Ashaman
XS650 Enthusiast
Finally got plates on the beast today, thanks to my loving and ever-patient girl, who went to the DMV twice today while I signed a POA, notarized, scanned and emailed over my lunch break. She was able to get tags and so with that and not having ridden since my MSF class last weekend, I hopped on the XS after work tonight and took it out. I live almost four miles up a washboard dirt road, so navigating that was the first challenge. Turns out Shinko 712's aren't great dirt tires. Made it to town and went up to the school to screw around in the only paved parking lot within ten miles of my house. Practiced some turns and stops, then took it out onto the country highway that runs through town and got up to about 65mph for a while. It was getting windy, spitting raindrops and the sun was starting to go down, so I called it quits and headed back. The dirt road on the way back was better for some reason; maybe that little bit of practice made it feel easier already, I dunno. Either way, I'm pretty stoked at how it all went. Bike ran great, with the exception of a tiny bit of roughness at very low speeds and RPM's. Felt like it was lugging but I didn't have any lower gears as I was in 1st at maybe 5-7mph. Dunno what that was about. All else was excellent. Can't wait to get some more practice under my belt and really start getting familiar with this machine.