Saturday 27 May 2017. Some thoughts on avoiding further nerve damage

During the last week I visited my GP to receive good news and bad news. The good news is that the test conducted in the last month came in all perfect. The bad news is that by process of elimination, the problems I have had with my hands any feet, known as peripheral neuropathy, or sticking and glove neuropathy, is most likely from the vibration that comes with riding the motorcycles. So now I am faced with a few options:

1. Change nothing, keep riding and most likely continue to incur further nerve damage.

2. Mitigate the vibrations at every opportunity and easure the effect.

3. Give up riding altogether. The probable effects of option 1 are further nerge damage that may in turn, permanently affect the use of limbs, I don't want that.

It is also important to remember that once the cause of the nerve damage is identified and removed, the nerve endings can grow back at a rate of roughly 1 mm per month. As I also do not wish to give up riding altogether so how does mitigation sound? First, you must remember that my two current regular rides are a large air cooled single cylinder (the Suzuki DR800) and a air cooled V-Twin (the Yamaha V-Star). These two configurations are known to produce the most vibrations of any motocycle engine. Send, both bike are fairly old and their designs were not to be the smoothest bikes on the. A new, multi-cylinder parallel in line engine would significantly lower vibrations. Possible contenders include the BMW GS800, the mooted Yamaha advneture bike based on the MT07 engine and the Honda CRF1000. With Honda's reputation for smoothness and the fact that I know that Karen and I can fit on it fairly easily, at this stage the CRF1000 looks to be a contender. However, that will have to wait until I finish my studies and return to work full-time. In the meantime what can I do reduce the effects of the vibration? Here are a few things I plan to try:

1. Switch to gloves with impact absorbtion. For cold days, I have just switched to the Dririder Speed 2 gloves. You can find out more from this link.

2. Switch the handlebar grips to softer, more compliant grips. The Suzuki has been running Grip Puppies for some time and last weekend I changed the 14 year-old rubber grips with new Grip Puppies on the Yamaha as well. Early days but right now, that seems to help.

3. Put the Air Hawk air cushion back on. I did that last night and today's longer ride seems to have been comfortable for much longer. Certainly the literal "seat of the pants" test tends to indicate that the Air Hawk seat cushion does isolate vibrations. The Air Hawk is sandwiched between the stock seat and a the sheepskin seat cover on the Yamaha; again it is early days but my legs feel better than after more recent rides.

4. Purchase vibration isolation footpegs. I have not done this and am yet remain unconvinced that they work. Further study on this issue before I set to work on this.