Hello from Jax, FL

Impressions after 350 miles

Well, I have around 350 miles on it now. put about 150 on it today in back roads in rural Georgia. The ride is very nice and it handles great. I pushed it real hard thru a bunch of sweeping curves today and it seems to handle everything great. I am riding with a friend who rides a ST1300 and mine seemed to pull him when we opened it up. I had it up around 110 in 4th gear at one point and it was right at 7000 rpm or there abouts. in 5th, 3500 rpm is about 63 mph, so theoretically at 7000 in 5th it should be running 126.

There is a rev limiter set at 7500 rpm, so 130 or a little more should be obtainable. Be interesting to see what it really will do.

I love the bike, but have a few negatives that I think take away from the overall package. The bags are crap. Hopefully someone will offer up some nice bags for this bike. They look great, but are super flimsy and you can't remove them easily like on the ST1300.

The small little storage compartments on the dash are almost useless. I did get my garage door opener in the left side and can get reading glasses and a pen in the right side. Trouble is, there is no place to store an extra set of glasses. I like carrying clear ones for when it gets dark. You could put them in one of the bags, but they need to be inside something else or they will just bounce all around.

Also, the stubby windscreen is pretty useless. While it looks cool, it does nothing to knock the wind down. If you are a wind-in-the-face kind of guy I guess it works, but I don't like wearing a full-face helmet and kept getting smashed in the face with bugs and sandblasted when riding behind others. I NEED a taller windscreen and will be getting one just as soon as one comes out. Seems like Honda would have that option in place before putting the bike out.

The last thing is that the grips are very small in diameter. Some people like that, but I don't. Will be changing them out soon.

On the bright side, there is the lights...they are bright! And the audio system works pretty nicely. Hopefully, with a taller windscreen I will be able to hear it! The dash overall is pretty cool. Easy to figure out the functions of the buttons.

The traction control is going to take some getting used to. At one point today we slowed to 1st gear to go over some RR tracks and I tried to pop a little wheelie off the tracks, but as soon as the rear wheel lost traction, the motor cuts out and sputters until everything settles back down. Can't do burnouts either with it on. It can be turned off, but it is on by default every time the bike is started. If you like to play, you need to remember to turn it off first. Probably shouldn't be doing that kind of stuff anyway...but I do like to ride my bikes.