Well, the Seattle International Motorcycle show came to town last week and I couldn't miss it. I was home alone last Friday so instead of going to the show alone, I decided to see if my dad wanted to go. It turned out that he was interested so he drove the 1.5 hours down from Sequim and off we went. The show opened @ 4pm and since we were a little early, we stopped by Pyramid Brewing and decided to see if their beer was as tasty as we remembered. I assure you, it was. After an early dinner and a tasty beverage, we walked next door to the Qwest Field convention center and entered a world of shiny new motorcycles.
The first display we saw as we entered was the sea of blue known as Yamaha. I immediately spotted the bike I've been interested in, the WR250R. I have been a little concerned about the tall seat heights on most of the dual sport bikes and I was curious how it would feel. As you can see from the posted picture of me on the WR, I had to tippy toe it a little. I still really liked the way it felt and I'm still hoping to take a test ride as soon as they're in the showroom floors. After I drooled a bit we headed off to see all the rest of the goodies. We went to the area where all the accessories were being hawked and neither one of us saw anything we absolutely couldn't live without. There were some cool vintage bikes scattered around the showroom and they were pretty interesting to look at. I kept thinking about how guys would race these old machines and it just looked to me like you'd have to be nuts to do it. I guess it was state of the art back then. What will people think about the bikes we ride now in 20 years?
We looked at cruisers and motocrossers and there were some cool bikes but every display we went to that had a dual sport machine, it was almost always surrounded by 3 or 4 people. It became evident that the dual sports must be the hot item this year. I know that I like them but I didn't realize that it was such a popular market. I was able to throw a leg over a couple other bikes like the Suzuki DR400 and the Honda CRF230L. I wasn't really impressed with the DR. The Honda was very comfortable due to the lower seat height but I'm wondering why they still have all the old school stuff on it??? I'm sure it's a great bike and I haven't ruled it out but the Yamaha is liquid cooled, fuel injected and has a nice digital speedometer/tripmeter that has features that can be used for enduro racing. The CRF is air cooled, carbureted and has the old analog speedo. I guess that's why it's about $1000 cheaper. I'll definitely have to ride them both to help decide which one I'd rather own.
After the show we headed back to "the Harbor" and hung out. It was a good afternoon with ol' Dad.
