The Man with the Pan

The Man with the Pan

You all know by now that I am the proud owner of a like-new 2019 BMW R1250GS Adventure motorcycle. You also may recall that I am still stumbling around with the registration process out here in California (or even in New York for that matter) given the COVID-19 closure of all DMV facilities. Given what we all know to be the experience at whatever DMV we go to, it will be interesting to assess after this Coronavirus lockdown in over whether the DMV was more efficient being shut down or whether that just created more of a backlog. I think it might be a toss-up since many people could and probably have had to figure out how to make things work for themselves through online capabilities (admittedly somewhat expanded during this crisis, but expanded by DMV BECAUSE there was a need to do so). We may find out that the deep dark secret that lurks beneath the surface is that there is no need for the many DMV staffers that we have had now that we have learned to live without them. These are the sorts of very real triage decisions that will need to be done across the state and local environment as states are struggling to meet employee payrolls. There is nothing like a lack of money to wake people like municipal unions up to reality when people get told they can have their jobs, but at minimum wage only. The herd will get naturally culled very quickly under those circumstances and both employer and employee may prove to be on the same side sooner rather than later about online automation taking over where less efficient “face mask-to-face mask” work would otherwise take place. This won’t be an instantaneous adjustment and reconciliation, but it will be a lot faster in this environment that it would have been before.

Anyway, the lack of a proper license hasn’t stopped me from insuring and riding my bike with a homemade plate on the back. I’ve probably done 250 miles on the bike so far and that has been in lousy weather conditions. The next two weeks look to be mid-80s weather, so I expect to do more with or without a proper registration and I will just plead Coronavirus is I get taken to task for being a scofflaw. I learned a long time ago in a high school ethics course thought to me by a seminarian in Rome, that I am an antinomian and a situational ethics advocate. I am insured. I have noted the bike’s prior registration so it can be theoretically tracked back to me. And I have absolutely no way (yet) to register the bike online since California DMV has not yet built that online functionality given their stricter-than-normal vehicular and EPA standards (my bike meets all the CA criteria since it is vintage 2019). So I feel I am on moral high ground to ride the bike and be a responsible citizen during these unusual times. The Sheriff or CHiPs will let me know if they agree if I get pulled over.

What I have learned form all this riding is that I love this bike as I suspected I would. After all, I have been riding a version of this bike for the last five years of foreign travels to Croatia, Greece, Sicily and Turkey and the more I ride it the more I find myself wondering why I don’t just buy one for my main ride. I was close last year, but then got persuaded by Brother-in-law Jeff and by BMW Rudy to go with the K1600GTL on the theory that I liked touring and keeping Kim comfortable and nothing beats the monster K1600GTL at fulfilling those needs. We know how that is ending (I await the lemon law settlement offer from BMW at this very moment). The GSA bike is more comfortable than I thought it would be in terms of hand/arm and knee/leg configuration, so that’s all good (I could raise it another 1-2 inches with a suspension adjustment). The one area where I think it falls short for my needs is in the seat. Understand that with the seventeen adult-era motorcycles I have owned in my life (ten of which have been BMW’s) I have never succumbed to buying an after-market seat. I have added Alaskan Leathers sheepskins to many seats, but I have always stayed with a stock seat because it was comfortable enough. Not so on the GSA.

I watched a YouTube video on GSA seats from online motorcycle superstore Revzilla and they even say the stock seat is only good for two hours before you get a case of Monkey Butt (think red baboon butt). I would say that after an hour I felt like I was riding on a 2X4, and that’s with my sheepskin cover on it. Therefore, I have decided to research what sort of aftermarket motorcycle seat I should get. The choices are many, maybe more than any other motorcycle accessory. It stands to reason since bikers spend a lot of time in the saddle and it is one’s main connection with the machine. Also, it cradles our most sensitive parts of the anatomy, the parts that nature itself teaches us and imbeds in our cerebral cortex to protect.

This is not a gear head blog, so I will not walk you through the vast array of choices and why I eliminated this one or that one. I will say that two riders I respect a great deal (Skip and Steve) suggested that I talk to Rocky Meyer, who has been custom-building motorcycle saddles for years from his workshop in Ventura. I looked at his website and got a sense of his product and called him on the private cell line Steve sourced for me. He appreciated the connections I had to get to him and immediately declared me a VIP client, something that worked very nicely for me. He could also see that I was more concerned about doing this right than doing it on the cheap, which matched his ridership and commercial sensibilities. One interesting factoid was to learn that he now lives in the high rent district of Idaho and manages his saddle business from afar with trusty Ventura staff. It’s always good to know that you’re dealing with an expert that has been rewarded well for his success.

As we discussed exactly what he should build for me he needed all manner of details including height and weight and a number of photos of me on the bike and presumably some evidence of what kind of an ass he was dealing with. No problem. However, he needed the same for Kim if he was to customize a pillion seat for her. She too had no problem with this (have I mentioned today how much I love Kim?). Their program is for the buyer to send in his existing seat and then they build the new seat on the existing BMW seat pan. That would mean living without my 2X4 for a week or more, which is suboptimal to me. I asked about just paying for a new set of pans so I could keep my existing seat. No can do. It seems that the Chinese company that had made 4,000 such pans for Rocky was no longer in business and he had no source for spare pans. The best he could offer was that he would build the seats for me based on specs and photos on pans that he has and that I would bring my seats to Ventura and do a simultaneous swap out.

These seat pans are nothing special. It’s not like they are ICU ventilators or something. They could easily be made on a 3D printer I suspect, but Rocky has his program and he has such a strong reputation and backlog that he has decided he can play the game as he chooses. I am willing to take a day trip to Ventura (stopping to have a driveway social distanced get-together with Sister-in-Law Sharon and husband Woo in Camarillo) to comply with Rocky’s generous pan swapping program. I am not sure this is a universal truth, but I think it is best never to argue with the man with the pan.