We woke up to a beautiful morning on Saturday. After a thoroughly adequate breakfast at Perko’s, we loaded up the bikes with chipper hearts and smiling faces. Peter’s bike, of course, had other ideas. Once again, it wouldn’t start.
This time the battery pigtail on my bike wasn’t cooperating either and we quickly figured out that the previous day’s bike-jumping had blown the small-amperage fuse on my battery pigtail. The one nice thing about being right at I-5 is that there are strip malls and Peter was able to walk over to a Radio Shack for extra fuses. Once I installed a 15 amp fuse the problem was solved.
We’d called Rick Mayer to let him know we’d be a few minutes late, but it didn’t surprise me when we bumped into him partway to his house, leading astute reader Chris Weiss on a joy ride of fun little back country roads. 😉 Rick pulled a U-turn when he saw us and zipped on ahead to his place.
Getting a Rick Mayer seat made is pretty much the same for all bikes; he asks a bunch of questions about what you’re looking for in a seat, has you sit on the bike in different positions, asks about color/material/etc….all while chatting about this and that and motorcycles and Newfoundland puppies and whatever else strikes his fancy. Rick is amazingly friendly and does really great work.
Shelf of seats and pans:
Rick’s workshop:
The outside of the workshop:
Seth shows off my new seat as he staples the cover back on:
Once again, I was thrilled with the result. The Rick Mayer seat is a little taller than the orange low seat (the low and “standard” seats use the same pan; the low seat just has less padding) but it’s thinner and more comfortable. I don’t feel as though I sacrificed an essential part of inseam.
Peter was also very happy with his new Superhawk seat. It looks really snazzy with the combination basket weave and smooth vinyl, especially with the red plastic cowling.
The most important criteria….can Peter still nap on the new seat?
I got my dose of off-roading arriving at and leaving Rick’s place — a pittance, sadly, but at least it’s gravel! It still amazes me how stable the F650GS is on gravel. Much more so even than the XT225; the following road felt as smooth as pavement to me:
Our first few attempts at finding lunch failed as the place Rick recommended was closed and the second place we tried had burned down. Oops. Fortunately there was a “giant burger” stand open for business across the street from the burnt-out place and we had decent enough burgers and milkshakes.
At that point, we headed straight for I-5 again and westbound 299, as it was almost 3pm and we still had 160 miles to go to Gil and Becky’s house in Eureka.
To be continued…