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Also, remember that my native language was not English, and I am in the winter part of my life. I learned English in UK, during summer vacations; I always took it as a punishment since I was the only kid spending two months in miserable weather while all my friends were at the seashore in France. In my school days, we did not have English classes. My father always thought that in future, speaking English would be important. He was my Jules Verne... lol... he was in WWII, so I am guessing he had had to deal with multiple languages. Actually he spoke fluent Russian and German, strangely, no English. However, I discovered that learning UK English with British or Scottish accent did not prepare me well for working mainly with people from Louisiana or Texas, who I had a very hard time to understand. I remember that on my first job, on a rig named "The Texas Star", the company representative was from deep Louisiana, I asked what language he was speaking to me... If you combine the misinterpretation that always occur when you type, because you know what you mean, but you need to pass it on to the reader, and if your reader comes from a different world, he may not get the subtleties. So, Quiproquo...

If the dash is blanking out it means voltage is marginal. The dashboard has a built in failsafe protection that if the battery voltage drops below a certain figure, (9V? Can’t remember off the top of my head.) it will abort the start and kill all power to the ecu to protect it from voltage spiking if the engine does start. The ‘Service’ warning will sometimes appear if the voltage drops to close to that critical point and it may also trigger various error codes in the dash and ecu. The voltage drop is due to the current demand from the starter which is very high and if there aren’t sufficient CCA in the battery it will drop below criticality. Usually when the dash re-boots after this event you’ll get a code appear on the LCD screen ‘AMG’ something or other which will appear before the tacho does its ‘Sweep’. Off you’re getting any of these symptoms it is most likely just a very tired battery and hopefully the ecu isn’t fried. It’s unlikely but not impossible. Thankfully ECU’s aren’t terribly expensive on the Bay of Fleas.

My school was situated on the other side of Montmartre from where I lived. So I did have to walk uphill both ways. I walked uphill up to the tip, and downhill then. But to come back, I had to walk uphill again. You could have walked around if you had wanted to, but it was longer. I did not catch the underlying meaning for that reason.

I am new to the forum but recently purchased a '14 brown Norge

As long as you are aware of their limitations, if you use them all year round.

I haven't been following the weather as this is typical for Michigan. I would say for people down south who might not have as much insulation in their home. If your getting sub zero temps for more than a couple days you need to run your faucets every once and a while to keep your pipes from freezing.

As an addendum to this, on my '97 1100 Sport, the starter was siezing over time and making me think the battery was at fault. I put 2 alternative new batteries in it, but in cranked slow, hard to start, multiple attempts until ultimately it siezed completely. The numbers are in another thread somewhere, but bench testing iirc showed no less than 80 amps, and when stalled around 350 amps. That's plenty enough to drop the voltage of even a new battery below the break point. So, check your starter; perhaps you have a DC clamp amp probe?

Currently I have a set of Michelin tires on our car that are basically snow tires that are year round rated. They carry the three peak snowflake rating for snow, so they would qualify as snow tires. But they don't need to be removed when it warms up. They look like something you would see on a WRC racecar. They work well in the snow, especially considering what they are on. Our Jeep has off road oriented tires, they do well enough in the snow but not as well as the Michelins. We used to run a set of snow tires during the winter on our car, our Smart car had a set of snows for the winter, and our Mazda MP3 had a set of snows for the winter. But these new Michelins solve that issue and allow us to not have two sets of tires.

We are even … you got me with the “up & over hill!” Bill

A little straying from the conversation, but it is-3F right now and I walk into my local watering hole (they see me in the summer on my bike not drinking),and they ask "are you on the bike tonight?" And attempt at humor I'm sure, but after 14 bazillionth time I'm like; "Yep ".

Yes thats right Mick, not my bike and no I wouldn't use heat bandages. My friend that ran the DDT for a few years wrapped this same bike and header system just like the image. The carbon mufflers lasted 1 practice session before exploding literally due to the heat they now had to absorb. Wrapping headers is for hot rodders and to keep under hood temps down not Superbikes. Back in the day before they had a total handle on 2 stroke expansion chamber harmonics they wrapped them as well for some theoretical advantage or change. Then they invented exhaust valves. Phil

Welcome, @Donk! A "brown" Norge like this one that Pete roper posted, above?

You are more certainly correct. My experience with snow tires is a bit dated now. When I was in France, I was going to the ski stations for the winter hollidays, but also every other week-end. Before we got the fast trains. I always installed winter tires on my cars, and drove to Les Alpes. My winter tires would wear out very quickly when driving on the dry highways. Today's compounds are obviously a lot better than those in the 70's.

They work really well all year round. They ride quietly, they offer good grip in the wet, they grip normally in the dry, and work well summer time or winter. I am sure your charts are saying something, but my experience with them is they are better than the original tires and better then the set I bought to replace the original tires when I got a nasty gash in the sidewall of one of the original tires. And unlike either of the first two sets of tires, these work pretty well in the snow. They are not full on snow tires, but they are pretty close.

I'm speculating a bit now, but that isn't plausible. When the lever is "activated", it is pumping, so how could anything, fluid or air, get back past the piston into the reservoir? There is, however, a way back past the piston when the lever is released. One can often see fluid swirling back into the reservoir when the cap is off and the lever released after a pumping stroke. As far as "zero pressure" and "no resistance" goes, I would suggest that those are relative terms. If your braking system really was creating "zero pressure", it would not have worked after the subsequent successful bleed. A bit like the guitarist sitting in front of his Marshall who claims he "can't hear anything". Of course he can, and of course your braking system was creating pressure, just very little. Given that the system must have been creating pressure (even if it didn't feel like much at the lever) because it subsequently worked without any other changes, one can assume that the bubbles in the system where a little smaller overnight when the lever was tied off. Maybe that helped, as well as maybe some of the air going into solution. Or maybe the bubble would have found its way up to the reservoir anyway, and tying the lever off was just voodoo.

I think you missed my teasing point: "Did you walk uphill both ways as I always told my kids that I did? " Seriously, I think few young folks in any era really know about, much less appreciate, what their forebears did to make life easier for posterity. Bill

I assume that is not your bike, as I don't believe you would see any real benefit in putting bandages on the headers. Unless they were bleeding, of course.

As a matter of fact, I am born in Paris, IXth arrondissement, close to the Sacré Cœur Basilica, which is on a hill... so, yes. My school was rue Lepic, about 5 minutes walk, but in Paris, nothing is far away. That being said, we tend to forget that our parents, born in the 1900, mine in rural area, had no buses, and if they lived in farms, they had to walk quite a bit. In these days, few people had cars, roads were not like today's. My father had to walk one hour to, and from to school, including when it snowed. And back then, you had snow every winter. I don't know if we had it easy before, or is it easier now? but in Paris, you can always take the Metro if the weather is bad. Fact is, rural areas are having less and less population, thus, less kids; facilities are closing, so your next school, hospital, post-office, bank, grocery store, are getting futher and further. So much further, than soon, we will need helicopters to bring our kids to school!

Any odd behaviour from the dashboard? Does it blank out when the engine is cranking?

Did you walk uphill both ways as I always told my kids that I did? Seriously, we have MANY miles of gravel roads in Frederick County here at the top of Virginia that school buses have to travel, thus the school closures on days that would, for most urban schools, be ho-hum business as usual. I do see -- in great weather -- all the parents sitting in their cars at the end of a street or driveway to take their kids the few hundred feet to their homes! I think much of that stems from fears of security. It's none of my business -- which never stops me from judging and pontificating -- but it still bothers me. I detest snow, but need to stop whining about the weather and just go down to the Moto Grappa and putz around, pretending that I am doing something useful. Bill

As far as I know, the studded tyres are no longer permitted in Germany, but I'm not absolutely sure. What I am sure about, if you have an accident between about November and about March in icy weather, and you don't have winter tyres on the vehicle (M+S tyres, more or less) the accident is your fault, no matter what happened.

Looking for some bass riffs for a Dylan song, I stumbled across this never-aired concert filmed at the Bellevue Biltmore Starlight Ballroom, April 1976, in Clearwater, Florida, where I graduated high school a couple months later. The link opens with the Joan Baez performance at 16:54, hauntingly beautiful. What was billed as the largest wooden hotel in the country is gone now. So amazed this video exists.