Feh. There are a lot of ways to get a full-body workout on two wheels. Riding trails under motor power (gas or electric) can certainly be one of them, but if you're not using your whole body on a mountain bike, you're not doing it right. It's not just legs and aerobics.

Besides, I can still walk away after tumbling over the bars on my mountain bike, then getting clobbered by the bike itself flying thru the air and landing on top of me. Try THAT on your DRZ!

Seems so much easier to loose on kg of bike fat than one gram of body fat.

Then again, in both areas I sin in the same way. I commit to loose it, only to find that I fall of the wagon and put it right back on again.

There is one thing to be said on loosing bike fat vs body fat though. Bike fat is static, where as body fat is not. Where it is definitely true that fitness will help a lot, in terms of weight alone, a lighter bike makes for better handling then a lighter rider.

Losing weight on farkles and luggage is valid, irrespective of what type of bike we ride. It seems as though nothing we put in our luggage weighs that much - yet when we put our bikes fully loaded on a scale, one can wonder where all that extra bike fat came from.

One might think that taking a tooth brush in place of a real chain brush, and scavenging for diesel at gas stations instead of bringing a chain cleaner on a can - that it really doesn't matter all that much. But, if you apply that same thinking to everything - it starts to matter