MotoSapiens KLR650 andMountain Bike Page

Yes, I've re-emerged from the dead. The clever among you may notice the change in title, to "MotoSapiens". It's true. I've somehow morphed into a throttle-twisting kook. Pretty ironic, after all the crap i've handed to other kooks, like Zap. Partly because of that crap, I'm going to make no effort to masquerade as a bicyclist when I've barely ridden my bicycle since January. I'll take the moral high ground, and just admit I'm a kook now.

Like most stuff, it's not really my fault. What happened is that I developed a truly annoying foot condition, called Morton's Neuroma, which is an irritation of the nerve between the 3rd and 4th toes. The toes squish too close together and pinch the nerve in between, which makes the nerve cranky, so it forms a cyst. This proceeds to hurt like hell whenever you do stuff it doesn't like, such as tie your shoes tightly.

After a couple cortisone injections, a bunch of advil, some wider shoes, and some little inserts in my shoes that help make my toes happy, I got to the point where I could do most stuff again. I could play volleyball, ultimate frisbee, and soccer. I could run, sail, swim, hike, drink, snowboard and so forth. As far as I can tell, the one thing I couldn't do too much of is pedal. That sucked. I've been racing constantly for 16 years, and this is the first one I've taken off. Normally, you would expect severe symptoms of emotional instability to accompany this situation. (NOTE: i had surgery to remove the neuroma Aug 25th. I am gradually starting to ride my bicycle again).

My wife made the mistake of telling me on New Year's Eve, that it would probably be OK if I bought another motorcycle (I sold my last one, a Honda CX500, back in '83, a few years before we met). So I went and bought one the following tuesday (the first day the dealership was open). What I got was a Y2K Kawasaki KLR650. Kawi bills this as an "Adventure Touring" scoot. It's probably the most versatile motorcycle on the planet. Easily handling twisty backroads, loaded touring, and reasonable dirt riding. In 9 months, I've put over 14,000 miles on it, including a bunch of singletrack up in Mendocino Nat'l Forest, commuting to work, a weekend tour up the California coast, a weekend dualsport ride to Carson City, a road trip to Moab, and some sweet off-roading around Moab. That's why I'm not crazy.

Well, I'd probably expect more scooter stuff. I'll still have some occasional bike info, especially since the foot problem seems to be fixed after my surgery, but I'm still pretty much enjoying playing volleyball and riding my 650. I may have an article sometime soon on the Cascade Cream Puff 100, the only race I did this year, but by and large, if you get annoyed by reading about dirt motorcycles, you should probably delete this page from your list of bookmarks. Since I make 3 times as much money as I did when I started this site (working in a bike shop), I have to use a lot more of my free time spending the money now, so I have less time to write stupid stuff to annoy you with. That means this site will be a little more static in the future. More of a reference, and less of a current events source.