So far as installation goes, once using the vise to set the collar in properly, I was still pretty confused about how the spring was supposed to go in. The diagram was very unhelpful, and the spring was quite different than the one on my bike. I happened on a post showing how it was installed on a BMW 1150GS and applied it to my bike. As you can see from the photo, the spring setup is actually quite simple.. I’m just that retarded.

The Fastway Evolution II footpegs are a little over twice the width of the stock pegs. The F4 model ships with built-in screws, which has now been replaced by the F5, which comes with new screws that can be plugged-in (and interchanged with the F3 and F6 screws). The screws on the F4 give a lot of grip, but are still very comfortable.

On the dirt, the Evo II footpegs are very confidence inspiring. They give a fantastic amount of grip, and the enhanced width is fantastic for standing on. You feel really planted. You don’t feel like there is any chance of your feet slipping off when jumping curbs or what not.

On the highway, the Evo II footpegs are also very comfortable. It’s been so long since I took the rubber-strips off my stock pegs to remember, but it’s at least a few times better than my stock pegs with the rubber removed. To test grip while I was on the interstate I tried to slide my feet back and forth on the pegs, and they didn’t budge.

City driving is where the Evo II footpegs seem to be at a slight disadvantage for me. In increasing the width of the footpeg, you decrease the space between the footpeg and the shifter. For upshifts, I have to plan a little further in advance to make sure I can get my foot in position in time. I also found that I was missing a few downshifts, in particular, the shift from 2nd to 1st. I can only assume this is due to the decreased leverage, which I’ve solved by giving my foot a more authoritative downward motion. Using the rear brake actually feels better on the Evo II footpegs than the stock ones, however.

Overall, I’m pretty happy about the purchase. Not only do the Fastway footpegs look better than the stock, but overall, they feel better too.

As soon as we pulled into the parking lot for Wild Animal Safari though, and saw the banged up minivans painted in zebra-stripe (for rent), I realized that this experience might be a little less impressive than expected. The tickets were $15.95 for an all-day driving pass through the park, including a walking-only section of the park. Dallas was shooting with the 18-200mm VR lens, and I had the 105mm F/2.8 and 50-500mm F5.6-6. lens. I spent most of my time however trying to navigate the car in and out of ruts to either pass people or let others pass by. The traffic was pretty heavy, and in fact, one of the rental vans overheated and was stuck on the side of the road, with it’s radiator steam wafting through the air.

Though the park has a giraffe, some ligers, a small heard of zebra, and a rhinoceros or two, most of the good stuff is hidden behind cages, unlike Lion Country Safari. This made photography a bit more difficult. The three things the park has an awful lot of however are deer, cattle, and turtles (in the lake). If you look at my photo album, you will see what I mean.

Throughout the experience, I think we realized that Wild Animal Safari is more of a drive-thru petting-park than a zoo. Some of the visitors were a bit rude, pegging animals with food, and honking to get animals out of the way. The administration of the park doesn’t really try to push the scientific or learning aspects of the wildlife, save for giving a bus tour. The real kicker was the “Baby Goats for Sale”. That’s when it really hit me that this is not a zoo. It’s like the McDonalds equivalent.

In the end, it was worth visiting the place. We got some great photos, and had a wonderful time exploring the neighboring towns of Pine Mountain and Warm Springs, Georgia. We got to checkout one of the roads I’ve marked down on Google Earth as being a good motorcycle road, Highway 190 through Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park. There were some beautiful views from it. Definitely worth visiting on a motorcycle if you are out that way.

Warm Springs is definitely worth stopping by. Not only is it where FDR hung out and subsequently died, but they have a very nice downtown complete with little shops and home-made ice-cream.

I was out riding in the Coopers Creek Wildlife Management Area outside of Suches, GA with my Bob, Jay, and David (all on advrider I believe, don’t recall their names). I was on my BMW F650GS Dakar, and they were on their BMW 1200GS’s. There was a side-trail that looked a bit gnarly, so I was asked to go ahead and scout it out to see if it was worth going down. About 50ft in, I saw a small log that I needed to hop the bike over. I’d only done this in the MSF Dirt Bike class, and it was easy enough. I got the front wheel up and over easily enough, but my rear began fishtailing. I’m pretty sure I got the rear off the log and back onto the trail, but I was still fishtailing pretty badly. I made the concsious thought to accellerate out of the problem, but I’m not sure I had time to execute it. I was thrown off the bike like superman. I landed on my forehead, knees, and stomach. Thankfully, my kneepads and helmet padding absorbed almost all of the impact.

Once I landed, I quickly turned around, and saw the bike in the air doing the horizontal mambo toward me. Before I knew it, it landed 180′ (opposite the direction I was going) on my right leg. I yelled an expletive, and promptly removed the foot from underneath the bike. Bob, Jay, and David quickly ran out to check on me and made sure I didn’t do anything additionally stupid. I asked Jay to get my camera out of the tankbag to shoot some photos:

My legs were in quite a bit of pain, but the shock helped it from being too bad. Dave checked to make sure I didn’t break anything, and then him and Bob quickly got on to getting my bike back up and straightening it out to ride it back out onto the main trail. Note, the logs you see are not the ones I went over (the bike is facing the wrong direction).

As you can see above, the metal bracket that goes above the headlight is hanging out. In fact, other than some scratches, the headlight was the only noticable damage:

Looking at the above photo, it looks like the headlight and windshield must have briefly hit the dirt before it came to rest on my leg. It’s somewhat all of a blur now. Jay, Bob, and Dave disassembled the headlight shroud and put it all back together while I rested and fired off more photos. I felt pretty bad about it all. The log was moved out of the way before David rode the bike back out. You can see how pitifully small it is here to the right:

After the incident, we decided to split into two groups. Bob and I backtracked 3.5mi on the trail to make it back out on to the main road and over to Suches. Jay and David continued on to some harder trails. I hated turning around, but as the adrenaline wore off, my right ankle and both knees were beginning to hurt quite a bit. Using the rear brake was absolutely no fun. Neither was putting my left foot down at stops. I made it out though with a smile on my face:

Lessons learned? I knew when I went to scout the trail that I was going a bit over my experience level, but did not think too much of it. I was excited. Know your skill level and ride appropriately. When you see a wet log, pause for a moment and consider the best technique to traverse it. Give some throttle to get your front tire off and then pause, then give some for the second throttle. I’m pretty sure I didn’t let go of the throttle enough between wheels.

How did the gear do? My Scorpion EXO-700 absorbed all of the impact, but I don’t think there was that much for it to do either. My Olympia Ranger 2 pants worked well, the knee armor absorbing most of the impact. The real hero’s were the Oxtar Matrix 2 boots I had on. The bike fell right up to the top of the boot line, and I am sure if I was just wearing hiking boots that I would have broken something. The Acerbis Koerta pressure suit I was wearing must not have taken much of an impact, as I don’t have any bruising or pains in the upper half.

A week after the incident, I still have a slight limp as my right knee doesn’t feel quite right. My wife made me get x-rays the day after it happened, and everything looked alright. The doc said it was all swelling and tendon-related pain and should be gone by the end of the week. The doc gave me some ibuprofen and Hydrocode to help ease the pain. I’m pretty happy that me and my bike made it through without too much injury.

I’ve asked myself if any gear would have helped? I think some more offroad oriented knee protectors would have helped. I believe that more MX-oriented boots could have minimized impact to my right ankle when the bike fell. An MX-type helmet with a peak/sunshade or a hybrid-style helmet such as the Arai XD could have taken some of the impact away from my forehead, but my forehead impact was very minimal already. The Arai XD however is about $500, whereas my EXO-700 is $180. One thing I did find out from this event is that unlike the higher-end helmet manufacturers, Scorpion will not do an analysis to see if your helmet is still safe to use. They summarized “Our helmets are already pretty inexpensive, you should just go buy a new one”. Their reasoning was that they did not want to be faulted for bad analysis. Even with that catch, I will be ordering another EXO-700 once I find one in stock.

Stay safe, and beware of wet logs.

BMW Motorcycles of Atlanta is holding their Spring Open House on April 14th, which appears to be a schedule conflict for me. I went to their fall event and had a great time testing bikes. This caught my eye on the flyer this time around: “Demo ride the F800′s and the G650′s!”. Those are the new lineups of bikes that BMW has for 2007, two of which I am very interested in. The BMW F800ST has gotten really fantastic reviews, and is quite a different beast from what I am currently riding. I obviously wouldn’t give it much offroad time, but it looks like the best compromise of a good commuter bike and a good two-up bike for the time when I can convince Dallas to hop on the back.

The G 650 xChallenge would also be nice to demo-ride, as it’s the closest thing to a replacement my bike has in the 2007 lineup. I got to sit on one at the Moto show in Atlanta a few months ago, and it didn’t seem too bad. It’s much more trail-worthy than my bike, but suffers some usability issues for using as a long distance tourer. The gas tank on it is half the size, the seat a bit stiff, and it doesn’t have a large alternator for powering goodies such as electric vests and gloves. Ideally, I would be able own both motorcycles, but I don’t see it as terribly practical at this point.

I don’t have any plans to buy a new bike in 2007, but perhaps another used one in 2008 to broaden my experience would be nice. There will be more demo-ride days for sure.