season09 – Page 4 – One Hell of a Ride

First Wash, First Rain

Took the bike to a wash this morning, as the day was bright and the bike was dirty. The guy did a professional job and asked for 1000 drams. I paid double. He promised to do a spectacular job next time.

Made a new purchase:

Just as I was sitting at the office and crawling about credit card processing problems, the rain rushed in — I do believe there’s an Armenian Murphy’s law about a relation between washing vehicles and precipitation! On the positive side, enjoyed some nice rain ride and figured that I miss tripping in the wild.

On Saturday I’m planning to hit Geghard as the first trip on this bike.

Let’s see how that goes.

And yeah, guess I’ll need to wash the bike again.

First Experiences

The bike has been an amazing experience all the way.

Now I have ridden a bike and two, but nothing compares to riding a brand new, fresh motorcycle.

So the first thing one should know about riding zero mileage brand new motorbikes is that they behave rather strangely at times!

My own personal experience was — the engine sounded and responded harsh at the beginning, the clutch and gear shifting would sometimes fail. But this disappeared gradually, and after the 200th kilometer I come across these issues only very rarely (running-in period for CBF500 according to my manual is 500km).

Other than that, the bike has been an absolute joy to ride. I don’t push the revs further 5000 till I hit the 500km mark on my odometer, and even so it’s very quick to accelerate and feels confident at the 6th gear. There was a problem with steering or shifting gears on turns at the beginning, but now the thing feels more agile than most of the things I’ve ridden.

I’m currently planning my first trip outside Yerevan on the absolutely wonderful Google Mapmaker. Will probably be on the upcoming weekend, and hopefully the weather will be fair. From there we’ll have the first live trip post with the first pictures on this blog.

Quest Complete

I am too happy to be able to blog. Will post a follow-up.

Quest: Honda CBF500

I’m starting this blog as I am on the final frontier of completing my main motorcycling quest for the upcoming seasons – a brand new Honda CBF500 purchase!

Tomorrow is a decisive day as I am going to fetch some crucial loan-related documents from the bank. Since my loan is approved, it will only be a matter of days to possess the shiny machine, and it couldn’t come at a better time: the season is barely up!

So this blog will be my motorcycling home on the web, as I am planning to ride and blog a hell lot this season. There’ll be a lot of stuff, so subscribing now is a grand idea. Let’s make this season one hell of a ride!