The big job for this morning was to go down to Two Wheel World in Arlington to get new tires put on the Sportster. I’m planning on running Deal’s Gap in a couple weeks and have been thinking that if that isn’t a good excuse for new tires, I don’t know a better one. The weather was pretty bad all morning with rain coming in from the south and I hit the first patch of it at Grapevine Mills.

On the way down I got to really test the ER 6i‘s. At 80 mph I heard as little noise as with plain foam earplugs and didn’t have to turn the volume up at all. The sound level was exactly the same as when I was in the garage with the engine off.

The new tires are a matched set of Avon Venom X tires.

On the way home the sky opened up and I got to take it really easy, riding through 1/2 – 1 inch/hour rain on brand new tires. The good news is that the tank bag is waterproof and the Roady 2 worked splendidly in the wet weather. The bad news is that I got drenched and it’ll be a couple days before my boots dry out.