So all told the trip ended up 12 days long and the mileage was:
1st bike - 2,600 miles
Delta A321 - 1,180 miles
Rental car - 102 miles
2nd bike - 780 miles
Here's the map of the whole trip. I changed the tracks color each day - except for the day I flew on the airline - I separated each mode of transportation as a different color as well.
Look at what was waiting for me at the suspension shop when I got home . Sooooooo glad this didn't come in BEFORE the trip! We have Traxxion cartridges for the forks too - just didn't unwrap them for a pic and left them at the suspension shop. I'll be mounting up the shock, then taking the forks to him, and when he's done with those I'll ride to his shop and get his help setting sag, suggested baseline settings, etc. I'm going to wait until after I get my insurance settlement and figure out what I can afford to replace now and what will have to wait. The pipes are a big one - I don't want to set the sag with those heavy suckers on there (I'll have 4 of the stock ones now - there's probably enough scrap there to make it worth the trip!).
Here's some random thoughts on the trip:
Honestly guys, I had what was one of the best and most emotional times of my life - outside of my wedding, and my kids births. After I got sick and was wheelchair bound for a while I doubted I'd ever be able to ride on 2 wheels again and even if I did it would probably be for short rides only. 5 years into the disorder I still wasn't riding. 2 years later and this is where I am. This is the drug store that I had to take with me to have my meds for 16 days.
There's empties there but that's because I didn't take the picture the day I left. I'd already gone through a number of days I have to take about 20 different drugs daily to manage the disease and it is a balancing act. I didn't have one problem from the disease this weekend (other than sweating buckets) - no flare ups and I didn't get sunburnt. Several of the drugs (a couple chemo drugs and one other) I'm on makes me especially sensitive to the sun. A year and a half ago I went on vacation with my daughters to Branson, MO and was out in the sun for 2 hours the first day and it ended up blistering all over - like boils (just from 2 hours). I had to hide out in the dark inside because just the sunlight coming through the windows at that point hurt. For this trip, I put sunscreen on every couple hours at the track. When riding I had everything covered up except my face (even a Buff neck gaiter) - and I kept that sunscreened up too after I got the first hint of a burn the first day riding.
I LOVE being on the road on my bike. A bunch of days in a row with just me, the bike, and the road. No one to be responsible for, no one to answer to, and no one needing things from me - truly relaxing. The bike handling great, no particular route to take, just a destination and more than enough time to get there whenever it happened. Me and the bike melding into one - simply awesome. There's just no other way that I've found to get to know a bike well than a long road trip on fun roads!
I made new friends, reuinited with an old friend (I'm one of his mentors and I pretty much talk to him daily but haven't seen each other since he moved down there), and got to meet his soon to be fiance for the first time. Got to watch great racing all weekend long from great seats. Rode 2 parade laps on the nicest racetrack I've ever seen, personally getting that first person image of the track - which makes watching the races more exciting because you lose perspective watching it on video. The food down there was phenomenal. The track food even tasted awesome and was reasonably priced!
Did I mention the umbrella/trophy/photo shoot girls? Wowza - I love that motorcycle racing hasn't gone completely PC yet. Amazing displays from the different manufacturers and vendors. I ordered a set of custom ear plugs (they took the impression there) with 3 different filters that I can change out to use for riding, concerts, shooting, etc. Was great to be able to talk to them directly and get exactly what I was looking for.
I would guess I took well over a thousand pictures from the event. My digital SLR will be here tomorrow via UPS with the rest of my gear (45 lbs worth) - I hope it survived the trip. I'll clean up the trash out of the pics and post a link to an album. Mostly of the races but some in the vendor areas too. I haven't seen them except on the little LCD on the camera but I'm pretty sure I got lots of great shots.
Going through the manufacturer area there's lots of cool bikes out there right now - the performance levels and the level of bikes available for purchase (albeit WELL out of my price range) are amazing these days! MV Augusta's really push my buttons - they are like rolling art. They had the F3 675 RC ( https://www.mvagusta.com/en/model/f3/675-rc ) in the booth and WOW is that bike gorgeous in person. The finish on it was unreal. I've never been a big Honda fan but they had a number of very cool looking CBR's.
I was tempted to take some test rides but just didn't have enough hours in the day. I don't remember all the other cool bikes but I'm sure I will once I see the pics.
Everything on my bike worked close to flawlessly (the Garmin 396 LMT-s GPS still has some bugs that cause resets once in a while and some other issues - I'll post my thoughts on all the mods I had on the bike below and how they performed during the trip) and I got to enjoy it for 2,600 miles on an awesome ride. My big ride's like this are every bit as much about the ride there and back as it is about the events themselves although they sure make a wonderful backdrop!
I was so high on life and having such a great time on this trip - much of it solo. I only have one friend that I would go on a ride like this with currently - MiRex (Jon) - and he didn't have the time to take off. We've ridden together in all sorts of crazy stuff, be it single track woods riding (Jon is who got me into single track), across the country through the UP and to Yellowstone almost all on back roads, through torrential storms, etc. We finished that ride with an Iron Butt ride (1k in 24 hrs) from Ogalala, NE to home. I'm open to trips with others but wouldn't want to jump into a huge trip with someone. I like to ride sun up to sun down and not many seem to be up for that.
There were a number of times that I got very emotional on the bike during this trip, some were snapshots of things like sunsets, others the feel of a fun set of S turns on a bike that just had it's handing magically transformed with a new set of Michelin Road 5's. Left several darkies on both the street and on the parade lap in turn 1 at COTA - so controllable. I was just so happy that I was where I was and doing what I was.
On Friday at the track, when I was sitting alone watching the guys on the track I started crying because I was so happy at one point - but there's no pictures and I'll deny it to your face lol. Weighing all of that on the positive side of the scale against having my bike stolen (with it insured) on the negative side the positives outweighed that it just couldn't break my mood.
Would I have preferred to not have my bike stolen? Absolutely, but there really was no point in getting upset over it - that would just be giving away my joy to the thieves, F that. I think that maybe that's age and wisdom talking?
Riding the stock bike home for that many miles in a row after having modified the 1st one was interesting. It's the first time I've had a brand new bike, modified it over time (although not much time) and then gone back and ridden a stock one again. Building up the first one was an iterative process, so it got a little better a little at a time. By riding one modified and one stock close to back to back and for long enough for the little issues to stand out really showed how much of a difference the changes really made!
Everything I had done to my bike I will be doing again. Every one of them improved my experience. The stock bike was incredibly uncomfortable for that many miles. The double bubble Zero Gravity windscreen, Helibar risers, and Corbin seat transformed the ergonomics. I was way more tired and sore riding the stock bike home than I was on my modified bike on the way down.
I'll do an equipment list and what I think of them probably tomorrow or Saturday at the latest. I'm picking up a Harbor Freight bike lift tomorrow so that I don't have to lay on the ground working on it. I don't get down on and back up off of floors easily - knees, hips, ankles, shoulders, wrists, etc. A friend is helping me with his truck. I'm driving a Mustang still and don't have a truck.
* Last updated by: SteveStLaurent on 4/19/2019 @ 5:24 AM *