Greetings from Southern Alberta

[windycityj]

Hi everyone,
 
I've been hounding my local dealership here in Lethbridge for about a month and the got their first FJ delivered Friday, so I was at the shop to watch the little red beauty roll onto the floor and an hour later put down a deposit (no test ride because she still didn't have any fluids).  I was surprised how much bigger the bike is in person compared to the FZ, but it erased any doubts about using her for touring.
 
I used to ride a little Honda Shadow in Calgary, which was my only vehicle for most of university.  I sold it to buy a computer for school and didn't ride again for several years.  Then my soon-to-be wife and I spend the better part of a year in Africa riding around central Mali on a DT 125.  It was a pretty wild time, but it made her really like bike touring (though, probably a watered down version of ADV).  Since then, I kept stalking FJR1300s online and at bike shows but we weren't in a place to really buy one.  Things settled down for us over the past couple of months and when I got my yearly spring dose of bike fever and started doing online searches, I discovered that the FJR had a little sister on the way that I could afford out of the crate!
 
By the way, thanks to the organizers of the forum and everyone else here for all the info.  I lurked on the site for a couple of weeks to learn a bit about the bike after I first heard about it, then joined up when it seemed inevitable that I'd be buying one.  Over the past couple of weeks, I've been using your posts to make my shopping list (I'll post on that somewhere else).  The advice has been fantastic - for example, I ordered a set of clearance FJR touring side cases last week from Ontario because of what I read here and I'm hoping to do a simpler version of redfjniner's vinyl wrap on them once they arrive.
 
Cheers,
 
WCJ
 
 
 

[ULEWZ]

Welcome aboard. The red is a beauty cause that is what I have.