20130408 - Chicago - Beaver Creek Ohio - Readington NJ - Florida

The plan all week was to take the bike for a 3 day leisurely ride, camping along the way and doing maybe 300 or so mile legs.  I checked the weather this morning and realized that wasn't going to happen.  It looks like I need to arrive on Saturday, or face rain and wind on Sunday.  Then again, Saturday night could have snow and the temp won't be higher than 36.  No matter how you slice this, I decided that I was better off being in the north part of the country than playing around in the southern half.  I loaded my stuff up and left.

The plan now is to avoid Atlanta on a Friday, and instead, go through Montgomery Alabama, pick up I-6 and ride it up as far as Bowling Green Ky.  From there, I'd pick up Rt. 41, yes, the same 41 that goes all the way into Florida and ride it to Chicago.  41 is also a free road.  I-65, of course is owned by the toll Nazi's.  Tomorrow will be quite tricky.  I should be OK until I get somewhere in Indiana, when the temperatures are likely to be hovering around freezing.  I'll need to be mindful of snow and ice.

So, today's ride was pretty nice.  Of course, I've ridden Rt. 19 many many times; but, I had a nice lunch in Bainbridge Georgia.  It looks like the center of town is on the decline; but, there is a nice deli right in the middle of town.  I was looking for something other than standard fast food while on the road, and I found it.  I ended up having a chicken tender sandwich with buffalo sauce, lettuce and tomato, plus chicken enchilada soup.  It hit the spot.

The entire route up to I-65 in Alabama was state and country roads.  This is exactly what I like to ride.  There was a short 10 mile section of I-10; but, no other interstate until I-65.  In fact, somewhere around Troy, I was thinking about how nice it would be to have some twisties.  Before you know it, God blessed me with about 15 miles of 55 mph semi-blind sweepers.  It was a nice break from an otherwise routine destination ride.

Once I got to I-65, everything was good until Birmingham, which I hit at rush hour.  I'll take Birmingham over Atlanta any day.  When the sun went down, temperatures started to plummet quickly and Nashville was hosting every sporting event known to man, so hotels were sold out for miles.  I was just about to call AAA when I managed to find a room at a Super 8 motel.  Actually, this room is quite nice, although I don't understand this:

So far, I've made it to Franklin, Ky.  As suspected, this is where things get interesting weather wise.

 

The good news is that the snow has moved out of Chicago and my route today should be clear of falling snow.  The bad news is that the temperatures won't break 35 for the majority of my route.  That means that there could be snow or ice accumulation along my route.  Also worthy of mention is that I called the B&B that I'm staying at.  They can't accept an early arrival because they have people there.  My check in is no earlier than Sunday at 3pm.  The forecast shows 70% chance of showers at that time; but, the temperature will be in the 40's.  It's nice when the options are limited...the plan is to go about 4 hours today, leaving at a leisurely 10am and riding for 4 hours, or maybe 5.  That will put me 2 hours south of my destination.  If I can get a late checkout tomorrow, I will leave at 1 and only ride 2 hour in the rain; but, it will not be freezing cold.  As much as I don't want to be on the Interstate, I might be better off if there's any precipitation left on the ground.  I-65 it is then.

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It's Sunday morning, and I've made it to Merrillville In., just shy of Chicago.  Yesterday's ride took longer than expected.  What should have been 6 and a half turned into 8, mostly due to horrendous traffic around Indianapolis.    Indianapolis has more than it's share of clovers.  Clovers is a term I heard first used in an article posted by my friend Jim.  It describes drivers that aren't paying attention, squatting in the passing lane, riding along side each other so no one can pass, and otherwise obstructing traffic.  Indianapolis has more than it's fair share.  I think I shocked some millennial clover when we got to the top of the interstate off ramp and she decided then was the time to finish texting.  My horn interrupted her and after we turned, she shot me a look like I'm some impatient, aggressive driver.  Perhaps things are different out here.

Other than the clovers and the huge traffic jam in Indianapolis,  yesterday's ride went really well.  I was expecting temperatures to drop to 35 degrees and stay there the whole way.  Instead, I was blessed with a 40 degree ride most of the day.  5 degrees does matter.  The temp only dropped below 40 when I was 34 miles from my destination.  Once again I need to thank Mr. Gerbings for providing such wonderful riding gear.  Riding in an electric riding suit is really awesome, and being behind the big fairing of the K1600GT really breaks the wind.  I am certain that riders without a fairing on the front won't fair as well as the wind wicks away all the heat from the suit.  When the weather gets really cold - below 30 - I put my rain gear on to further break the wind.  I've ridden in my riding gear comfortably down to 11 degrees.

Late into my ride, I got the check oil warning again.  I checked the oil and indeed, I needed to add some.  This has been going on since my last valve adjustment.  I needed more oil just before the last oil change and at the time, I was wondering if the shop didn't add enough after the valve adjustment, or if they did the adjustment wrong, or perhaps the head gasket is leaking.  I did the oil change the last time and I'm sure I added the correct amount of oil.  That removes human error from the equation.  I will be doing my maintenance this time around with my friend Scot and we will look into this.  Another valve adjustment is due.  If we can't deal with the issue ourselves, I hope we can point the mechanic to the cause.  So far, the bike is burning less than a quart per oil change.

I chose Merrillville not because of all the fun things to do; but, because it put me an hour out of Chicago, where rooms are likely to be cheaper and it gave me several options for getting into Chicago this morning.  Right now, I'm waiting for the weather to get warmer so I only have to ride in rain and not the 'wintery mix' they're having here now.

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OK, welcome to Sunday.  I found myself in an unusual situation.  Usually, I'm up, dressed and back on the road in a matter of minutes; but, today, I had to wait out some weather.  I even had to request a late checkout.  The latest I could check out would be noon.  By then, the temperature would be in the low 40's.  If I could wait until 2, I would have mid 40's for temperature  It was going to be windy and rainy for my 1 hour ride in to Chicago.  There was going to be no avoiding it.  Fortunately, it's only rain and wind and not thunderstorms with hail and tornadoes.  I found a path in that didn't require payment of tolls.  I hate tolls for several reasons; but, other than the obvious, they are dangerous places for motorcycles to be.  It's easy to get rear ended by someone who isn't paying attention, motorists aren't paying attention when they change lanes to get the 'open' booth and, equally bad, the area inside the toll booth always has a slick of oil/condensate mix that will sure as hell put you on your back if you get your footing wrong.  I always put the kickstand down when I'm in the toll booth rooting around for money.  I digress.

Checkout time came and I had 3 and a half hours to go before I could check in.  Initially, I planned to grab lunch in Merrillville and then head over to Chicago; but, when I left, it was cold; but, not really raining yet.  I decided to move toward my destination and deal with the lag when I got there.

On the way over, I got a low pressure warning on my rear tire.  It's probably because they are cold.  I put air in it anyway.  Next week, I have a new pair of Michellin Road Pilot 4's coming for both the front and rear.  I'm running out of tread and need new sneakers!

I GoPro'd the Dan Ryan and Lake Shore Drive on the way over.  Here it is - all of it in 5 minutes.  Specifically featured are the Chicago skyline, the proper way to zipper merge, what to do when you find yourself in the wrong lane and a roller coaster feel.

I arrived at the B&B suggested to me by a friend Justin.  He's stayed here before and said it's both comfortable and inexpensive.  I think he was right.  Here's a video of the place:

 Now I'm here, my blog is caught up.  I was looking for a restaurant to go to tonight; but, it's really ugly out there tonight.  I may just find a place that will deliver and avoid going outside.  I am expecting the owner to come over.  I arrived to find that the toilet was dripping from the handle.  I pulled the top just to see if it could be easily repaired; but, it can't.  It will require a plumber.  In the mean time, I'll have to turn the water off and on at the bottom.  Eric, the owner, said he'd make sure the plumber came in tomorrow and would be here soon to check on it himself.

I'm hopeful that I can get off street parking.  It seems like a really nice neighborhood; but, there are a lot more cars and traffic and people around than I'm used to seeing.  I know Erick offers a garage at $30/night; but, I also noted a gated place in the back that would be just fine.

I spoke with Erick.  He saw my bike sitting on the street and told me that he didn't want to see it there.  He told me he drives a BMW 7 series.  He said I could put it in his garage for $20/night.  That's fine with me.  Rusty, his business partner went to open up the garage for me.  It's big enough for both my bike and his car.  I don't plan on using it until I'm ready to leave, so chances are,  it will stay right there and Rusty can still use the garage.  I'm betting the guys won't even charge me the $20/night since they are still able to use their garage.

While I was talking to Rusty, I met Yankee - their Golden retriever mix.  Yankee came right over to say hello, get some lovin' and then demand that I play fetch with him for a while.  How awesome is that.  Rusty invited me over to have dinner with them.  I love B&B's.  It's rainy and windy and generally crappy out.  I really don't want to go looking for dinner.

---------------

So, I had dinner with Rusty, Erick and Yankee.  Spaghetti with meat sauce, garlic bread and salad.  I ate more than I should.  Great conversation with these guys.  Rusty is an attorney and Erick is in real estate.  They bought this place 11 years ago, remodeled it and have been in business for 10 years.   Erick is originally from NY; but, you'd never know it.  I can't pick up even a trace of accent.  Rusty is from Ohio.  Yankee is from Chicago.  Yankee likes to play fetch and to be petted.  Nothing else really matters.  It was a good choice to stay here for the week.


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4/15/2016 - This trip continues.  On this leg, I will go to my friend Scot's house, where he and I will do the 48,000 mile service on my bike (separate post).  I decided to take the scenic route through Indiana and I'm really glad I did.  For the majority of the trip, I didn't encounter any traffic lights.  I stayed off the interstate also.  A few times, I encountered a blinking red light; but, that was the only traffic signal.

I do have to comment about the way they work on the roads in Indiana...and Ohio.  The just shut them down.  This is really annoying; but, probably cost effective.  The problem is that you encounter a road closed sign and have not idea how long the detour is going to last or where it's going to take you.  If you're navigating by GPS, the GPS is constantly trying to route you back to where the detour started at, so that's useless.  Since you don't know how long the detour is, you don't know if you should follow it, or bail and find your own alternate.  This happened twice during this trip and both times, put me far behind my intended travel times.

Sorry, no pictures of this one; but, here's the map of this trip so far.  The only comment I have about it was that I was pleasantly surprised that the trip out of Chicago on a Friday was surprisingly quick.  I was leaving at 1pm; but, still; very light.

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My 48,000 mile service is complete.  I had to extend my stay with Scot another day in order to get my iPhone fixed.  I crashed the glass with my handlebars and I couldn't do anything with it.  I couldn't even swipe it to get it to open.  This is the second time in less than a month.

Scot, Marsha and Gracie were fantastic hosts.  They not only accommodated me for what was supposed to be a maintenance weekend; but, they graciously had me stay for the weeks worth of delays.  Scot caused me to gain 10 pounds.  He's a hell of a cook.  Gracie was so disturbed that I was leaving that she was biting my boots as I was walking out.  She's a very sensitive creature and communicates very effectively.

So, the weather picture was such that I could ride between thunderstorms.  Storms would be coming in to Beaver Creek by 12:45 - 1pm and would be leaving the Cleveland areas and points east by the time I would get there.

I opted for the scenic route and took rt. 42 from just east of Beaver Creek all the way up to Ashland Ohio before bailing out to an Interstate.  I was getting into a lot of stop and go traffic, traffic lights, low speed limits and such.  My suspicion was that it was only going to get worse the closer I got to Cleveland.  I joined the Interstate for what must have been 3 hours - all the way to Conneaut before I was able to turn east on to rt. 6.  6 would take me all the way across the state.  Ohio farmland is nothing like Indiana farmland.  Indiana has much nicer manicured farms and farm houses...one after another.  Ohio farmers seem to like dandelions...by the acre load.

The temperatures plummet rapidly as you approach the lake.  I noted this with Lake Michigan as well.  The cold air blowing down from the north, over the lake cools things down for miles.  What started out as a 77 degree day in Dayton, ended up being a 42 degree day by the lake.  The best it got while riding east, away from the lake was 50; but, that was only for a moment.

I stopped in Porter County PA.  The sign when you enter on Rt. 6 says "Porter County - God's Country"  The lady at the front desk of this inn says it's God's country because no one else will have it.  She said there is nothing going on up here.  Before the new governor took office, they would be fracking; but, now that is gone.  She said most folks around here are elderly and and finishing out their lives where they grew up.  There isn't much infrastructure here at all.  Motels, food places and gas stations are all few and far in between.  When I came across this inn in Couldersport, I decided it was better for me to take it than to risk not having a place to be for the night in rapidly dropping temperatures.  Besides, it was after 8pm anyway.  I was getting hungry and cold.

Speaking of cold, I'll give another plug for Gerbings gear.  The thing about heated gear is that once you stop and turn off the bike, you get cold almost instantly.  When you get cold, you go from chilled to frozen and shivering in a matter of minutes.  That said, there is no doubt that it greatly extends the riding season and places people will go on their motorcycle.  Go Gerbings!


------------ 4/28/2016

The morning brought temperatures that barely made the mercury rise.  I had an easy 6 or 7 hour ride ahead of me, so I decided to wait for warmer temperatures; which the weatherman promised would happen in a few short hours.  I grabbed breakfast at the restaurant a couple doors down and saw a couple of paramedics getting breakfast.  The poor slobs got called away from their breakfast.  I remember, and do not miss, those days.  At around 10, I was able to leave.  The temp was closing in on 50 degrees.  I have to say that northwestern pa is pretty barren.  There is very little in terms of infrastructure..practically none.  The only industry up there seems to be fracking or maybe logging.  It's pretty dreary.  Until one gets as far east as Troy, there's basically nothing.

It just so happened that Dave, was working in Tunkanock and I got to see him for a few minutes.  After that, it was a quick 2 hour ride to my father's house in Readington NJ.

-------------5/2/2016

The trip from NJ back to FLA to conclude this trip started today.  The plan was to ride to Martinsburg WV, or Winchester, VA and then grab one of the US routes into the mountains and follow mountain roads down to Greensboro NJ.  The forecast for the entire week looked pretty bleak, with rain every day.  Things really aren't looking better further south either.  There's a line of thunderstorms forming up over North Carolina and eastern Georgia.    My best bet is to stay with I-81 to I-40 to I-75 to Chattanooga, Tn and then pick up US 27 down to Columbus Ga.  That is 765 miles and google maps says it will take 12 hours.  That's without traffic, construction and without delays for people driving poorly in the rain.  Generally, I allow 10 percent for additional travel time.  I'm betting that tomorrow it will be longer - if I get there at all.

--------------5/3/2016

I'm in Atlanta.  I decided to stay with Interstate and not do US 27.  Thunderstorms prevailed in southern Georgia and I was concerned that they might start cropping up in more northern parts of the state, preventing me from getting down south more.  I got a high temperature warning on the Atlanta byway.  That stopped me for the night since the byway was jammed for miles and it would be all stop and go.  I got to a Quality Inn off the byway and will leave first thing tomorrow morning.  The stop and go traffic was during 85 degree OAT.  It looks like I'm between the lines on the coolant, so it's possible that the water pump died.  I will find out in the morning.  My preference is to make it home and deal with the issue there.  Everything was fine today - 11 hours of riding, including a traffic jam in  Chattanooga.  I burped the cooling system again and will do it once more in the morning.  It appears that I have enough coolant in the reservoir, so I should be OK.  I'm thinking that the cooler temperatures in the morning and less traffic should be enough to get me home.  Unfortunately, it doesn't look like I'll be able to avoid the thunderstorms for my arrival.  :-(

-------------5/4/2016

The morning started early, as planned.  The idea was to get out of Atlanta before the heat and traffic started.  It was 56 degrees in the morning, so as long as I wasn't stuck in traffic, I should be good to go.  I wasn't more than 2 or 3 miles from the hotel when I saw the flashing warning triangle with an exclamation point in it and the headlight symbol with a zero.  See additional post about this.

This would be the storm that awaited my arrival into Florida.  The forecast says that this would continue throughout the day.  The good news is that there were no reports of flooding or hail.  As predicted, the storm came with a ton of rain.  My rain gear sort of failed.  Actually, I failed.  I need to ear suspenders to keep my pants up high and make sure my jacket comes down over the pants.  I didn't do that and ended up with lots of water in my pants.  It was cool; but, not cold and I didn't care.  I care about cold rain.  I don't care about rain when it's warm out.

Getting home, I was greeted with living fish and weeds...plenty of them.  The only grass I have is the sod I put in last year.  The whole front happens to be weeds.  I'll be working on this for a while.

I also managed to get the front right Tupperware lid off and check the coolant.  It was empty.  I think my water pump is probably OK and I just need more coolant.  I have not run diagnostics on the electrical problems yet.

Here are the maps:

This is my first offering of motorcycle art - a new art form where one uses a 750 pound motorcycle as their paint brush.  I think this looks like a dolphin; but, friends say everything from breeching whale to eagle to other things.  I call it Failla #1.

My updated trips to date.  I should note that the file of coordinates that produces this map is 715704 lat/lon coordinates or 14MB in size.  I have written some tools in python to help with mapping.

One tool uniques a list of coordinates.  This is useful because each device has a certain precision.  Some will give you 5 digits after the decimal and some 7 or 8.  Some will pad with zeros, some will not.  Accordingly 123.4567 and 123.456700 are not seen as the same number.  This produces about 10% more coordinates in the file than there needs to be.

I wrote a second tool that will amplify the data set by looking up each lat/lon coordinate and returning the street, city, county, state, country and zip code for each.  The issue there is that the lookup will only allow 2500 lookups per day.  At that rate, it would take me 283 days to look all of them up.  I'm thinking of other approaches.  This information would be useful if, for example, I wanted to make sure I rode all the roads in a certain county or zip code.

5 minute tent setup

So here's the situation.  You're out riding and you get caught in the rain, an hour before dark.  You don't have a hotel option, so you're forced to set up your tent in the rain.  If you're lucky, it's just a drizzle.  If you're unlucky, it's a down pour.  Either way, the objective is to set up your tent and keep the contents inside dry.

This is how I set up in 5 minutes.  I take the time to put together my tent before I leave home.  I actually pitch it in the living room.  I pack the sleeping bag, air mattress and pillow inside.  It is packed on top of everything else in my dry bag.  On top of it is my rain fly and on top of that is my ground cover.

If I should have to pitch in the rain, ideally, I'd like to find a place between two healthy trees.  If you do this, look up and make sure the wind and/or rain will not bring any branches down on top of you.  Between the two trees, I would run parachute cord and drape my rain cover over it to give me some cover to start with.  If I don't have that option, I would lay the ground cover out first, the rain fly on top of it and pull the tent assembly out of the dry bag, in one piece between the two.  From there, I'd simply assemble the poles, pass them under the rain fly and raise the tent that way.  Having a second set of hands on a windy day would be very useful!

It is CRITICAL that when you pack a tent like this that the mosquito netting is on the outside so that when it is compressed, air will not stay in the tent.  Failure to do this will make you very unhappy when the seams burst.  Pack and compress SLOWLY!!!

Here's the video!

20160329 - March Moto Madness (Telico Plains Tn)

The plan for this weekend was to try my hand at Dual Sport motorcycle riding.  Over the last 2 years, I have been getting little tastes of it and it was time for me to get on a bike and find some dirt.

As luck would have it, Jeff Kurtz, the go to guy for all things rally let me know about March Moto Madness in Telico Plains, TN.  Here's the promotional video for this event:

There is no possible way that I'd be able to ride my K1600 GT.  In fact, I would have had troubles at the campground there is so much mud.  I rented a Yamaha XT250 from Dan Dickey, coordinator of the event.  It was the last one he had available.

I planned to ride to the event and take it easy going up, splitting a 1 day trip over 2 days.  I was taking my time packing out when I saw this:

 

That made me start rushing to get on the road.  If I got far enough North,  I would miss this storm.  I managed to do that; but, forgot my shin guards in the process.  Fortunately, Fred has plenty of extra riding gear.

 

Let's let some pictures and video speak to the riding part of the weekend.

 First order of business - drop my phone and break it.

(L-R) Jeff Kurtz, Secret Squirrel, Fred Zucker, Cliff Lose, (Hold my beer) Andre, Randy

 

(Not me.  I'd love to; but, I don't have skills like this yet!!)

  

2 barrels in a muddy field - endless entertainment for rider and observer.

Alvin and the Chipmunks survey the MMM campground

This was after lunch on day 1.  Fred led a really nice pavement ride back to camp.  This is the Cherohala Skyway.

Cliff and Jeff planning my demise.

This is the map of two days of off road riding in the Cherokee National Forest

 

Trip back.  This was really bad.  I bailed out and decided to get over to US 19 for the ride back.

I came across these guys with homemade pit BBQ.  Of course I grabbed a pulled pork sandwich.

 This is the ride up and back.  The first day, I took the more eastward leg (US 41) and west around Atlanta.  On the return trip, I went all the way without stopping.  I traveled around the East side of Atlanta and took the more westward leg (US 19) 

I hit 0 mls to empty 4 miles from my planned fueling stop.  When I filled up, I put 7.27 gallons in.  I have a 7.50 gallon tank, so 1qt left and I had an MSR can with 1qt of fuel in it as well - that's enough for another 20 miles of riding!  

My post isn't complete without the complete map!

2060318 - Spring Hill to Jupiter to Alligator Alley to Spring Hill

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.

Here are the maps:

2013 BMW K1600 Maintenance to date (45,000)

Product review - Ducatti Xdiavel

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.

20160311 - Trans Florida x2

(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)