Henceforward this blog will etch into history my adventures on the BMW K 1600 GT - people, places, calamities, happenstance and all joyous occasions. Read on about my journeys, maintenance, equipment reviews and more.
Yes, another trip to Jupiter. Why bother writing about them? I go there to see my dad and step mom, who snowbird there from January through the end of March. The answer is that I try to not take the same route twice; although, that's gotten pretty hard at this point. There are a couple more routes that I want to go on; but, I need more time. Each will take 10+ hours. Obviously, I'm touring, not destination riding at this point.
So, this trip was planned to take county and state highways; but, once I loaded the route into the GPS, it calculated the trip time at 10+ hours and I didn't have that much time. There were plans to go out to dinner and everyone that was going likes to go early. So, I started out riding the plan; but, once I got down to Lakeland, I grabbed 60 to 95, a route that would definitely get me there on time.
The first part of the route from Rt 41 out to Rt 98 is a bunch of fun - some twisties and some good scenery. On this route, I ended up on hard pack with loose gravel for a mile - just the last little section before rt. 98.
Other than this, the ride there was uneventful.
Coming back, I decided I wanted to ride through the Everglades. The whole reason was that there are two 'loops' through the Everglades - roads that are off the main road - the road less traveled. It's a long way down to Rt 41 from Jupiter, so I just grabbed I-95 down there. It would prove to be a long day and probably would have resulted in an overnight stop if I didn't do that. I also had 2 phone calls I needed to take and fortunately, I was in Miami when I needed to do that, so I took my phone calls and grabbed some lunch before starting out on Rt 41. The first loop is in a park. The gate is guarded by a park ranger. There are tours and such. The 'loop' is not accessible by anyone other than rangers, a fact that was pointed out to me at the gate. Since all tours were already booked, I turned around and went to the second loop. The second loop, called 'loop' starts on Rt 41 and comes back to it. It is a little more than 25 miles long and 25 miles of it is all hard pack with loose gravel. It is well maintained and there are no imperfections on it from heavy trucks. I was very comfortable riding along at 22 mph. I wasn't too comfortable getting any faster than that. Maybe that will change after I do some dual sport. This looks strangely much like the first video...
My plan to video this was to run my GoPro the whole length of the road. At one point, I get off the bike to check out an alligator sunning himself of the side of the road. I didn't get any of that footage because my GoPro was overwriting content every 5 minutes. I've since changed that setting and it appears that my GoPro footage is limited by the battery. I'm getting an hour of footage per battery. I have 2 right now. I will pick up more. It would be very nice if they would last 2 hours. At least that's a reasonable amount of time between stops to load a new battery. Maybe I'll find a better battery.
Normally, I don't do product reviews; but, this is deserving of one.
My friend Cliff said I might like to do a demo ride of the new Ducatti XDiavel, a new offering that only hit the streets 2 days before Daytona Bike Week. In fact, only 3 dealerships even have them. They sold 3 this weekend.
These young ladies were happy to register us and get us riding. They also have very nice umbrellas to see us out the gate with.
Ducatti arranged a 45 minute ride to showcase these bikes. Normally, they would do it in 30 minutes; but, traffic is horrible and they really wanted riders to enjoy the bike, not have a ride like you'd find at an amusement park, where you can only go so fast and are tethered in place by some mechanical something or other.
So, from the ground up...
The tires are wide; very wide. They have a nice gentle curvature to them and they stick to the ground like an electromagnet. Roll in and roll out are very gentle and as fast as you'd like it. The bike will lean 40 degrees and there is no feeling of impending doom when you approach that much lean angle. I don't know where Ducatti came up with 40 degrees. It feels like I could lay that bike right over and there would be no issues whatsoever. There doesn't appear to be anything stopping someone from taking it further. The tires provide more than adequate traction. This might also have something to do with the suspension. The wheels seem to provide unbreakable traction (not tested thoroughly).
Forward controls. This in my opinion was an engineering disaster; but, Ducatti was going after the Harley V-Rod in this offering, so they wanted forward controls. This bike screams to have standard controls, or even controls that are just behind the riders pelvis. I saw more than one rider struggle with this. I didn't have an issue with it; but, when you're cornering this bike at high speed, the forward controls prevent you from leaning over the inside handlebar as you would like. Perhaps this has something to do with the published 40 degree lean angle. Perhaps it's just not safe because the rider can't achieve the correct riding position.
Engine wise, this bike has 156 HP and 95Ft lbs of torque at 485 pounds. It's a little torque monster. I managed to get behind our group a little at a red light and after shifting into second, accidentally pulled the front wheel off the pavement. When I realized what I had, I applied slow constant throttle all the way up to the rev limiter (9000 RPMs). At that point, the rev limiter cycles very fast and the front end goes back to the ground very gently. We found some nice sweeping corners that allowed plenty of lean in. At 100 mph in a turn, this bike is as stable as a train on a rail. I don't recommend any of this and highly recommend doing this sort of thing on a track with a professional instructor first. User satisfaction in this situation will vary wildly depending on users skill, road conditions, bike configuration, etc.
Noteworthy is the fact that for such a little windscreen, you don't note any wind resistance. That alone is remarkable. At no time, was I "tucked in," and was not holding on for dear life, like I would my Harley with a comparable wind screen.
Instrumentation on this bike is plain. It's simple. Perhaps, the display is a wee bit small. I'm 49 and that's not an excuse, it's a demand to put displays that the riders of this bike can appreciate.
I did not get into the configuration possibilities with the foot controls (3 positions), traction control or ABS (if it even has it).
45 minutes on this bike was a full blown therapy session. The soul was happy. The smile was evident. It's a fast, well engineered machine. My ONLY wish for it would be standard foot controls. The forward controls are a miss in my humble opinion.
(Please excuse the verb tense agreement. I was writing during and after this all happened...as with all my other blogs.)
It's 10pm and everyone in my group has called it quits for the night. I'm willing to bet they are all asleep by now. I'm not quite ready yet, so I thought I'd blog a little.
First, I have to say one more time how happy I am to be using overpass-turbo.eu and BaseCamp. I plotted a route from Spring Hill, Florida over to Ormond Beach Florida (west coast to east coast), using secondary, secondary link and tertiary roads - no interstate or toll roads, no dirt roads. The route took me down 41 a little to Avery road and across I-75, and then up 301. The route was excellent. There was beautiful country side and many twisties along the way; definitely enough to keep me interested. Even though I never hit a high speed highway, I still made the trip in 4 hours and stopped for lunch along the way. I planned a really nice ride for Sunday; but, it looks like it's going to thunderstorm and I may need to re-route to the south. We shall see. If that's the case, I'll be disappointed because the route takes me on the ferry to cross the St. John's river.
Before this trip started, I picked out the camping gear I wanted to use.
I've clearly accumulated a pile of camping gear. I have 3 air mattresses, 3 sleeping bags, 2 tents and a bunch of other stuff. When on a motorcycle, one must choose wisely as each item takes up precious space and contributes to the overall weight of the bike. I have yet to worry about the weight recommendations of the bike. My bike has more than enough power to take two riders and full bags and then have stuff strapped on top. I've also seen pictures of guys in Asia that do ridiculous things like transport a 600 pound pig on the back of a moped. Space, however is a serious concern. So, on this trip, I went with my bivouac and my large air mattress. I wasn't sure the large air mattress would fit inside the bivvy; but, if it didn't, I simply
would have put it on top of my ground cover and pitched my bivvy on top
of it. No problem.
For my sleeping bag, I selected my REI light weight bag. I think it's a 3 season bag. I had this bag and tent combination in Death Valley and it got down to a bit below 40 degrees if I remember correctly. I was toasty warm. The bivvy adds about 15 degrees of warmth all by itself and the sleeping bag many more, particularly if you know who to use it correctly.
I also brought my MSR Whisperlite camping stove. This little stove is truly awesome. This trip, I left the spot tracker behind as nobody was following my travels and I'd post the GPS track anyway. I brought an extension cord, mess kit and hand axe. I thought that should definitely cover it.
I arrived to see Fred coming out of the camp site. He said the others were out and were going to stop at the store. He also said I could set up anywhere I like, folks were starting to pull up stakes already. I remembered they were by a porta-john; and pulled in close by; but, couldn't see Cliff's car and trailer. Almost on queue, Cliff called to see if I was there. He said his car and trailer were there, nothing moved and maybe I wasn't far enough down the path. He was right. I found the camp site right away. The campsite looked something like a modern day western. There's big cover on 4 telescoping legs and under it is all the cooking stuff. There were no sides, so it's not really a tent. The tents were pitched around it. Cliff was gong to be back and start cooking soon, so I wanted to get my bivvy staked out and get some shorts on. It was pretty hot and I was sweating being still in the heat. Fortunately, I packed well and didn't have to search for anything. I pulled open one hard case on the motorcycle and there was my bivvy, ground cover, etc. I got that pitched and dove inside for a quick change. It must have been 130 in there already. WOW. About then, Cliff, his brother Brian and Fred came back to the campground. They were going to start cooking soon.
(Cliff - Red shirt, and Brian, his brother)
I had to run back up to the campground office because last weekend, I had to pay a $20 deposit and I didn't stay to camp. I wanted it back and the manager obliged. I also ran to the gas station on the corner and grabbed some sweet tea. The guys had beer and water and I wanted something else. On the way back, I picked up 2 bags of ice and carried it all back to camp. I didn't realize they just bought ice; but, there was room for more. I took the second bag to another bunch of campers right next to us. They were too happy to have it. These are the people that were helping with Brian's bike last weekend.
Cliff had dinner going and I asked if he needed some help. Cliff always says no. I was telling him about my MSR stove and how I wanted to burn off some of my fuel. He said to set it up because he could use another burner.
This stove has a small pump that screws directly into an MSR can and feeds the stove with fuel. Every so often, you need to give it another pump. The manual recommends 10 strokes every 10 minutes. I don't think it needs quite that much. Perhaps it will need that much when the fuel is mostly drained out. From a heating point of view, this little stove is awesome. It puts out a lot of heat. We heated up a kettle of water faster than my stove at home. It's HOT. The thing is, you really can't turn the burner down to a lower temperature. Once the valve is cracked, it's pretty much full on, so cook fast or find some way to elevate your pan, pot, or whatever a little higher off the flame. This stove packs down amazingly small. I think I bought this stove about 5 years ago for about $25-$30 and it was worth every penny. I understand they now go for $40 and they are still worth every penny. I highly recommend it.
Dinner was steak with peppers and onions. Fantastic. Cliff seems to be the campsite chef; but, I wish he'd share some of the responsibility. I almost didn't mention Steve. He wandered over and ate with us at some point. Steve is camping on another site adjacent to ours. He's got a Ford Explorer and trailer. He's got 2 BMW's with him. He also has a big tent set up (no sides) as well as an awning off his trailer. He sleeps on a cot under the tent with no sides. This is pretty smart for Florida. There's plenty of air circulation and you're protected from the dew. If it rains hard, he can go in the trailer if he needed to. We went over to Steve's camp for a fire. We all gabbed about motorcycles and the event and who knows what else. It was a lot of talking for guys. I think all that talking wears guys out because by 9pm, everyone was wanting to go to bed.
Right now, it's twenty to eleven and this campground is still very
busy. Motorcycles are still coming into the campground and someone is
revving their car engine. There's a group across the way still sitting
around the fire talking. My group, I think is fast asleep. I'm about
ready to turn off the computer and rest myself. Tomorrow, we're
supposed to go to the Daytona 200, a motorcycle race. I'm looking
forward to that. Sunday may get cut a little short because of rain.
I wanted to mention my GoPro Hero 3. I thought that for this trip, I would try time lapse photography and sort of stitch together a vine of the trip. Just as I got to my lunch place, I heard the camera shut off. I could not turn it back on - the battery was dead. I don't know why it ran out so fast. I was not continually recording, just one snapshot every minute for 90 minutes. I need to check the battery to see what's what. I think it should have lasted longer.
Another thing I wanted to mention was the BMW Nav IV GPS I have. I bought a micro SD for it because I was running out of space on it (94% full) and it wouldn't accept any more custom routes from me. Initially, I put in a 16GB card and it wouldn't recognize it. I read online that it can't read bigger cards and 4GB was recommended. Where does anyone find a 4GB micro SD card in 2016? I bought the smallest one I could find, 8GB and fortunately it worked. I put the new route on there and when I started the Nav IV, it recognized it and asked me if I wanted to import the new route. Once imported, it began calculating the route. My guess is that BaseCamp saves the way points only and the GPS calculates the route. No worries, I had enough way points to force the route where I wanted it to go. Particularly annoying though was that it would lose the route periodically and indicate that it can't route from where I am to the next point... which may only be a mile or so up the road. It happened 8 times with 24 way points. I think this is horrible. Fortunately, as soon as I told it to follow the route again, it did. I'm so happy that this GPS will let me program it while I'm moving. I'd be livid if I had to pull over every time it happened.
---- Saturday March 12th ---
I woke up to Cliff at my tent telling me breakfast was ready. I thought I had another couple hours of sleep to go. Cliff is an early riser. I was happy to see it was light out and that it was just my lazy ass wanting to stay asleep for a while longer.
At this point, Cliff's brother Brian is going to start his trip back to Texas and Fred is going home to North Carolina via his mother, whose 93rd birthday is today. I think his wife was picking him up and they were going to visit mom. So, the morning would be filled with activities to get those two guys on the road. There were bikes to be loaded on trailers, camping items to pack, etc.
(Brian's bike ready to go to Texas)
In the midst of all this, we got to talking about my rear tier, which, before I started this trip, was having trouble with holding air. The issue was that after I filled, air would come out the valve stem. As seems to be quite normal on these sorts of trips, Fred has everything, including a valve stem and a valve stem change tool. Steve had a tank of compressed air. So, we changed the valve stem. The tire still hold air, although, at one point while we were filling it, the same problem occurred. We'll have to see the next time I go to top it off if the problem is solved or not. Either way, I have a new valve stem and a tire full of air, so the day will go on without a service call taking priority over everything else. I brought the right sized torx socket, just in case I had to pull the wheel and have someone ride it into town.
Now that Brian is on his way and Fred is in a holding pattern, it was time to go use the wireless and then head into Daytona for a Ducatti demo ride. It seems that Ducatti came out with a new bike, only 2 days before Daytona - the Ducatti Xdiavlo. It is competing with the Harley V-Rod. I will write an blog about just this bike and the demo ride. It definitely deserves it's own blog post.
After the demo ride, we headed over to the HIlton for lunch. Cliff had a free lunch coming to him for some reason. While I was there, I somehow got into a conversation with a motorcycle gang member. Without mentioning names, this gang was recently involved in a terrible shooting. He was from LA and I was shocked to hear that they trailered their motorcycles to Florida from Los Angeles. I totally didn't expect that one. Big tough biker gang members trailering their motorcycles and staying at the Hilton.
After lunch, we decided to go the speedway for more demo rides. Unfortunately, the only one we were able to get was a Suzuki VStrom 1000. I'll write a separate blog about this bike as well. By the time we were finished, everyone was packing up at Daytona.
I should have gotten a picture at Daytona. Outside the track, there is a concrete walkway. It's wide, maybe 35 or 40 yards in width and on the other side of that are the vendors. The walkway is PACKED with people and moving motorcycles. The motorcycles are slowly working their way around walking people. I was glad to not see anyone get knocked over. Sometimes, you had to ride really slow and wait for pedestrians to move out of the way. If you don't know how to slow ride, you weren't going to have a good time getting around this. Also of note were a particular type of motorcycle. These are Harley's with very big, thin front tires, almost like a big wheel. They seem to be all show - bright colors, chrome, immaculately kept and annoyingly loud pipes and stereos.
(This bike has a 32" front wheel)
Traffic was a nightmare; but, we took the interstate back to the campground, so it wasn't an issue.
Cliff wanted to break down most of his stuff, so we did that. We loaded his bike on the trailer and packed his big tent and many of the things we would not need in the morning. I also packed most of my stuff and left the hard cases open for the sleeping bag, bivvy, etc. We had a camp fire going also; but, around 9pm, I was ready to turn in. I slept really light last night. Now, I can't get to sleep! So, I blog, again.
About bivouac tents:
One problem that has to be addressed with the bivvy and tents in
general is condensation. In most cases, the temperature and dew point
seem to collide somewhere around early morning; but, tonight, I noted
dew starting to form on things by about 9pm. I was fortunate enough to
get the rain fly on my bivvy in place before the contents inside got
wet. That said, by the time I crawled inside, the temperature was still
in the low 70's. Remember that 15 degrees of heat 'savings' I
mentioned earlier? Well, inside the bivvy it was probably 85 degrees and that's
not good for sleeping. Now, if I open the rain fly, I get wet and
there's simply not enough ventilation in this bivvy to decrease the
temperature. The other problem is that by morning, if I do nothing, my
breath will have condensate on the rain fly and I could be wet anyway.
My two man tent deals with this problem by having an air gap between the
top of the tent and the rain fly. I have woken up to condensate on the
rain fly, so this isn't exactly optimal either; but, it's never been so
much that things in the tent got wet. As I write, I have the rain fly
partially open by my head so my breath can escape. There isn't very
much place for dew to collect where it could drip in, so I plan to leave
it that way for awhile. If it gets cold, or I feel something starting
to get wet inside, I'll close it.
So, over night daylight savings happened. At 5 am (on my Iphone) 4am (on my biological clock), I heard Cliff stirring about. I had to pee anyway, so I got up. He was already in the process of packing up. I peed and told him I was going back to bed. I couldn't get to sleep, so I got up and made coffee and tea while he packed. There was no point in my rushing through packing the motorcycle. I didn't want to leave until it was light out anyway. Go MSR Whisperlite. I had boiled water ready in a heartbeat. We went through 1 tank of gas, and I was very happy about that. I want to re-purpose it for unleaded gas to have as a reserve for my motorcycle. I have one now, I want two to carry.
After Cliff packed, he was gone. The sun wasn't up yet. The sun wasn't even thinking about coming up yet. The sun was still tucked under the covers and not coming out. The sun apparently did not get the memo about the daylight savings time change. So, I started packing. Packing up with a hand light is just as much fun as setting up camp with a flashlight, the only difference is that you don't have to be concerned about how things are packed when you're unpacking. When I packed the motorcycle, there wasn't any space left. I had to pack it just as tightly to get home. No, I do not regret bringing my full size pillow. I was more comfortable on this trip than on many others, simply because I had a full size pillow. I'm going to be hard pressed to pack an air pillow next time. I need to write about improvements I can do to my camping gear to be more comfortable next time.
So, now, I'm packed, Cliff is gone, Steve has pulled out and it's still dark. It's not even that kind of dark where you'd be wondering if it's light enough to hunt yet. It's pitch black. Off to the bathhouse. Fortunately, when I got out, it was starting to lighten up and that was good enough for me. I rode out.
My GPS would not reverse the route that I had gotten there on because it "couldn't find the destination." Whatever. I had a breadcrumb trail. At some point, I noticed a button on my GPS that said something about reverse track, so I pushed that. Well, that wasn't what was intended. It wiped out my breadcrumb trail. Fortunately, I was already on my way to Rt 1, and I could figure something out from there. I knew that I generally needed to ride south and west. I also knew I wanted to go back to through Ocala National Forest and that was the big green blob on my GPS, so I pointed to that. It wasn't long after I got off Rt. 1 that the sun came up behind me. It was big and beautiful. I turned north as it was about 7/8ths of the way up and was able to watch it come all the way up. Not soon after, I was back going west again. I took only county and state roads as I have been doing lately. I'm really liking this, I find an occasional twisty road, see a lot of farmers fields, animals, horse farms, trees, and other wonderful things. I generally know I'm in the right spot when I see homes that were abandoned so long ago that the roof caved in and they are falling apart. I managed to come across a Denny's, so I stopped for breakfast. I was curious how close the rain was also.
I decided that I would take 35 south to 301 south. I hadn't been on 35 south or, that far up on 301, so that worked out. At some point, I started seeing my breadcrumb trail again and I was about to get on a section of 301 that I'd already been on, so I turned off on another county road and started working south and west on other county roads. Sumter county is very nice. I also found that county roads with a letter designation generally aren't the same quality as maintained paved roads. I went down one that was better described as 'hard pack' than pavement. It was rough. I had to adjust my suspension because I bottomed out twice. That road took me through someone's orange orchard. I don't think it was a private road and it intersected a more well maintained road about 2 miles up, or so. After that, I wasn't far from home and came out right on a segment of road that I started this trip on. I had no idea I was that far south. It was another awesome trip.
More maps and pictures:
(I made the right decision. This was right after I got home. I would have been in rain all day long.)
(The route)
(Florida routes to date)
(All K1600 routes of 250 miles or greater to date)
(Who could resist these ladies when they asked if we wanted to go for a ride on their motorcycle?)
(Camp fire. Jeff Kurtz said I need a professional photographer. He should have been there.)
(Cliff after riding a Vstrom 1000)
(Self explanatory)
(Cliff before riding the Ducatti)
(Ducatti brought a bunch with them. The Daytona dealer got the first delivery of this new bike 2 days before bike week started)
Last year about this time of year, I called my friend Jeff Kurtz to see if he was in the state, or close to the state and what his plans were for riding. I really had no idea where he was; but, our paths had crisscrossed multiple times over the last couple of years, so it wasn't unreasonable to think it would happen again. Sure enough, he was at a camp ground on the east coast and planning an adventure ride across Florida with advriders. He invited me to come along and I did. That was last year. This year, Cliff Loose, whom I met on the above trip, called me to let me know he was doing the trans-Florida ride again. Jeff had other commitments. I said I would love to do it again.
So, I knew I needed to ride to St. Augustine for the start of the ride; and I knew that I wanted to take a route that I hadn't been on before. I began my planning with overpass-turbu.eu to find all the secondary, secondary connector and tertiary roads in the area between Spring Hill and St. Augustine. That equates to county and state highways. I really wanted to avoid interstate. Once I got the results back (about 8MB), I started putting together a route. I used Garmin BaseCamp to do that. BaseCamp is becoming very easy to use. Once you have the hang of it, route planning goes pretty quickly. I planned to start on the Gulf coast, get an obligatory picture of the bike with the Gulf in the background and, when I got the east coast, do the same in St. Augustine. I used a selection of roads I found with overpass and viola, I had a route with 25 way points. Routing between two waypoints took me on 15 miles of interstate; but, I suppose that's not bad on a 300 mile trip. I was pretty satisfied with the routing. I learned from the last planning with BaseCamp to put my waypoints before the intersection, and not after, or in the intersection. This worked out pretty well; but, somehow, I got routing that involved making a U-Turn. I was able to avoid it when I got to it though. This time around, there were no GPS rerouting failures. I'm learning.
The trip to Cedar Springs was uneventful. I grabbed an early breakfast, got gas and headed up there. I snapped a couple pictures and grabbed some video.
Breakfast. (Bike way in the background)
The temperature was supposed to be in the low to mid-seventies. It
barely broke 60 and that was for just a short while in the morning.
When I got to Alachua, it was time to take a break and warm up a bit. I
found a Sonny's BBQ and that would do the job just fine, so I pulled
in. Soon after, a motor officer from Alachua pulled in. Apparently, it
was time for the Alachua Pd to have lunch also. Once warm, I hit the
road again. I had to do a little back tracking because the roads I
selected didn't join, so GPS routed between the two points and, actually
put me on some nice roads. No complaints there.
-Weather before I left on the first leg.
- Cedar Key - before I found a spot to get better pictures of the Gulf.
The Gulf of Mexico as seen from Cedar Key.
Clearly, the temperature is going in the wrong direction today!
Arriving in St. Augustine, I went for the lighthouse right away and got
my finishing picture. I wanted to stay around where Cliff and Jeff were
staying, so I could meet up with them quickly. Last year, they stayed
in the Atlassian, I think. I managed to get a room across the street
from that. I think on the hotel scale, this is probably a 3. It's
clean and that is what really matters. Internet is ridiculously slow
though. It brings back memories of being on dial up.
Last year's kickoff dinner was at a lodge. This year's
was at Jaybirds. It's a pizza restaurant. I happened to sit down at
the table with 3 other firefighter/paramedics. 2 of them knew and
worked with each other and were doing the ride together. The other just
happened to sit with them before I arrived. Of course, we talked about
many of the differences between Florida and Pennsylvania EMS. Dinner
was free! One of the sponsors picked it up.
---Day 2 (3/5/2016)
So, at this point, I'd traveled across the State of Florida once, had dinner with the guys and was about to do it again with them. This was the same ride as last year's ride that found me riding my K16 in a freshly plowed farmers field. This year, they had a street ride. When I arrived, Wolfgang saw me pull in and realize I had to be there for that ride. He was going to be riding sweep and described Todd, the ride leader, to me. I quickly found Todd. Todd also had a Sena headset and showed me that you can pair them by taking them off the helmets and shaking them both. The light turns green and voila, they paired. This was great. Todd designed the route and pointed out everything to me as we went. So much work goes into planning and leading a ride. Even if you know what routes you want to take, you need to map them, load them into the GPS and for this group, produce a roll chart. Todd also pre-rode this route to make sure it would be OK for the bikes to do. Each way, this route is 6 hours, plus the time to create it, do the computer/gps work, etc. - Todd really put in some hours on this and I was most grateful. So, this is a rally format. Ride the ride and take the pictures at all the designated places. You accumulate points for the pictures and time. He who has all the pictures and the best time wins. In our case, there were 4 riders going to Steinhatchie and 3 of us coming back. The returning 3 would all get prizes, whether we took pictures or not. Picture taking does give you a chance to get off the bike though.
The first picture we needed to take was of this 'Alligator removal truck and trailer.' Zoom in. It's an interesting site.
Required picture # 2 - an ocean view. Behold the Atlantic ocean.
Required picture #3 - this boat.
Required picture #4 - This post building. Up front is Todd, second is Gustavo and our sweep was Wolfgang.
Time for lunch. Meet Todd, the leader of this group. Wolfgang is in the background. This is the Yearling Restaurant in Cross Creek. I ate a shrimp and alligator po' boy and it was outstanding. This is a must return restaurant.
This guy was playing the blues. I will go back to this restaurant in the future and enjoy a lazy afternoon of food and blues.
Another required picture and an pretty cool building.
Water tower.
So, we stroll in to Steinhatchie at 3:30 - 4:00 after having gassed up just outside of town. Bikes would begin rolling in soon. There were about 100 of us and this was the only restaurant in town that could possibly accommodate us all. Fortunately, they were serving a seafood buffet and were able to move us all through pretty quickly. I had dinner with Wolfgang, Todd and Steve (medic I met last night) and after they left, Cliff and Brian came in, so I sat down with them to catch up. We all had a great time and when we all left, I needed to get back on my bike as my hotel reservation was in Perry Fl., about 35 miles away. There were no rooms left in Steinhatchie and Perry was the closest place with rooms. It was a cool evening ride; but, the heated gear kept me nice and warm.
When morning came, I was up around 7 and knew that the group wouldn't pull out before 8:30 and probably start breakfast around 8. I wanted to see if there were any back roads to get from Perry to Steinhatchie and there were; but, I wasn't going to be able to do them. There wasn't enough time. I was able to get going at 7:30. I sent Todd a text to tell him I'd meet him there. The ride was a cool 40 degrees when I left. The dense air kept the smell from the paper plant hanging in the air and I smelt that from the time I left Perry until I turned off 19 onto 51. Yuck. I was about 5 minutes late in arriving. There were plenty of bikes getting ready for the ride back. Not many were ready to go though. When I walked in, Cliff and Brian were sitting right in front of me with Mark, another person I met the night before. They told me that they had been there an hour and they haven't even gotten coffee yet. The story was that there was a power failure in one of the waitress stations and they were percolating it now. The fact was that there were more than a hundred people in the restaurant and only 2 waitresses. Finally, we got a waitress to take our orders and our food was delivered to us; but, none of us had coffee or orange juice. Forget about tea - they were out. It was a horrible showing. When our meal was over, I went to pay the waitress, and she said that she was so sorry for the horrible service and that she was picking up the check. I asked her if she was picking up the check or if the restaurant was picking up the check and she wavered in her answer. She didn't want to give me a straight answer. At that point, I looked her in the eyes and said "Little lady, I asked you a direct question. Are you picking up the check, or is the restaurant." She started to tear up. She said she felt so bad and that the manager wouldn't even come out and talk to us when she asked him to. She was worried that nobody would come back, so she was picking up our check. I told her that I wasn't going to let her do that. It wasn't her fault and she tried her best. She continued to argue with me and I finally said to her 'look, you don't make enough to pick up checks if something goes wrong. How much do you make?" She said $4.19/hr + tips. I told her that she could either ring our table up and let me pay for it, or I would leave the money on the table. She charged me $18 and change. I gave her $30. I had no doubt in my mind that we weren't the only table she was comping, would have no earnings today and, chances are, would get fired for having her heart in the right place and not enough life experience to let the restaurant management worry about it. I hope she gets to keep her job. She deserves to.
During this conversation, I received a very nice complement. It was from Wolfgang, who was our sweep yesterday and will be our sweep today. He said 'watching you corner is a beautiful thing.' At the time, we had been talking about motorcycle performance and how nimble the GT was for it's mass. Wolfgang has probably been riding for 40+ years, so I really felt that. I put a lot of effort into not just getting around corners; but, gently pushing the degree of lean, apexing late, etc. I apply the skills I learned during the California Bike School track day I was at and try to improve as much as I can. It was nice to hear an unsolicited compliment like that.
So, we saddle up. Going back, we had 7 riders. We picked up some GS guys that had just had it with the trail riding. By the first stop (Perry railroad depot - .5 miles from where I stayed), we learned that one had a knee that was giving them troubles and they were going to break off from the group and get home sooner. That left us with 5. I'm not sure exactly when they bailed out on us; but, it was pretty early in the trip. Early into this ride, we took a 90 degree left turn. I am very good about checking intersections for gravel and I distinctly remember checking before I made this turn. I missed the gravel in the road and my front end came out from under me. I was already in the lean when I felt it go. The bike started going down; but, I wasn't about to let it. I put my left boot on the ground hard and kicked the bike up. About that time, the front tire caught some good pavement and the bike came back up to a straight up position. I continued the turn without incident. I was very lucky. I could have spilled out right there. Todd heard me say 'oh shit' or something similar. He was glad I was OK as well. It was much too close and just proved that no matter how careful you are, bad things can still happen. A couple hours after this, we had kicked up some vultures on the side of the road and one of them flew toward us. As I was going past, the vulture hadn't gotten much altitude and nearly missed my windscreen and helmet. I ducked and he went right over. He was big to. With his wings fully spread open, he covered the whole front end of my motorcycle. I wish I were rolling video for that one!
At this point, we were way behind schedule. We didn't leave until 9:20. We intended to leave at 8:30. As a result, we got to the restaurant an hour late and right in the middle of the crowd of GS riders, who were also dining there. We waited about 15 minutes for a table, so not too long. At this point, it was Todd, Wolfgang, Mark (a physical therapist who had been with us since Steinhatchie and Patrick, a retired man from PA who flew down to pick up a used R80GS. This is a story in itself.
At lunch, we pulled in to a big restaurant in High Springs called 'Great Outdoors.' I didn't see any outdoor seating and the place was packed. I think all the riders that left Steinhatchie were already there, plus their normal crowd. I had to circle around for parking and finally got a space right outside the restaurant. We waited about 15 minutes for a table, at which time the place was clearing out. Our waitress was pretty lively and Wolfgang picked up the vibe and had quite the banter going with her. While that was all going on, he mentioned something about one of his ex-wives and Patrick asked how many wives he's had. Wolfgang said he was on #7 and loved all of them. He said he still has great relationships with them all. Patrick asked him how many kids he's had and that was when things really started to get amusing. Wolfgang said he had between 10 and 20 kids he knows about; but, he doesn't interact with them. He goes and sees them, gets a bead on how they're doing in life and leaves, not saying a word; but, he'll send them something if they need it. The story was getting deeper and deeper and Patrick even said that this conversation was firmly in strange land; but, he appeared to be buying it. I couldn't tell if Matt was also buying it or not. It was entertaining though. Wolfgang is a no holds barred and very lively fellow. He's in his 70's and looks like he's 50.
Soon after this, I asked Patrick if he rode his bike down here for this ride and he said he flew. So I asked how he got his motorcycle for the ride and he said he flew down in November to buy it. He went into detail about the issues with the bike and the back and forth with the original owner. This bike had some serious valve issues and left him stranded more than once. The previous owner was able to fix them and Patrick went through with the sale. This whole transaction took place over several months and Patrick stuck with it. I, personally would have bailed out on it at the first indication of serious trouble. I was riding behind Patrick the whole time and didn't notice any smoking like he had trouble with and I didn't notice any pings, knocks, skips or any other issues. It would appear that he has things in hand. He said the plan was to ride it back to Pennsylvania and that the weather was good. I said he needed to take advantage of that and told him about my trip during winter storm Boreas in December (Houston to NJ), where I arrived and it was 11 degrees.
Lunch took a long time and that had to cut into our riding time. Todd planned to cut off a couple of segments so we'd get to the restaurant on time. He said he'd be surprised if all of us went to the restaurant. It is Sunday night and folks needed to get home to their families, etc. We were also going to lose Patrick and Matt along the way. That would leave me with Todd and Wolfgang. We stopped for very few pictures on the way back. We didn't need to do anything except show up to win the E-Class trophy (all 3 of us).
St. Augustine was busy with people - so many people and traffic. We pulled into the restaurant and I thought I'd work on getting a room first. Todd told me about some nice B&B's in the area, so I started with Airbnb. I'd never booked a room with Airbnb, and after my experience, I don't think I ever will. First, I registered a while ago and forgot my login credentials, so I did a password reset. The link they send takes you to the login page, not the change password page, so that was useless. I had to create another account, using another email address. I did that. I found a room and went to book it. As expected, it asked me for my credit card information, which I supplied. Then it asked me for a picture of my drivers license, which was unusual; but, not unreasonable as the Airbnb service is probably doing this as a service for the BNB owners and to have it on hand before people actually show up at the door. Then I was asked to supply a message to the owner so they knew when I'd arrive. Also expected and I supplied that. After all that was done, and I'd been working on this reservation for probably half an hour now, I was asked to supply either my FaceBook or LinkedIn information to confirm my online identity. That was the last straw. There is no reason for that. I bailed out of the reservation, after putting down a credit card deposit. The credit card information is the last thing they should take in case someone wants to bail out of the process mid way. I could see no reason at all that they needed to 'confirm my online identity.' What if I were retired and didn't have a Linkedin account, and didn't have a Facebook account? So much time wasted. I was ticked off. So, after that, I found that Travelocity showed no rooms available in St. Augustine. I called Best Western direct at that point. A very nice lady from Beliz answered the phone and helped me with my reservations. She asked which I wanted to stay at as there were actually 6 in St. Augustine. I said lowest cost. I've stayed at Best Westerns many times and have never had a quality issue. Wifi is always pretty good, the room clean, bed comfortable and linens plentiful. She found me a room in the Historic district, 5 miles from where I was sitting for $90. That is pretty darn good considering the amount of people here. I thought for sure rates would be extraordinarily high. I booked. The whole process of searching for best rate, etc. took about half an hour. So, within about an hour of arriving, I had a room reservation for the night. On to dinner.
Todd and Wolfgang were sitting at a table on the dock. We had a great view of the airport on the other side and the sunset. The plan was to eat light since we had such a big lunch. Mission accomplished, we split conch fritters, alligator fritters and I ordered a bowl of clam soup (red). Their iced tea was horrible. I didn't drink much of that. Along the way, Cliff and Brian joined us. We received our trophies for completing the ride and there was a prize drawing. Cliff and Brian both won!
So, here I sit in my hotel room catching up on my blog. It's not even 8am yet. The plan is to meet up with Cliff and Brian today. They want to do demo rides - try out other motorcycles. I'd like to ride a GS and some others. I really want to get into dual sport and will eventually buy one. I know nothing about dual sport bikes, so selecting the right machine could we as easy as plunking down a whole lot of money for a GS and having the best of everything, or making a few sacrifices here and there and saving thousands. I think I'm going to get an education from Cliff today!
Here's some pics!
Another train depot.
I'm a fan of clocks (actually, this and the previous pic were from yesterday)
Todd, Mark, Patrick
Lunch at the Outdoor Restaurant - Lots O Bikes
Got Bow tie? This is my track from my spot tracker for the last couple days.
Sunsets are always good pictures.
Cliff in Silhouette
Cliff and Brian in silhouette
Todd. Awesome ride planner and all around guy. It would be a priveledge to ride with him again.
Space shuttle tank. This is going to be transported as soon as all the permits are done. It's been sitting there for months and will probably sit for months more.
This weekends trips. 3/4/2016 - 3/7/2016.
3/7/2016 -
Right after finishing the blog entry above, I jumped in the shower, packed and was on the bike and ready to go. I had texted and called Cliff without answer. I have a Bluetooth headset, so I'd get his call or text if he were to call me back. I thought that I should get going since I had about a half hour to 45 minute ride to get to their campground. When I was nearing exit 295, I was getting concerned because I thought that was the exit for the camp ground and Cliff had not called back. There was no exit 295 and I kept going. Finally Cliff called and I asked him what exit I needed and he said 278. I was at exit 278 at that very moment. I pulled off and Cliff talked me in to his camp site. I had to pay $20 at the campsite with the promise that I'd get it back at the end of the day. As things worked out, I didn't get the $20 back because we went out and never came back to the site. :-(
I was hoping that those guys would not have eaten breakfast yet; but, they had and it looked like they weren't going out for a while. They did offer me a corn muffin and some yogurt, which totally did the job. Given all the over eating I'd been doing lately, this was a nice light breakfast and a good change of pace. The plan was to first figure out what was going on with Brian's brand new (1000 miles) Kawasaki KLR dual sport bike. Most of those miles were put on the bike during this trip.
The problem was that he would only get about 2 gallons of gas per tank before the engine started sputtering. He'd switch to reserver; but, only get a few miles and have to pull into a gas station. The bike still had several gallons of fuel in it. My thought was that one of two possibilities existed - either there was a problem with the petcock, or the fuel wasn't making it from one side of the fuel tank to the other. That was until I heard that he had installed a fuel filter on the bike where one previously did not exist. I was betting that there was already a fuel filter on the petcock and that the double filtering was causing flow issues. Fred was very convinced that the fuel filter had nothing to do with it and demonstrated that fuel would flow through the filter with the engine side of the fuel line disconnected. That said, he went on line and asked in the Kawasaki forum for help and someone replied that you should not put a fuel filter on the KLR. So, we took it off and test road the bike. Brian was not having any further issues. I am waiting for them to tell me about the ride home from Daytona, where I left them to come home.
Our ride to test this possible solution to the bike sputtering out started at the campground and took some back roads to A1A and then all the way down to Ponce inlet. We ate lunch there and then went the back way to the Daytona speedway. Brian had no trouble at all. At the speedway, we did some demo rides on some Yamaha bikes. I'd never ridden a Yamaha and one of the few left was an R3. This is a little girl's bike. It's about 350 pounds and 44.1 horsepower. That's about half the weight of my K1600GT and under 1/3 the horsepower. This bike didn't have a lot of giddy-up and go. It was highly maneuverable though and easy to place on any patch of pavement I wanted.
We left the speedway at about 5:45 and I headed home, while the rest of the guys went back to the campground. My ride home was 3 hours. I went across on Rt. 92 to Rt. 44 and down Rt41. I was looking to avoid all things around Orlando. Traffic in Daytona was a bear; but, once I was about 30 miles out of town, things lightened up significantly. I just barely made it in Chulas, the local Mexican restaurant by my house, before they closed.
This was a very memorable trip. I met new friends and got to catch up with one I made last year. I'm already looking forward to next years trip and hopefully, by then, I'll be on a dual sport or endo bike and doing the off road stuff!
