It Is What It Is

Commuting in heavy, urban traffic is no picnic, so I garaged the big, heavy, great-for-wide-open-spaces cruiser for the smaller, lighter KLR650 (since nick-named "The Beast"). I bought the KLR, a single cylinder, dual sport bike in Arizona and used it primarily for off-road adventure with a buddy (accompanied with lots of bruises). The KLR is great off-road but lacks that little extra "umph" you can use when accelerating in traffic. But given that my wife prefers window coverings and carpets over a new motorcycle (hard to imagine, huh?), I am stuck with it in a different role. So I figured I would do some modifications to juice it up just a bit.

Thank God for the internet and the thousands of folks who work on and communicate about, their bikes.

My first thought was to add a new exhaust, as doing so on my Harley project bike (Puff the Magic Dragon) had really pumped up the torque in the mid-range RPM's. So I started researching what others had done and was shocked at what a learned. Adding a new exhuast adds 1 or 2 horsepower at best, and even a cheap exhaust system costs $300+. So maybe you rejet the carbs as well at a cost of another $50-$100. But again that nets only one or two additional ponies to your stable. And on and on it went. It finally occured to me that with probably $1000-$1500 worth of changes and an incredible amount of work I could increase engine performance by about 5 HP. Does that make sense? Especially after you have already spent $500 adding protection to the bike for off-roading (which you shold now remove, since added weight decreases performance). Fifteen hundred dollars is a nice down payment on a new bike!

But I figured there must be some solution to my perceived problem, so I kept reading and the more I read, the funnier it got. For example, there was lots of discussion about making your KLR perform well enough to do wheelies.

Huh? Why would you buy a single cylinder dual sport bike, spend an amount equal to 20% or more of the original cost to modify it just to get it to do wheelies? You can buy some beautiful and relatively inexpensive bikes - Kawasaki Ninja, Ducati Monster, Honda CBR, Yamaha FZ8 - that will do wheelies right out of the box for about the cost of the original KLR plus mods. Why would you buy a bike meant for a particular purpose and then try to dramatically alter it to fit another purpose?

And then I began to think of the many human relationships I have witnessed over the years where folks fell in love with someone and then tried to change them into something else. Why would you fall in love with someone, presumably because of who s/he is, and then try to get that person to change into something else?

Why would you fall for an alcoholic and then be surprised that s/he does not quit drinking?

Why would you fall for a person who has never met a budget s/he liked and then be surprised that they are always broke?

Why would you fall for someone who says they never want to have kids and then be surprised that they actually don't want kids?

There is a difference between necessary adaptation and change for personal preference. All of us have to adapt to changing circumstances at various times in life: if you lose a job and have to change your lifestyle, you do it. If you grew up as an only child but married someone from a large family, you figure out how to make holiday's work. That's adapting to fit circumstances. If your spouse loves his work as a caprenter, you can't change him into a rocket scientist; if your kid loves reading more than running, you can't turn her into a track star. That's trying to change someone for personal preference.

I bought a dual sport and now I ride it primarily for commuting. It will never have the zip I would like for commuting, but it sure is a safe and dependable ride, well adpated to commuting. It is what it is, and actually, that's quite good, so I think I will quit trying to change it. Guess my wife will get her window coverings and carpets after all ...