Weather Imagery

I decided on the 2005 BMW 650 GS Dakar for my first motorcycle over some other comparable single cylinder motorcycles for a couple reasons; looks and performance. Bottom line … I LOVE this bike! Some of the other bikes I looked at were the Kawasaki KLR, BMW 650 CS/GS, and the BMW 1200 GS (a bit much for a first bike).

I wasn’t interested in buying a brand new first bike so I shopped around for a used one. And I shopped. And I shopped. And I shopped some more. Not because I was picky, but because I could not find any used 650 GS/Dakars anywhere. I found a few used bikes but they were all in other states. After looking for 4 months, the BMW dealership in Denver said they had two. I told the sales rep I would be up there on a Saturday to take a look and he said they would be gone by then. I figured it was salesman bull crap and let a couple days pass. I called back and sure enough, one was already sold. So I put a refundable $1000 deposit down just to hold the Dakar for 2 days until I could get up there and take a look. The bike was only 6 months old and they were only knocking about $1500 off what a new one would cost. It had the ABS brakes, heated hand grips, and a transferable warranty. The cost is probably why it didn’t sell as fast. Anyhow … long story short … once someone buys the 650 CC/GS/Dakar, they rarely get rid of them. That’s how well-liked the bikes are.

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Rain drops are often drawn in books or shown on TV as being tear drop shaped. In reality, the shape of a rain drop changes as its size gets bigger, and they are never shaped like a tear drop at any point during their life-cycle. Their shape is a result of two things; water surface tension and wind resistance. An example of water surface tension would be the shape water takes as it collects on your car just after it has been washed and waxed. The water globs up and sits on top of the car instead of spreading out into a thin layer. Wind resistance on the other hand, creates a force on the rain drop which causes them to deform and break into smaller droplets. Imagine blowing on a large bubble and noticing the change in its shape. When the wind resistance overpowers the water tension force, the water droplet deforms so much that it splits into two smaller droplets.

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