Today was a beautiful day here in Northern California; the morning started cool with a hint of a breeze. Highs promised to hit the mid 70's.
I've had my 919 since the middle of March, when I purchased her with 4700 miles on the clock. The original BT56's had loads of life in them.
Hemming and hawing whether I should immediately replace the tires or wear them down a bit has ended up with me just wearing them.
One of the local tight/bumpy/gravely/steep roads is a loop comprised of Mt. Hamilton thru Mines Road. This road is really fantastic ... for a motard.
When I bought the 919, my criteria was "sport streetbike that's comfortable that I can pretend is a motard." So the 919 might not be exactly that, but for my purposes it fits.
Something I notice is that I seem to use a lot more revs on the 919 than past bikes; I don't know if that's a function of the power delivery or just that I'm having more fun --- but I spend a lot of time in that 6500->8500 RPM range; sometimes I'm caught between 1st and 2nd -- 2nd won't pull out of a corner as hard as I'd like, and 1st will seem a bit "twitchy". Regardless, it's rare on Hamilton to get out of 2nd gear, and on Mines it's rare to get out of 3rd / sometimes 4th.
The BT56's... in their 9 year old glory, stuck well (God bless 'em.)
I was purposefully hard on the gas exiting a few corners and could
just get a little slide out of the rear.
I wasn't hammering the throttle at full lean.
Anyhow, I'm really digging the bike. I had visions of fork springs and Ohlins rear shocks... but I'm honestly having a lot of fun with it as-is.
9 year old tires can stick
On top of Mt. Hamilton / Lick Observatory