Dave:

No apology necessary, I understand and agree with you. Whenever looking for parts and such, I always try to buy from somebody in town when possible. The owner of a small local shop even told me one day that I could get tires and parts cheaper from Dennis Kirk or JP Cycles. I'd rather pay a little bit more and keep business local when I can. I work for Wal-Mart and hate their corporate bullshit and how they keep buying cheaper and cheaper crap and cutting down American countries to offer products at a lower rate. I disagree with much that they do and try to shop there as little as possible. But, when it came time to buy a bike I needed a reliable one and had to stay around 4 grand. I am young, fixing to start a family, and am trying to stay out of debt as much as possible. 4 grand can't buy much of a new bike unless you go metric, so I did. I ride all over and don't have the money to be fixing broken parts on the side of the road. A little known fact about Honda is that they now have (don't know how long it's been there) a factory in Ohio I believe that builds several models of bikes they sell. Sure they're still Japanese parts but at least they're using American labor to assemble them.