Has riding this motorcycle for the last month helped you understand the cruiser thing?

What???? So you’re saying when Clarkson described a turbo as “A turbo: Exhaust gasses go into the turbocharger and spin it, witchcraft happens, and you go faster.” that he was merely saying that for its entertainment value and it’s not true??

Just my stab at it here - but if accidents are reduced substantially then they'd be selling less replacement parts. I would think that's a drop in the bucket compared to requiring parts at build and replacement parts that break but you never know.

The GIF of doing doughnuts had me laughing for a good 5 minutes.

I also took the class twice due to a similar experience. The box killed me the first time and a few other little things added up to a fail. I had never ridden anything on two wheels other than a bicycle. On the second go around I aced it all.

Don’t forget this guy, also in Dublin

I don’t think it’s the insurance guys - they have to do what they have to do. The real issue is that no matter how obvious it is to everyone that it’s a dangerous race, enter at your own risk, they’re going to get the shit sued out of them if anything happens. Insurance guys have no choice - participants’s families…

I almost crapped my pants just reading his story.

Hey Sean, thanks for the links to the articles. I thought I heard that they improved the fueling for the most recent model year. Is that true and if so do you have any experience with the new fueling?

Great review Sean. Surprised that most of the group preferred the DCT over the manual off-road. I figured there would be a lot of manual traditionalists.

Andrew: THANK YOU FOR THIS. Perfect timing. I’ve been thinking of buying LED upgrades for the blinkers as a winter project and this answers a ton of questions I had.

Here is my take, all said and done it’s probably going to be a summary of what everyone else said:

Agree on the spine protectors - I rarely see much out there with a built in protector other than foam. The best you can do is make sure that the jacket has a pocket for a protector and you can buy it separately. I bought a CE 2 protector for about $80. You can also get standalone protectors that strap on your body.

$2k is the most quoted thing I hear also. $2k is a good idea but you can come in well under that for gear if you’re smart about it. You can get amazing deals on last year’s gear. That’s what I did. For example I picked up prior year’s Alpinestars armored jacket for 150 bucks (orig $399 I think?). Also, if you’re…

Not sure how long ago this was. If it was recent I hope you’re feeling better. There is nothing worse than hearing a sound like that and you know something is terribly wrong. I blew my knee out (loading trucks during a college job) and heard the loud pop and knew what happened. Guy that found me asked if I bumped my…

Was the guy on the far left psychic or something? He sat there watching the whole time like he knew you were going to loop it.

Throwing this out there for people looking for good helmet values - you can check out Icon’s Airmada range. I’ve been thoroughly impressed with the helmet:

My thought is that it has nothing to do with performance but with keeping American made vehicles on the force. I’ve seen tons of cop cars from the Big 3, never a BMW, Mazda, etc. which other automakers may have models that would fit just as nicely in the role.

This was worth the price of admission:

I'm surprised the driver was injured - from looking at the damage on the passenger side I thought the injury must have been some poor soul riding shotgun.