More Bike Maintenance

I was looking at the rear suspension of my RT last night and it looked like the rear end was sagging a bit. I measured the length of the rear shock, eyelet to eyelet and it was a bit under 12". A post to the BMWMOA forum site gave a quick answer. The nominal length should be something like 13 to 13½" so I probably need to replace the rear shocks which also function as the springs. Unfortunately, like many other parts, they are expensive since I can't just pick them up at a local auto parts store. The after market parts seemed expensive but they pale to the price for the OEM parts. So, I guess, I should be glad that there are after market parts available. On my ride last Monday, it seemed like the rear end would bottom out all the time and I would get bounced up off of the seat. This was most noticeable going down Goldstream Road with all of it's frost heaves. Also, this would explain why it is so difficult getting the bike up on the center stand. After all, you have to lift the whole bike up an additional 1½". Here all this time I was thinking that there must have been some special technique that I couldn't figure out. I guess worn out parts should be expected for a 26 year old motorcycle.

I am only 10¼ miles from my 2000 mile mark on the Nike+ website and I made my 2009 goal of 1000 miles. One more goal that I set is 25000 Calories burned in 4 weeks. I am a bit over halfway there and about halfway through the 4 weeks. Isn't it amazing what some of us do for entertainment. I am still managing to stay in front of many of the other challenges that I've entered except for some of the really weird ones such as run around the moon. For just about all of them that I am entered in, I'm managing to stay in the top 5. I suspect that will change as it did last summer when I started slacking off. I don't think I entered any data between the Equinox in September through the following January.