So what do you need if you want to go sport touring?  Well, I believe all you need is a motorcycle, a direction, and a love of riding.

According to the Wikipedia:

Sport touring refers to either a style of motorcycle design, or a philosophy of riding. It is an attempt to blend performance with long-distance capabilities while providing comfort and relative safety to the rider.

I think that is a fair assessment and to that end I have decide to use this page to showcase some of the items that I use for my touring.  As an added bonus (no extra charge to you), I will include some of my thoughts in an attempt to help others make choices about their gear.

2005 Suzuki Hayabusa GSX-R 1300 Limited Edition

With a 1299cc, liquid-cooled, 4-stroke, 16-valve, Dual Overhead Cam, fuel injected four-cylinder smoothly working through the 6-speed transmission to deliver about 175 base horsepower @ 9800 rpm to the pavement, this bike is enjoyable to ride each and every time you take it out.  This thing has the capability of doing over 3 miles a minute (not a typo.  it’s computer limited from the factory to 186mph) with a simple twist of the wrist.  With it being able to go 0-60 in 3.25 seconds you can see that it is pretty sporty on the bottom end too.  People are amazed when you show them that it doesn’t redline in 1st gear until 80mph… before reminding them it has 5 more to go.

Past experience has taught me that it will happily eat up as many rear tires as you want to feed it, but I have grown out of that phase for the most part.  Seriously, I’ve been at high speed many times for extended distances and now I really don’t have anything to prove by it.  Will I roll on the throttle a bit when passing or to get away from a possible situation?  Without a doubt.  Am I going to do it to try to impress anyone?  No.

One of the things that puts some people off about these bikes is the fact that it weighs almost 500 lbs dry and is all around “bigger” than (say) a GSX-R 1000.  Seeing as I am 6′-2″ I find that this bike is far more comfortable to me than the liter bikes.  I don’t care how fast a bike is, if I can’t ride it any distance it is not worth my time.

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