Ride - Day Three. Nothing To See Here. Move Along, Move Along.

Sunday morning CG and I got up early. We were both anxious to get on the road. The ride had been fun but hearth and home were calling. After breakfast we pledged everlasting friendship and hit the road. At first I was going to retrace my ride across 375 and then, by side roads, back to I15 just above Cedar City, just 40 miles from home. Then I remembered that whole running on fumes thing and considering I was going to be solo thought it might be better to go south to Las Vegas instead. I jumped on Hwy 95 at 0745 with a full tank and an undiscovered road ahead.

We've all been there. Away from home, at the end of a fairly long and tiring trip. You just want to eat up the miles and get there. That pretty much sums up Day 3. The start of the ride was down another pretty much empty stretch of highway. the landscape went from nice to desert almost immediately. The road skirts Death Valley to the west and the Nevada Test Site on the east.

I made it to Beatty at 96 miles and I was glad it showed up when it did. Those of you with delicate constitutions may want to just skip this next part. See, CG and I had dinner at Mexican place the night before. The food was good but later that night I started feeling a stirring in a certain place below the belt line. If you catch my drift. I tried to relieve the pressure before starting out but no joy. I had premonitions but what you gonna do? Time and the road were calling so, full of self confidence in my ability to overcome any gastrointestinal difficulties I might encounter, I soldiered on. Until I got to about the 50 mile mark. Then the first pangs of discomfort hit me. I ignored it. Surely there would be somewhere to stop and relieve my incipient condition coming up any time now. Yep, any time now. Sigh, there's never a place to go when Pangs of Discomfort become Immediate Need. I started looking for a place on the side of the road where I could do the stop and squat. Soon that became anywhere, anywhere at all. But no luck. The land was flat and open with not so much as a telephone to shield me in my shame. I squirmed and stood on the pegs and prayed for divine intervention. At mile 96 my prayers were answered.

That's the gas station/restaurant/convenience store at Beatty, Nevada. She shore is purty ain't she? Got a very nice restroom too. I spent the better part of half an hour staring at those graffiti stained walls, thanking my lucky stars they even existed. How close was it? I was mentally cataloging all the extra clothes I'd toted along hoping I had enough to get me home because the flood was coming and if I hadn't stumbled across Beatty I was going to be doing a quick change on the side of the road.

Ok, enough of that. After taking care of all my needs I got back on the road and pointed BigBandido's nose toward Las Vegas. I passed Creech AFB along the way. I wanted to stop and take a few pictures but I wasn't certain my 'issues' were completely resolved so I kept the hammer down and thundered into Sin City.

126 miles from Beatty to Vegas.  And it was hot. Like 110 degrees hot. I hit the first station I came to, filled up and spent another half hour trying to cool down and chugging a one liter Mountain Dew. It was so hot I briefly considered getting a room in a motel with a pool and taking up the rest of the ride early the next morning. Very briefly. I called Lu and the sound of her sweet voice convinced me to man up and get back to my baby just as quick as I could.

Back onto I15 north and home. By this point I was interested in one thing and one thing only. Miles and getting them under my wheels as expeditiously as possible. I may even have exceeded the speed limit once or twice. But just a couple of times. I swear.

I eschewed any more stops. Even with my somewhat advanced rate of speed I figured I could make the last leg in one non stop run. At 1430 local time on Sunday, after a 139 mile leg that had me on reserve for the last 9 miles (sorry about that Nevada, Arizona and Utah Highway Patrols. I was somewhat in a hurry. I'll slow down next time. I promise), I pulled into Casa Six and home. Three days, two nights and 1224 miles after I'd begun.

Here's proof that I made it without damaging BigBandido. There she is, looking just as good as the day I'd set out.

A few thoughts on traveling long distances by motorcycle.
-Pack carefully. I took way too much stuff. I barely touched all that crap I'd packed into the backpack attached to the rear seat. When I do it again I'll pare it down to just what I can fit into the tank bag and saddlebags.
-Know your mileage, range to reserve (if your bike has a reserve) and maximum range. Tend to fill up when and where you can anytime you're riding in sparsely settled areas.
-Make sure your bike is serviced, has good tires, chain and sprockets and everything is up to date. We were in areas where if we'd had a breakdown help was going to be hours, possibly many hours, away.
-Ride with a friend. I had fun every day but the last when I was riding alone. A good companion makes the miles a lot more pleasant and is a good backstop in case of problems.
-The Throttlemeister worked well within the confines of what it was intended for. I recommend it but keep it's limitations in mind.
-Take a camera and stop for pictures often. The second day we kept to that and got some great shots. The last day I didn't and now I regret not taking just a little more time.
-BigBandido worked flawlessly and was surprisingly comfortable. All in all a creditable sport touring machine. It's proof that you don't have to spend mega bucks to have a competent ride. I paid $2400 bucks for her and she was worth every penny. You can spend more and get more but don't turn away a bike just because it isn't considered a true sport tourer. You may be pleasantly surprised. I was. Sooner or later I'll probably upgrade to a BMW but if I don't I'll be well served with the one I've got.
-Buy saddlebags, even small ones. The ones I bought cost me a measly $72 dollars on sale and were money very well spent.
-Carry. We were in places where I kept expecting to see Burt Gummer drive by. Toting along a handgun just seemed like a good idea. Take a good one with spare ammo because there's just no place to put a rifle on a motorcycle. Carrying on a motorcycle is different from carrying in a car. You have to take into consideration that you may well find yourself sliding across the pavement on the seat of your pants and casual carry may result in a lost or severely damaged heater. My view is that I'm probably not going to be in a situation where immediate access while I'm riding is going to be an issue. I decided that having it in a holster in my tankbag put it in  a place I could get to quickly and easily. You may have a better option or different opinion but put some thought into it before you leave. And know the carry laws in any jurisdiction you may find yourself in.
-Sport touring with a buddy on a motorcycle may be the most fun you'll ever have with your clothes on. I highly recommend it. Just get a bike, do your maintenance and preparation and GO! It's a freeing experience. Nothing but wind and sun and sights and new places and miles of adventure.

After the ride I was pooped. I spent the evening getting reacquainted with my wife and being mauled by Angus. He did the Doggy Dance of Joy when I got home and didn't let me out of his sight for a couple of days. I went to bed and he promptly curled up behind me in Daddy's Finally Home bliss. We slept in.

All in all a very good time. My eternal thanks to Car Guy for making the trip and keeping me company on the journey. A better companion doesn't exist. And remember, he started out the trip with a 640 mile ride just to get here bringing his total mileage to right at 1900 over 4 days. What can I say? He's a good man and I'm lucky to have him in my life. I love you brother.

The question of whether or not I'll do it again has arisen. The answer is yes. I think I'll probably limit it to two days at a time though. I thought that was just about right for a nice, relaxing ride. And I want to do the total mileage with someone. Riding distance solo isn't much fun at all.

I hope you enjoyed my travelogue. The time I spent on my motorcycle with CG was some of the best I've ever had on two wheels. If you're considering it all I can say is go for it. And if you're in my neck of the woods give me a holler. Me and BigBandido are always up for a ride. Just remember my traveling credo.
No Camping!

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Ride - Preparation And Day One

Car Guy (hereinafter referred to as simply CG) arrived on Thursday evening after a 16 hour, 640 mile run from California. I spent all day Thursday prepping and getting BigBandido loaded up and ready for the ride. Part of that was installing a Throttlemeister cruise control.

The Throttlemeister is a friction throttle controller as opposed to a true cruise control. It works by twisting the controller until a brass ring contacts a plastic cup installed over the actual throttle. Here's a picture of the controller as it ships from the company.

It's actually a pair of bar ends with the controller installed in the right hand unit. That worked out doubly well for me as BigBandido came without any vibration damping bar ends when I bought it. That black plastic piece is the friction cup that goes over the inner handlebar throttle. This is how the empty bar looks without anything installed. Just as I bought it.

Peel back the rubber throttle grip

And install the black plastic cap over the end

Then assemble the controller. Those rubber o-rings will be compressed by a bolt that goes through the unit to secure it in the handlebar.

And stick it into the open end of the handlebar

Once it's properly assembled and installed you have to tighten and adjust it. Adjusting it consists of getting the gap between the controller and the grip exactly correct. When done correctly a back twist on the controller tightens it against the cap and holds the throttle in place. A twist forward releases it so the throttle can be operated normally. It took quite a bit of time and a lot of fudging to get it correct and I still had to fiddle with it a bit all that first day.

The Throttlemeister has two functions, bar ends to dampen the vibrations put out by the big 1200 cc motor and as a cruise control. I bought it in it's 'Heavy' iteration and it did indeed do a good job smoothing out any hand tinglies from that engine. But it's not a true cruise control. That is you can't simply select a speed, flip it on and forget about throttle input. It works by friction so when you get to a certain speed you twist it on and you're set at that throttle position. If you're on a consistent piece of road it works fine. If you're in a rolling section, not so much. Even then, on either a flat or gentle uphill, I found myself having to make frequent throttle corrections. Minute adjustments to keep a consistent speed. It also requires you to closely monitor your speed but that's nothing you don't already have to do on any motorcycle without true cruise control and there are precious few motorcycles out there so equipped. Still, it allowed me to set it and with small inputs keep my speed within a fairly small range. That also allowed me to rest my throttle hand and even take a picture while moving. I only did it once but it is possible. All in all I recommend it for anyone doing long distances, just for the chance to shake out the numbness from time to time if nothing else. At 168 bucks it ain't exactly cheap but in my opinion well worth the investment.

A word on gas mileage and range on a motorcycle. Motorcycle speedometers and odometers are notoriously inaccurate, generally reading on the high side. In my case I'd checked my mileage and compared it to my odometer and gas tank capacity so I'd know what my maximum runs were going to be. The BigBandido was disappointing in mileage, averaging about 33 mpg. I was confused until I calibrated the speedo and found out it was off by 10 mph and I was pulling 5000 rpms at 75 mph.The culprit was the rear sprocket. It's two teeth bigger than stock. That emphasizes the torque of the motor but at the cost of gas mileage. It was too late to address before the ride. In the next few weeks I'll drop two teeth on that sprocket and maybe go up by one on the counter shaft. I'm estimating I can improve my mileage by 5 mpg and my total range by 25 miles. That's significant when you're tooling around in areas where signs like this are frequent.

We saw one sign that was 167 miles. Considering that my range on the main tank is 150 miles with 175 to totally empty on reserve it's important to know exactly how far you can go before running out. Hiking down the road in hundred plus degree heat in boots and gear is no fun at all.

Finally all was set and ready. On with the ride.

Ok. Friday dawned bright and hot. CG and I got up fairly early, ate a good breakfast and by 10:00 we were on our way. The first leg took us north on I15. Salt Lake City was the destination. We stopped in Beaver and later Nephi for gas and lunch. We arrived in Salt Lake at the Marcia and John Page Museum building on the campus of the University of Utah at 4:00. Here's where I screwed up. We decided to stop in at the museum to check their open times before we checked into a hotel. Good thing because it closed at 5:00 and didn't open again until 11:00 the next morning. So we decided to go ahead and take the tour right then. When we went in and bought tickets the employees graciously checked our tank bags and helmets. It was only after we started the tour, with no out and back privileges, that I remembered my camera was still in my tank bag. Oh well, CG had his and I could get some from him later. Something I have yet to do. Sorry, no cool car pictures. But it was really cool. Totally. I swear.

The museum was cool and so were the cars though the display was small, only 19 cars in total. We wandered around, oohed and aahed and generally enjoyed ourselves. With one exception. Car Guy is irreverent and I admit to a certain amount of that myself. At one point he squatted down and got within about a foot of one car in particular for a close up picture. He was still outside the Line Of Death demarcated by a string but that was apparently not quite good enough. At that time there was exactly one security guard in the rooms housing the display. He approached CG and made a somewhat snide comment about having Zoom on his camera and told him to back off from the car. CG complied but I must admit that he and I shared a few snarky comments that may have been at a volume Security Guy could have overheard. Apparently he did and most emphatically did not care for it because within just a few minutes there was approximately 500 security people in the room with us, following us around and generally being obtusely obnoxious. It may have only been a dozen or so but it sure seemed like they had emptied the security detachments for every institution in a hundred mile radius. All for us. Every time I got occupied examining a car I'd look up to see one guard leaning against a wall obviously watching me closely all the while trying to appear nonchalant in that charming, Inspector Clouseau in a disguise kind of way, while 7 or 8 others were walking around pretending to be concerned about the cars in essentially empty rooms. How do I know it was all for us? There were exactly 4 people in the museum at the time. A nice young couple and us. The ratio of security guards to attendees was at least 11 to 1. There is one and only one response to such. We engaged them in all manner of small talk, from weather to traffic to hotels in the area. All of them. Purposely forcing them to acknowledge us and recognize that were both no threat and really fun guys. We even got one young lady to laugh. I'm sure she went on report. Sorry about that.

Still, the young man at the desk who had checked us in was very nice even though he was making cow eyes at CG. Not that there's anything wrong with that. We collected our things and with a few inquiries about accommodations we were on our way once more.

We headed downtown because I wanted to see the Temple and maybe take a picture. Just to make up for forgetting to take any actual photos of cars. The reason we went to Salt Lake in the first place. Yes, I am indeed an ultra maroon.

The Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City.

Car Guy on his V-Rod taking a picture of the Temple. Sigh. Better pictures on Day 2. I swear.

We headed toward the airport because everyone knows there are always decent hotels around them. Except when there's not. We finally found a friendly airport police officer who directed us a few miles down I80 and a Marriott. The young gal at the check in desk was polite and friendly and we even managed to charm her out of a couple of white chocolate/macadamia cookies. I found the Hoyt Archery factory just down the street. We ate dinner at a Subway and turned in for the night. After checking in with Lu and Mrs. Car Guy (AKA BikeNurse) of course.

94 miles to Beaver, 116 miles to Nephi and 110 miles to SLC for a Day One total of 320 miles traveled. We were feeling good and before leaving Saturday morning we discussed where we wanted to go. Instead of East we decided on West and an encounter of the Close Kind with beings not of this earth.

Tomorrow.....Central Nevada.

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Back

I got back to the homestead yesterday afternoon. It was a great ride, just what I needed. Give me a day or two to get my bearings back and I'll do some posts about the ride. It was great to spend a couple of days on the open road with Car Guy and no place we had to be. BigBandido ran great, we had no extreme weather and even saw an ET. Yep.

See you tomorrow.

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Ride

I'm going to be missing here for a few days. Car Guy will be here tomorrow and Friday morning we're loading up the motorcycles and heading out. Time constraints, and the fact that this is a first for me, preclude anything cross country. If all goes well on this ride though, I'll probably be doing a bit more of this kind of thing.

BigBandido is ready. I changed the oil and filter, lubed up the chain and bought a set of small saddlebags. Throw in my tank bag and whatever I decide to bungee to the passenger seat and I should be able to haul along sufficient supplies to take me where I want to go.

This is really a kind of minimalist touring. Call it sport touring lite. I've got the Bandit and Car Guy has his V-Rod. Well, one of them because he can't ride two at once. I mean, he's good but even Car Guy ain't that good. If I decide I like it and want to do more and further there will almost certainly be a BMW in my future. I have no idea how it's going to go and whether or not I'm going to enjoy it so I went with a motorcycle that, should decide touring isn't my cup of tea, will be a great around town bike.

We're going to Salt Lake City first. The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) has a new exhibition showing called The Art Of The Performance Automobile that I really want to see. From there we'll see. I'd like to run out to see Little Big Horn and then ride through the Rockies. Maybe do a big loop down to Four Corners, over to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and then home. Maybe. I'm planning on letting whim and the wind cast me where they will. I'm figuring on 3 to 5 days in total. That's for me. Car Guy will be riding here from California and then back. But then he's a lot more awesome than I am.

I'll be taking plenty of pictures and doing a series of posts on the ride when I get home. For this ride I just want to get away and forget everything for a couple of days. Clear my head and just spend time on the road with my best friend. See what's out there to see and travel some roads I've never been on before. Maybe find some nice twisties and let my inner squid out for a little fun. Forget what ails me and just have fun.

I hope you all are having a great Independence Day. We soaked in the pool and then threw some cow on the grill and made some garlic bacon burgers. Yes, they were yummy!The TDF is on the tube and I have some packing to do. You be well and I'll be back in a few days.

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Six Gets A New Motorcycle!

Say hello to BigBandido, my new (to me) 1997 Suzuki Bandit 1200S.

The engine is basically a bored out GSXR1100 motor, tuned for better low end power delivery and more torque. The saddle is a Corbin Lady and Gunfighter though this is strictly a Me motorcycle. I kept Black Beauty specifically for double touring.

I looked at a lot of bikes, including more than a few BMWs and I was tempted. Then that dang practical streak started whispering in my ear. That guy can really be a pain in the posterior some times. This bike has a small fairing, a comfortable saddle and an upright riding position. Plus round tube handlebars. I started riding in the time when all handlebars were tubular steel and I find I just prefer them that way.

I kept on looking, seeking the maximum bang for my riding buck. I wanted something I could take on a two or three day trip through the Rockies but that I could still tool around town on without carrying everything but the kitchen sink along with me. I'm not a cruiser or touring bike kinda guy. No offense, they're great motorcycles, it's just not me. I rode a variety of sport bikes from my Honda CBR600 F3 to my Honda 996 Superhawk. Throw in a couple of Yamaha standards (750 and 650 Specials) and my preferences are pretty clear. I did spend a few years in the saddle of a BMW R1150 RT(P) but I was priced out of that model fairly early into the search. I wanted a big bike I could take anywhere but that wouldn't tie up a significant chunk of my assets and irritate me every time I thought about it sitting in the garage,

A lot of the stuff that was for sale at a price I was comfortable with was pretty crapped out. What is it with some of you guys? Modified and junk shouldn't be compatible terms. Everything was hacked on, cut up, rattle can painted and just generally beat beyond my desire to resurrect. I found a few that I figured I could bring back to useful life but the end result was going to be a high mileage motorcycle that I was going to have to do a lot of work to before I could depend on it. Have I ever mentioned how lazy I am?

Then I found this jewel. Yes, it has been re-painted but it was done by a professional. The paint is deep, shiny and near perfect. It already has good tires, brakes, sprockets and chain. The odometer shows just a tick over 16,000 miles. Best of all, she's almost completely stock with the original fenders, exhaust and turn signals (seriously, the very sight of those tiny white blinkers on bikes just makes me grit my teeth).

Good enough. I plunked down the cash and rode her home.She's big, fast, comfortable and all mine.

Of course the fly in the ointment was a helmet. See, I have this irritating tendency to get rid of all my riding gear when I sell a bike, only to have to buy same once again when I inevitably buy another. So I had to run down to the local cyclery establishment to procure a new lid before taking to the streets once more. Hey, my life has been saved on at least one occasion by a helmet. I never ride without one.

I have a tank bag that was somehow overlooked during the last purge so I only need a tail bag and I may forgo that in favor of a small duffel and a bungee. Then I'll be all set. I called Car Guy and I'll talk to my uncle later this week. Ride The Rockies is on!

Yea Me!

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