and to

Nice first post and the answer is... there's loads of XT riders all over the place, last time we looked at the statistics, these are spread between Europe, Australia & NZ, South Africa, and South America and if these bikes were imported in USA they will also be very popular because we got a lot of americans registering in this forum to find out about the xt bikes. Some have gone the trouble of importing them themselves from either South America or Oz.

As for the nodding thing... no one really give a damn anymore. Fact is the majority of other bike riders wouldn't even acknowledge the XT as a bike until.... you take a few of them for a ride on a twisty bendy road and see all those pocket rockets struggling to keep up with the smooth cornering ability of the XT's. Its not the straightline speed that matter on an XT but rather the throttle response in corners and twisties. Which is why someone on a GSXR600 will have to redline their bike to get the same torque response as our xt speeding in and out of bends, and as a result pocket rockets ****ing hate us