A Friendly Reminder: Pre-Season Checks

 The optimistic among us are exclaiming, "It's finally here" and can feel the freezing cold behind us as the temperature inevitably begins its ascent.  As spring rapidly approaches, a rider can't help but start to try to finally break away from the aches of cabin fever by occupying the space between here and "riding season" with something to reacquaint him or herself with our two wheeled obsessions.  Unfortunately, as exciting as this time is, this is also a time when I see a lot of bikes being crashed.  Often in our haste, we tend to overlook certain basic things and end up "jumping the gun" so to speak.

No matter how good of a job you do in winterizing and prepping your bike for storage, you should always double check everything.  How much tread do you actually have left on that tire?  When's the last time you checked your tire pressures?  Do all of your lights work?  What about your chain?  Maybe there's a bit of tarnish on there, a layer of dust or maybe it's just a tad dry.  In a perfect world, we would be able to just hop on our bikes and go, but unfortunately the world we live in isn't perfect and as our bikes age they become less and less so.

So you've made sure that your bike is in tip top shape and you're all geared up and ready to go.  You feel the familiar resistance of the clutch pull and you slide the transmission into first gear as you're ready to take off.  Three things are often forgotten by riders during this time of the year; first are the pot holes, the second is the actual temperature and the third is the short-term memory of car drivers.  Chances are that if you are in the New York tri-state area, even if you forgot about the pot holes, it won't take long before you remember them.  Hopefully, you remember them before you're at your local shop looking for a replacement rim.

Being mindful of the temperature should seem like common sense, but it's often a factor overlooked.  Tires perform best when it's warm and dry and despite the fact that you're outside in a t-shirt because today's 50 degrees feels like 70 compared to yesterday's 30, your tires don't acclimate themselves to changing temperatures.  Many of us who try to stretch our riding season in the fall will often learn to tip toe around corners come November when temperatures drop into the 40s, but for some reason forget that cautious behavior when dealing with the same temperatures in the spring.

As motorcycle riders, we learn to be mindful of our four-wheeled nemesis, but they always seem to be especially on the offensive this time of year.  Keep in mind that car drivers have had a solid 4-5 months to forget that motorcycles even exist and aren't used to seeing us.  Remember how they drove whenever it snowed.  Not only have they had the winter months to push motorcycles from their memory, but they've had those months to run amok and learn a whole new set of poor driving skills.

We're all excited to get our riding season underway, but be careful out there.