

Red Tiger 1050

A really beautiful bike. Especially in person. Here it looks a bit darker than in reality, but it's a good looking red and I always liked the looks of the Tiger 1050. This one doesn't fit the downsizing as well the 800s, but it still feels lighter than my GS, though it's a fairly old model by now, probably in its last model year.

So, any decisions? No, not really. Just that the downsizing idea isn't a bad one - when I rode the 800 it felt about half a ton lighter than my GS and that was an interesting experience again. It doesn't have the power of my 1200 and is also not even close to the rush of the 1050 engine when pushed, but it revs very linearly, has enough power for everything and just feels so light and easy - possibly also because the engine, even when pushed hard, is so silky smooth. It has less vibrations than the 1050, shifts much nicer than either the big Tiger or my GS, which of course isn't even close to the smoothness of either Triumph.

Certainly interesting bikes and gives me something to think about.