I got up and headed to my most favorite top secret classified road. Riding hard, hanging off, and having fun. I stopped here for a break before the next section of twisty roads:
There's a warning sign for the truckers there. It might be new:
From there it was pure motorcycle fun. Just me and the road. Really opening the bike up after being stuck with the daily commute for so long.
I ended up in Shady Valley, TN on 421 at the "Motorcycle Playground". This is a Deal's Gap type area where the sportbike and motard crowd gather for fun on the weekends. The country store there is a great place to hang out. There was one guy on a Norton Commando that he built from a basket case. Sweet bike, and I'm a doof for not taking a picture. After a while this group was going to head across the mountain so I asked if I could tag along.
A good group of us started out. A couple of motards (Husky and DRZ400SM Suzuki), a couple of sportbikes, the Norton, an SV650, and me. We were followed by a couple of sports cars but they soon fell behind as the pace increased. The SV passed the Norton, and I soon followed. I'm here to tell you we went crankin' across this mountain. I lost sight of the motards after we got behind a car. A sportbike, the SV, and I passed the car and had a great run all the way over to the Mountain City side of the mountain. Turns out we were right behind the lead group and I got a couple of thumbs up from the guys as we made u-turns and headed back up to a turn-out to hang around some more. There were lots of other bikes of all kinds and guys doing stunts up and down the road. Not really my scene, but the vibe was cool and I enjoyed hanging around as part of the group for a while. on the way home I tried taking pictures with my new Canon A530 while riding.
I had backed a few turns on the preload adjuster and forgot to reset it before this trip. Normally I don't touch any hard parts unless there's a dip in the road, but on this run I scrubbed off some of the left side peg-feeler even with one butt cheek off the seat. This was going into a hard left after just coming out of a hard right. Just as the suspension settled...scraaaaaape. Time to crank the preload back up.
Go ahead, call me a squid. I don't care, it might be true.
I snapped this picture of my rear tire at the first stop of the day:
I took this one this morning before my ride to work:
This was the first time I'd been on the bike since Saturday because of the Cincy trip. It may not show well in the pictures but the tire definitely got a workout. I was surprised when I looked at it after getting home. This tire was supposed to last me through my Nova Scotia trip in a couple of weeks.
The family time in Cincy was great (car trip). We did all the big things: Zoo, King's Island, Aquarium, Reds baseball game. Lots of fun. This was the scene from our hotel window:
Walking back from the game on Tuesday night I spied a boxer motor in the distance. A little closer and I discovered that it was Roadster, a black one like mine! I had to talk to the guy. Turns out he was from Virginia as well and was just in Cincinnati visiting his brothers. We chatted for a good while about the bikes and different dealers. He's been on the board, but not for a while. I think his name was Aaron. Here's his picture:
A great ride and a great few days out of town!!
Full size pics are here: http://r1150r.smugmug.com/gallery/1615548/1/78612002
Did not catch up to a single vehicle, and more important to my ego, no one caught up to me! 