So another week has passed and this weekend we headed up to Goulburn in NSW to visit MJM custom seats.

While the ‘real deal’ in the long distance riding game is called the Iron Butt rally over 11 days, the Butt Lite rally is still a goodly 6 days long. For work I ride a desk, which means I’m pretty comfortable with sitting for a couple of hours at a time on an office chair, but it’s pretty unusual for me to work a 10 hour day and even then I get up to go to the bathroom, get a coffee in the kitchen or walk to a meeting room. Those are luxuries I won’t have when we’re on the rally. And that means I need a seat that doesn’t leave my ass feeling like it’s been hauled over hot coals.

The seat on the 1200RT in the US isn’t toooooooo bad. It’s a Corbin aftermarket seat which I sat on from Washington DC (after Kiwi collected it from Dan Simmonds’ place in Pennsylvania) to Lori and Joe’s home in Apple Valley, Minneapolis (more about these legends soon). This map shows our first two days of riding…

And this is us at one of the incredible rest areas on I76! I do have the gear, I swear!!

Anyway, I managed roughly 6-7 hours per day on the back for I think about three days before my butt started hurting. Then I became like the kid in the back seat on a long road trip “Are we there yet?”…

By contrast, the seat on Kiwi’s K1600 here in Australia was made by someone with a vendetta against pillions. On our trip out to Temora a few weeks ago I lasted no more than about an hour and a half before my butt felt like it was on fire. I know it sounds like an episode of ‘The Princess and the Pea’ but it’s serious stuff! Which brings me back to MJM on Saturday!

Mick at MJM knows a think or two-hundred about motorcycle seats: how they’re made, where the pressure points are, where the manufacturers manage to cut the foam so that it feels like it’s the corner of a box cutting into the back of your leg… the lot. And when he pressed down on the pillion seat on the K it became apparent that I haven’t been bitching and moaning about the seat for no good reason. I feel like I need a medal for making it to Silverton and back on that seat in 2016! The foam is rock solid below 1cm and there are at least two different edges in the foam that hit the edge of the seat right in the wrong place. Thankfully Mick is my feather butt’s best friend and is going to rebuild the seat for us so that hopefully I can do some longer rides without becoming that whiny SOB I referred to in an earlier post (thanks Mick!!). When we know it works for the seat here, we’ll get Mick to make one to replace the seat in the US also.

Which brings me back to the legends mentioned above. Dan Simmonds looked after the bike in the US despite never having met either me or Martin in person! Not only that, Dan helped Martin out with test riding the bike – purchased sight unseen and the bike was delivered from Illinois to Dan’s place in PA where we picked it up. The day of pick-up is famous in our house for the carrot cake eaten that day…

Even with the three of us we didn’t finish it!

I’ll leave Lori and Joe for another post… it’s a loooooong story…