Tuck, you are gonna hate this, but we farm mostly durum wheat
, and yellow peas. Dad and I farm 2500 acres together a few miles north of Assiniboia, Saskatchewan. I make the 200 mile drive home most weekends. I also work as a design engineer on harvesting equipment for CaseIH / New Holland for most of the year here in Saskatoon. They've been very good for letting me take time off during seeding and harvest. Another side benefit is an excellent employee discount on equipment, that has actually had more of an impact to the bottom line than my salary. This fall we bought a new CaseIH 7088 combine that I had been on the design team of for 3 years. It was a very cool experience to buy a machine that I had a hand in designing. The frustrating part is going to come when breakdowns occur. I am sure we have all done this... you go to take something broken apart, and you find that you just can't quite take it apart the way you hoped to, and it ends up taking hours longer than hoped. At that stage you undoubtedly curse the stupid engineer that designed such a stupid contraption. I'm not going to be able to find a suitable scapegoat.
Most of the bikes I have gotten in the last 4 years, since I started working. Going through school, I rode junk. Still had a ton of fun though. 1986 Honda XL100 and a 1985 Honda ATC350X trike. When I started working, I just didn't know when to stop. I was allowed to work as much overtime as I wanted, and coming from farming and going to school, I was just in a habit working until the job was done. But with an office job, it is never done... there is always more. So I was putting in huge overtime, right around 500hrs per year. That's an extra three months of 40hr weeks that I fit into evenings and weekends. Plus, I was farming too. So, I had no outside life at all really. When I had free time, I would scour the classified and find any interesting bikes I could. Really, the chase of an interesting bike was my entertainment. I didn't actually get to ride much (I've put 1000kms on my Buell in 3 years, 200kms on my Triumph in 2), but I sure loved looking at them. Last February I was on a business trip in Iowa, watching the classifieds back home, and spotted the KX500 and KLX650R. I only had vintage dirtbikes, and the only modern stuff were my streetbikes, so I thought a dirtbike might be good to get back into physical shape. since university I had gotten into horrible shape. I weighed 270lbs, and looked about double my age. I needed something to motivate. I couldn't decide which to get, so ended up buying both the same day (different sellers). I had wanted a kx500 from the time I was subscribing to Dirt Rider in grade 7, so finding an old one with the same decal scheme as Jeff Emig just seemed too cool. The KLX650R (no relation to KLR) was an oddball I just wanted to try out. And it was a perfect bike to let my dad ride. It has proven to be a perfect bike with near-kx500 performance when givin it (very similar with a xr650r)... and is fine with lugging around with my dad riding it slow.
This year I spent a whole lot less time working overtime, and a lot more time out riding bikes. I made 13 trips to the forest, and burned through more VP fuel jugs than I can count. The only day-stopper was a broken kicker. The ground was just too loose to manage push starting. By the end of riding season (November) I was down to 245lbs, mostly just from riding. Since then I've really changed my diet as well, and have been working out pretty hard. I'm sitting at 224lbs now, which I figure 46lbs weight loss should be the best performance mod for a KX500 a guy can get. I'm not sure I can say it saved my life quite like the heroin addict, but it sure helped me start enjoying life more. I always stayed clean and lived on the straight and narrow, but I wasn't enjoying life much.
I suggest you don't get too jealous of my abilities, I can make some pretty dumbass moves. The bike is back running again, but I had a disaster when I first got it back together. It started up 1st kick after the rebuild, ran great. I rode it a lap around the yard, seemed ok. So I pulled into the shop since it was really cold out (February in Saskatchewan). A couple minutes later I pulled out again to go down the road to check all gears. First good, second, good... go to pull third and the shifter just flops and now had about 3 inches arch. I could have made a mistake anywhere between step 1 and step 300... but I made it on step 1. Engine back out, pull cylinder, split cases, and find the two shift forks in mixed up. That was a really depressing job, and made me question everything else I had done on it.
Anyways, there is my confessional. If you are ever up this way, there's a spare KLX650R you are welcome to ride. If you want to see some more of my bike pictures, I am on facebook. Jonathan Myers in Saskatoon, SK. Add me if you like. I will see if I can post photos from there on here. I think I might be able to since my profile is public. If they don't show, please let me know.
Here's a welcome sight to see on a Saturday morning...
It rained 3 inches on us that day of riding.
Mid July, riding with my dad.
Catching a breather after about 2 hrs of riding.
A coworker of mine from england that I offered the KLX650R to for an evening. We went out after work. Long days this far north, it was about 8pm when this was taken.
Trying to extend the riding season.
And the most recent, fresh rebuild shot.
And just a recent photo to show the difference the KX has made in my fitness since last summer. People say I look angry here... and you said there was always a grin in my photos
