Steve Carlton:

Winston Churchill allowed the Luftwaffe to firebomb one of the towns in England just to cover up the fact that the Brits had cracked Enigma. Something like 10,000 British citizens died to preserve that secret. Machiavelli would have understood that action. Most "modern" people don't understand because they have had very little true stress in their lives.

Or more simply put: You don't risk your own health trying to tame a rabid dog so you can cure it. You shoot the d@mned thing. Period. Hitler was a mad dog. Huessein is a mad dog. There are plenty of other mad dogs out there. When they become a "clear and present danger" to America, we will have to act, because we know Germany, Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan and all the others won't.

Senility setting in: I forgot FRANCE!

Well Israel does know how to take care of business, within the limits of their ability to "project power" which ain't near ours (starting with no carrier battle groups...). Still, when they took out that French reactor Saddam got hold of they did everybody a HUGE favor...

Moybin- I have no problem with shooting the mad dog. I would just prefer to minimize the "collateral" damage.

I know the enigma secret was extremely valuable. Didn't know the price the Brits paid to preserve it.



I understand some are upset about the non-motorcycle related discussion. Perhaps a new thread should start with an "OT" marker so some can choose not to click. But OT topics surface here all the time; pure R1100S topics would get slow and boring, IMO. (This isn't normal, j_dock).

Jim, did you sleep at a Holiday Inn Express last night?:D

Ehhh...no! Is there a joke here I'm missing?

My first wife was a Bah'ai, but not foreign (in the usual sense). I met her in a past life in the Palm Springs area, there was a community of 30 or so. A peaceful bunch, not much stranger than the other Californians I came in contact with (present company excluded).

Jim

Correct, there's nothing at all "odd" about the Bah'ai, in fact it's a way mellow, very reformed and non-violent variant of Islam. So naturally, the "pure strains" try and kill 'em.

Arright, not ALL of the "old school" types are that bad but damn, enough are that your ex was chased clear to California. Did she ever talk about the persecution back home?

Wow! a wildly divergent thread with hugely inflamed passions on all sides and a bigoted idiot to boot; and I didn't even contribute to this one? What happened?
The only thing I'm gonna say after reading the last 3 pages of posts is that I am 100% American and have no heat with any race or creed as long as they aren't trying to kill me.
I may have Prussian ancestry but I support Israel's right to exist, Geuting, you schmuck.
Now, let's get back to MOTORCYCLES, right after we pass the hat to ship Geuting back off to the vaterlandt, dumped outta that C17 from 35,000 feet as it passes over the rhine....don't forget to wave bye-bye on the way down, bonehead!

Hey, at least we got a reference to "Bah'ai Brith, the Jewish conspiracy" out of it :D.

Jesus Joseph and Mohammed is that ever a comedy note :).

When, oh when is an american manufacturer gonna build something like an R1100S and my KTM 380EXC so I can 'buy 'merican'?
(yes, I know cannondale made a killer 440 enduro; I wanted one, but it was a grand MORE expensive than even my overpriced KTM...and the one I wanted ran a 'total loss' EFI system...not the hot setup for a trailbike!!!)
BMW builds stuff like the S and 'merica produces the West Coast Chopper gufuses...go figure.......
Enough to make me go buy a Boss Hoss...the big block one, no less...

Well the Buell was a credible attempt...still is. Give 'em time to get away from the "classic" motor. Eventually they'll have to give up on the "Evo Sportster" models (in both Buell and Harley type frames) for smog reasons and do a "Sportsterized Twin Cam 88" type motor which might have real potential in a Buell frame.

As to the "chopper thing", damned if I know what's up with that, or how "deliberate low performance" in terms of ground clearance and handling became somehow "cool". It's a marketing thing :rolleyes:. And the "young ricers" run into a REAL problem because the Japanese stuff is just dumb. Try taking a ricerocket down a dirt road - it RADICALLY doesn't work because the bikes are fundamentally unstable and will be so long as GP/Superbike/600-style racing is considered the "epitome of speed and cool". So people take that sort of thing to the streets as a FIRST BIKE and just get slaughtered.

You know what we need? A race series in the US, heavily pushed by all the major makers, which somehow combines a cost-per-bike limit so that at least "somewhat streetlike" stuff is being raced (sorta like what Boxer Cup is supposed to be, but multi-vendor) AND where there's at least some aspect of the tracks or one or two races that forces STABLE STEERING GEOMETRY as part of the bike's recipe. Partial dirt tracks would do it, or a requirement that two or three races out of 10 or so be on mild dirt...maybe even with a light jump or to. That way you're at least optimizing the tires and suspension *settings* (NOT parts) for each arena.

That would force real-world bikes that don't turn into manic twitch-fests if they run into some midcorner crud at sane street speeds the way GSXRs and the like do now.

If wheels like that became the "cool thing on the street", we wouldn't be losing so many newbies!!! We'd get fast bikes that can be thrown down a fire trail sideways (yes, like a Buell can be even on street rubber and I'll betcha a Rockster and prolly "S" is the same way!). We'd get tractable power bands instead of "Mt. Everest-looking crap" with gonzo power at 12,000rpm and bupkis at 6,000.

<Shakes head in disgust at the trends lately...>

Flattrack racing in the US helped keep things sane for a long time. Things have gone way wrong and need re-thinking.

Well, having had a streetbike since 1975 and, back then, spending all my time, money and effort to make a gixxer-thingie, the sport in general got the kind of bikes the sport wanted but now it's so specialized every niche has it's own design.
What would help immensly in the 'new rider survival' aspect is, unfortunately, more gov't regulation, kinda like licensing private pilots. teired licensing tied to hours/experience/driving record or somesuch.
I survived my first streetbike (a yamaha RD350) by having had 7 years of dirtbike experience, including big-bore 2 strokes like a maico 400 and bultaco 360, before I hit the street, and even then, the RD was plenty in the hands of a testrone-crazed 17-year-old....the wheelie tickets I beat woulda got me in a federal pen nowadays, and that was with 40 HP; a modern R6 would have been insane; I'll bet I could won daytona on one, turn signals and all; joe teenager on an R6 as a first bike nowadays is in over his head the second his thumb hits the starter button, and society can't legislate that kind of common sense, so the price for a mistake nowadays is much greater.
I'd love to see buell stuff some kind of v-rod in a xbr chassis and sporttourer it up a bit, but I'd rather see some other 'merican mfgr. rise to the occasion and leave the air-cooled v-twins to the carnival characters/lockstep-conformist buffoon sturgis clowns..(any REAL outlaw biker just gags at what the '1%'er scene has become).
Oh, well, not in this lifetime, so I ride an overpriced product of the vaterlandt, as I'm a REFORMED gixxersquid (but I earned ama nat'l points for a few years in a row, so I come by it honestly) and still can't be trusted with 150HP; a cbr1100xx just wheelies SO easily, but at 47 I can't afford the penalties I could at 22....not to insurance, or life/limb....somewhere along the line, a sense of mortality crept in....

The problem with gov't regulation is that it gets too closely tied to a "fixed measurement" like CCs or horsepower, and not on "rideability".

Let's get real here: a newbie on an 1150 Rockster will have a FAR higher "survival odds" quotient than on a GSXR600.

In Europe they played with a 125cc limit and what did they get? Weird little twin two-strokes with crazy powerbands and razor-edge handling that are probably a HELL of a lot more dangerous to newbies than...well Jesus, probably the Rockster again.

Hmmmm.

No, what we need is a "newbie survivability rating" on every bike by an independent org like Snell. To be real thorough, graded by weight of said newbie. In other words, a big 250lb dude on a...I dunno, say a big but mellow cruiser like the Suzuki Intruder 1400 would be in very good shape while a skinny little 100lb dude (or gal) on the SAME BIKE would be tipover city and would have a damned difficult time counter-steering it quick enough, esp. at speed. Some bikes would need a "minimum inseam needed listing" unless you modded the seat.

The rating system wouldn't be just about horsepower. It'd be about "peaky powerbands" or lack of same, and "handling twitchiness/quirks".

And if this rating system was accurate enough, the insurance industry would latch onto it to reduce insurance costs on the better choices, providing an economic incentive for buyers to follow the ratings system.

Betcha you could even get the insurance industry to pay for the ratings process. It would work as long as the raters weren't known as "hardcore safety Nazis" like Consumer Reports...Snell still works fine on that basis.

Free-market alternatives CAN work...and did just fine with the Snell helmet ratings for example, until the US gov't screwed it up with "DOT ratings".

Do you think their might be some Americans out ther that might have a problem with someone (gov't or not) telling them what bike they are allowed to buy and what they are not?

Do you think even half the motorcycle population has even heard of Snell?

No different than general aviation in this country; with enough money you can just go out and buy a gulfstream IV or 747, but FLYING it yourself without the proper training and certification and licensing is another story entirely; there is plenty of precident for this; I'm NOT advocating this, mind you, just a suggestion to get the carnage under control.
BTW, I used to travel to Ft. Monmouth on a regular basis and some of the street squirrels I saw out there in the summer rival california's bizarrest...

Oh, the Jersey Shore has them alright. Its like bizarro-world. All the freaks that can't handle the big apple when it gets too hot come to my back yard to play on the weekends. You can forget about driving a car anywhere. Most of us locals leave on weekends in the summer so we don't have to deal with it. Keeps me on my toes though.

I dunno 'bout that, Jim. Snell won't even look at a flip-front helmet. If insurance was based solely on Snell, we wouldn't have any of those to choose from. Free market can only do so much, as can public lynchings. There is not single answer to a complex question. Some squirrels are that way because no one told them different. Others are like that because mommy & daddy didn't spank them. Yet others claim they were spanked too much. Go figure. No matter what rules you put in place, there will be exceptions. Look at the US Tax Code!

Maybe we should regulate what the media gets to air on the news. Doh, Stalin did that... Held up for a while, but finally fell through, too.

ps: if you want to use a metrics on the operator, why not IQ? Can't operate anything more than 2x or 3x or 4x or 5x your IQ in CCs. See how many guys go bragging they got 200cc in their bike!!!

Well, I guess now I can see why this thread got rated at 2 stars... and all this happened during my travel time. That'll teach me to get on a plane.

Uhm, yeah! So I got here yesterday (Raleigh.) Today I went to the BMW dealer in Raleigh (Capitol BMW) and tried on a Replika (2005) and an R1100S in Mandarin/Silver (2004).

The Replika is really beautiful in "person." The handlebars are underneath the triple clamp and the rear ride height is jacked up there, so the riding position is a little bit more squidly, and it makes me only able to get the balls of my feet down. Hefting it off the sidestand induced a little bit of worry, as I could really feel the weight of that thing. Very beautiful though. They wanted $14.4k + TT&L, no surprise there.

The regular S fit me a lot better, I could flat-foot the bike as opposed to the Replika and I felt more upright and "on" the bike as opposed to "in" the Replika which made the Replika seem unwieldy and bigger, somehow. The S had ABS and heated grips and they wanted merely $14.6!!! Yieee.

So anyway I'm still pokin' around but it was nice to be able to actually sit on both bikes and see which one fit me best... as loverly as a Replika is I think the ride height and lack of centerstand are liabilities for me, so I'll hunt for an S and just deal unless I find some kind of screamin' deal on a Replika, at which point I'll at least swap the rear shock for a standard shock, and possibly commit other heresies.

Anyway... you guys can feel free to get jiggy with your OT stuff I guess, but it might be prudent to take it to a new thread? Por favor?

Hijacking threads here is a time-honored tradition.
Back to on-topic;
I always thought a replika is way too much 'boy-racer' 'gee-whiz-look-at-my-racebike' fast-n-the-furious-bling-BS, what with the racer decals and goofy ride height (yes, that's a personal issue as I'm 5'6"; I can ride a tall bike no problem as I have a 380 KTM, but replica-type ground clearence is useless on the street).
The standard S is a much more rational choice.
Don't buy one if you need lotsa power; an S is balanced, reasonably quick, reasonably fast and a great overall ride, but I occasionally wish for more oomph, and 'more' is really hard to come by without a substantial outlay of time, effort and cash.....and these thinhgs are easy to make slower.
However, it's also one of the prettiest motorcycles to come down the pike in a good bit (as long as it's not a 'boy-racer replika').
Leave the decals for the RG500 set...

Mr. Jony-

Yeah, I agree the bling factor is a bit high, but I'm not immune to bling unfortunately. The practical considerations seem to be a bigger factor for me, this will likely be my only bike not too long after I get it. I don't think the Replika, as kEwL as it is, is a good "only bike." (I'll fix the one-bike issue later, but it makes the most sense to limit myself for now.)

I don't need lotsa power right now - I'm stepping up from an R65LS with its screamin' maybe sorta 45 hp or so. The S should be a BIG difference for me. I'm all about well-balanced bikes; not only from a practical standpoint but as a matter of rider safety. I think a bike that's too compromised one way or another is a bit of a safety risk. If I get bored with a new S, its my own fault really, and hopefully that boredom is far enough down the road that when it happens, I could go all heretical and get a K bike for a reasonable amount of money, should I find myself feeling poky on the R11S- on the throttle stop WFO all the time, kicking the flanks of the bike for more power.

Thanks for the input, I think we're on the same page... and as far as the hi-jacking, well, that's just life in the modern world. ;)