It's been a while

It's been a while since I've updated my blog and so it's time.

With my BMW in the shop, and no vacation time, I won't be making any long distance trip for a while. Yesterday, my wife and I did manage to go on a nice little 100 + mile trip, where we stopped at Bastrop State Park and did a short 5 mile hike through the woods. However, it really got hot by noon (high 90's already with an expected 100+ deg. F day), and so we headed on home.

Gear

You know around town, I've never been one to wear both jacket and pants. With our summer this year already hitting well over 100 degrees multiple days in a row, it would seem that just a mesh riding jacket with jeans would be OK. However, after my accident over Memorial Day, I've been a lot more cautious about gear. Yesterday in the 90-100 degree heat, I wore shorts and my mesh riding pants. I was amazed at how cool they really were over just my jeans. The mesh really breaths, which the blue jean material doesn't do. This attributes to why the jeans feel hotter on summer days when riding. I guess I'll have to start wearing my riding pants more often in town, instead of just wearing them when I'm going on a trip.


Logos Give Away


Logos is a company that makes Christian software. Years ago, they made an excellent Dead Sea Scrolls DVD on the Mac. They also make their Bible study software that is really helpful. I use it weekly at my Bible study group meetings. Well worth the money! The additional reference material available really helps me gain a deeper understanding of the scriptures.

Now logos is giving away some of the best made Bibles around. I think everybody should have a quality Bible. Logos is now giving people a chance to do so free of charge!

Logos Bible Software is celebrating the launch of their new online Bible by giving away 72 ultra-premium print Bibles at a rate of 12 per month for six months. The Bible giveaway is being held at Bible.Logos.com and you can get up to five different entries each month! After you enter, be sure to check out Logos and see how it can revolutionize your Bible study.


Finally

I'm going to start updating my blog more often with more daily style topics, most related to biking, but there might be a few other things tossed in along the way.

Another Ride

It's been a while since I updated my blog. I really need to do it more often. Again, I'm preparing to leave for a trip. This time I'm headed north. I have to go to York, PA for work, so I was able to request that I ride instead of fly there. Unfortunately this means that I'll have to skip out on Easter. In fact, since I'm off on Good Friday (of course not called that at work, it's Spring Holiday), I'm going to leave on Friday. Unfortunately, my wife has to work, and my daughter is out of school. So, I'm going to wait until Lunch to head out. Because of this, I'm only going to ride to Arkadelphia, AR the first day (443 miles). The next day(Saturday), I'm off to Richmond, KY (654 miles). Then finally on Sunday I'll make the push to York, PA (561 miles) via Waynesboro, PA (where I was born ... figured it would be cool to take a photo there) and Gettysburg (where I lived for a year, and have a brother buried).

I spent a great deal of time planning my trip, trying to stick to smaller roads to get more of feel for the countryside. My actual route is: http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=168392. I'll also visit Allentown, PA, where my company has a office, and then have dinner with my brother and his family in Hartford, CT.

I'm still debating which motorcycle to take. Right now, I'm leaning towards the BMW R1200RT, but I haven't ruled out taking my Buell Ulysses. I see advantages to both, but I think the extra wind protection and heated seat and cruise control on the RT are going to win out over the Buell.

I will start updating this blog daily starting Friday.

Trans-America Trail

The Trans-America Trail (TAT) is a trail that goes east to west (not west to east - more on this later), starting in Tennessee and ending in Oregon.

There is a small group of local Buell riders who are going on their dual-purpose bikes in June. Now, I’m a road rider, and in fact only once have owned a dual-purpose bike (we called them enduro bikes in the late 70’s), and only rarely took the bike off road because I needed it to get to school and work and couldn’t afford to have it go down. When I bought the Buell Ulysses, I thought that finally I would have a bike to go down dirt roads and fire roads if needed. Anyhow, with the recent purchase of the BMW RT, I don’t have the money to buy yet another bike, even if I’m going to sell it after the trip, so I’m considering taking the Ulysses on the Trans-America Trail with the Buell boys. I’ve read the ride reports and nearly everybody thinks I’m crazy for considering it since the Ulysses was not designed for that much off-road. I do wish there was a better off-road tire for the Ulysses, but there isn’t. So, I’m going to put a set of Pirelli MT60 tires on the bike if I finally decide to go. I think the thing most people on AdvRider and BadWeatherBiker forums don’t understand is that I’m not all that opposed to going around sections that I don’t think I can handle on the Ulysses and meeting up with the group somewhere for the night. A former colleague at LSI loaned me a book about Emilio Scotto, a man who rode his Honda Goldwing around the world. It took him ten years to do it, and in the book he talks about having to push his bike through some horrendous jungles and muck in Africa and Asia. I really think if he can do that on a Goldwing, a bike designed for 100% street, I can tackle some of the TAT without problems. Crazy? Maybe, but I think Erik Buell would go for it.

Will I go? I’m still unsure. I have some doubts, but I’m always ready for an adventure. One thing the Marine Corps taught me is that my only limit is my mind and what I tell myself I can’t do. I’ll keep you posted, but I am looking forward to the planning that has to be done for this trip.

Oh yeah, a bit about the east to west route. The guy who came up with the route lives in Tennessee, so it makes sense that it is routed to go westward. Both roll maps and regular maps he setup going that direction and on his website, he makes it clear that is how he intends people to ride it, not the other way around. The group plans to pick up the trail in Arkansas and go only as far as Utah. I may or may not go all the way... more to come I’m sure!

New Year's Day Ride Report (Central Texas)

A few of the Buell guys wanted to go on a ride for New Year’s day. Seeing as how the temperatures looked like they would be pretty nice, I started planning. Initially, I started planning a multi-day trip. However, nobody wanted to do a two day ride, so I remapped the route so it was more or less what the BMW club I’m in does occasionally. Actually, I combined a few routes and added some things like going out to Hunt, TX where there is a mini Stonehenge and Easter Island statue. A couple of people agreed as long as it wasn’t too early. So, I set the time for 11 AM.

I'm about two minutes away from the HEB parking lot and I get a call from Ken K., who says "I'm here, but there isn't anybody else here." I tell him I'm two minutes away. As I pull into the parking lot, I'm amazed. When he sent me an email about the trip, I recognized his name, but didn't put two and two together. Turns out Ken is one of the officers in the local BMW club I belong to who purchased a 2007 Buell Lightning Long recently.

We hung around a few minutes more before a guy on a BMW GS comes cruising into the parking lot. After a tour of the parking lot, he stops and to talk with us. I'm not sure if it was more a talk or trash talking about Buell and HD and how he wouldn't own one. Ken and I both told him we also owned BMW bikes too, but somehow I don't think that won him over since we were there with Buells and not BMWs. Whatever... After a few minutes his buddy shows up who he is trying to meet and they get into the guys car. Ken and I look at our watch 11:20, nobody else, “OK, their loss, forget about 'em”. Ken had a dinner engagement, so we decide to shorten the ride a bit from the original course.

The sun is out and things seem great as we ride down RR 12, the sky gets a bit cloudy. As we turn west, and get closer to Blanco, the sun can't be seen. It's cold. I tossed my winter gloves into the Uly topcase along with my fleece, but in the sun it wasn't all that cold, so I didn't put them on. In Blanco, we stop for a bio break and I don my winter gloves and fleece. Ken probably knows these roads better than I do, but both of us have been on these roads quite a bit with the BMW group. When we ride with them, it's pretty tame and I'm keeping up that tradition.

We hit Comfort and decide to go up Old San Antonio Road towards Fredricksburg instead of going through Kerrville and out to Hunt. We stop in Fredricksburg and fuel up. Ken and I compare how much fuel we put in the bikes. He has just adjusted his timing and only puts in 2.? gallons, my Uly is just over 3 gallons (hmm... it's almost time for the 10k service, but I really should be getting better mileage out of the Ulysess). Turns out the way Ken wants to go back is how I planned the trip originally. But as I said, he knows these roads probably better than I do. I tell him to take the lead, but somehow I end up leading again, at least for a little bit. On RR 2721 I think Ken was tired of my 10 MPH over the speed limit pace, as I'm gazing at some cattle off to my right, I see a blazing man on a Buell wizz past me... Ken takes the lead and suddenly, our pace picks up quite a bit. On the turns he really is pushing me. Did I mention that Ken is old enough to be my dad? Yet this guy rides a mean bike? He is really pushing me as we go through the corners. Hell, I had no idea that's how he wanted this ride to go. ;-)

We arrived back at 71 & Hamilton Pool Road and thank each other for the ride and headed home.

Total miles: 194
Total Time: 4 hours

GPS track (actual route)

A New Year, A New Bike (AKA You Did What?)

Having just returned from Florida aboard my 2004 BMW R1150RT, it wouldn’t seem that getting rid of it was in order. And truth be told, I really wasn’t looking to replace it. It is a sweet bike, with lovely curves that BMW has since gotten rid of. The new RT bikes have a much more angular look and are lacking the curves. But a funny thing happened. I was reading the For Sale area of the BMWSportTouring web site, when I stumbled across an ad for a 2009 RT. The price was right and so I asked Teri about it. I think she was reluctant at first, but said it was a good deal. I contacted the guy and got the information, called the bank and got approval from the money people to buy it, then I went looking for a plane to Fort Wayne, IN, where the bike was located. That’s where the realization started kicking in...

They guy was asking about 2 K less than what a bike like that locally was selling in the BMW bike world, that’s huge. But add in plane fare, gas, hotels and the difference between the two starts to shrink. I had to go to the local BMW shop to pick up two o-rings that had developed an issue on my recent trip. So, I asked the sales manager if he had any interest in a trade; he didn’t. I also told him the story about the ‘used’ 09 with 608 miles on it that I was going to buy, but out of kicks asked if they were willing to move on a bike that was nearly identical to the one in Fort Wayne, I was was going to get. Turns out December 30/31st is a great time to buy a bike, and he was willing to work with me on the price. Turns out when everything was said and done, the price difference was within a couple of hundred dollars. I called the guy back in Fort Wayne, explained the deal the local dealership was giving me and apologized. I’m sure he was upset, I would be if I was in his shoes, but it happens in sales.

So, now I have a brand new silver 2009 BMW R1200RT, along with my 2004 BMW R1150RT, and my 2007 Buell Ulysses... anybody want a deal on a 2004 BMW R1150RT with lots of extras? I have listed it, now I need to clean it up and take photos, so I can get it moved out of my shed and into somebody else’s house.

Along the El Camino Corridor

We left Andulsia, AL at dawn and headed down a wonderful stretch of road. US Route 84, named the El Camino Corridor. In Alabama, it's a wonderful two lane road with few cars, or at least when we rode on it. The weather was cloudy, but warm. The road had some water on it, but overall pretty easy going. In Mississippi, the road turns into four lanes and unlike our jaunt on I-10 heading the opposite direction, we encountered very little traffic, road construction or crazy cagers taking themselves out (i.e. car accidents). Now, I won't lie to you, this stretch wasn't without some intrepidness on our part. The forecast had some very nasty looking showers in it, and while we darted through Alabama and Mississippi without any real rain (we did have a few showers, but nothing major), Louisiana was suppose to be a very different story. Teri wasn't looking forward to riding in the rain. Not because she didn't want to get wet, but because she wasn't sure how her bike would handle in the rain and honestly didn't want to find out.

As we crossed the muddy Mississippi into Louisiana, the sky was getting a bit darker, but seemed fine for the time being. However, as we got closer to Alexandria, the sky was black off to the west. I made the decision to skip the secondary roads I planned and jump on I-49 and head north to Natchitoches, LA. Now typically I don't like riding on interstates, but the brooding storm on the horizon won out. As we cruised along I-49, we got some light rain, but nothing major, and we were able to crank the speeds up to 70+ MPH.

We made it to our hotel in Natchitoches, grabbed our bags and headed to our room. We had maybe 10 minutes to spare before the day turned into night and the skies opened up. It was one of those rain storms where you hold out your hand in front of your face and you can't see it because of all the rain. Boy, was I ever glad I changed my mind and cut out 10 miles from trip and rerouted us up the interstate. Of course this did present one problem, what were we going to do for dinner? There was a Huddle House outside our hotel, and while not a great place to eat, there were very limited choices, so we walked across the parking lot and had dinner. The storm had passed, and ushered in a nice cold front. The temperature dropped a good 15 degrees from when we got into town. In the back of my mind, I knew that tomorrow's journey would be a cool one.

I wasn't wrong about the temperature. The next morning all three of us donned our flannel lined jeans and winter gloves. But there wasn't a cloud a sky, so it looked like the perfect ride back into Austin. We hopped back onto US 84 and headed towards the Texas border. About 60 miles outside Natchitoches, my intercom started acting weird and I during our gas up I decided to take a look at it. Ah, seems the solder joint to the power had come loose. No problem I thought. I had just the tool, a battery operated soldering iron I brought along for just that purpose. After a couple of minutes, I determined that a fresh set of batteries were in order, so Teri went into the gas station and after a fleecing, walked out of the store with a fresh set of batteries. Yep, that was the problem, well sort of... I had never used this soldering iron before. Seems it gets hot enough to melt solder, but not hot enough to really flow solder, and not nearly hot enough to solder wires together. I gave up and decided I could go without the intercom. Back to old school for me. No music, no passengers chattering. Just me with wind and nature surrounding me. One small issue, seems my GPS is also on that power circuit, and that means I had to run it on just the batteries. Fine, I'm in Texas, I should be home in a few hours. Except that GPS won't run on batteries that long. Bummer... As we made our way into Crockett, TX (named after the Tennessee hero Davy Crockett who died at the Alamo), the sun disappeared behind a wall of clouds and we encountered some of the coldest temperatures on the trip. I stopped in Crockett to warm up with a cup of coffee, it was nearly noon and we were still over 200 miles away from home. After drinking our coffee and hot chocolate, Taylor decided she wanted a granola bar. While she was eating, I decided to take another stab at getting at least the GPS power. After several tries, I was finally able to get a temporary fix in place for the GPS. Now initially our plan was to spend some time in Crockett and look around the town. I had gone through it previously in the spring and it seemed a nice place to look around. But with the cold overcast skies, we opted to skip Crockett and just head home.

Back on road, we ran into light showers again, but they were light, and by the time US 6 turned into 21 going into Bryan, TX the rain had stopped and the road were dry as a bone. We made our final fuel stop we were less than a hundred miles from home now and I was very familiar with the remaining roads. Taylor was in a great mood, and despite not having any music or anybody to chat with, was in very good spirits. As we approached Austin, I was impressed with both Taylor and Teri. I wasn't sure what to expect out of this trip, it's different taking your family with you on a trip of this length, than doing it solo or with a bunch of guys. If guys start whining, you simply make fun of them and tell them to suck it up. With your family, you can't quite do that, well do it and live to tell about it. ;-)

As we made our final approach into the driveway, I was impressed by everybody on this trip. We had no issues with the bikes, weather, or attitudes. There were certainly some issues out the gate, but the return trip home was perfect.

The final numbers for those keeping track were:

Miles: 2501
Gas: 107.5 Gallons
Cost of Fuel: $189.19
Average cost: $1.75 Gal
MPG Averages:
Teri's 2004 BMW R : 43.5 MPG
My 2004 BMW RT : 40.9 MPG (two people on the bike)

I guess when I consider the extra weight I had, 2 MPG difference isn't too bad.
I put all the photos up on flickr they are in the following group.

Now, I'm already in the planning stages of a very short ride next weekend with the Buell group.

Going, Going, Gone...

So we started our Disney gorge feast at Magic Kingdom, then we moved onto Epcot Center, and then onto Animal Kingdom. If you go online and read the reviews, people tend to dislike Epcot and Animal Kingdom, most claim you can see them in half a day. We didn't feel this way, we all really liked Animal Kingdom. But then we really like zoo's and animals, so maybe that has something to do with it. On Christmas Day, we decided to go back to Magic Kingdom. Now, we've made some mistakes on this trip, starting with my route around Houston that caused us to bed down in Beaumont instead of Baton Rouge. But I think deciding to go back to Magic Kingdom on Christmas Day was as big of a mistake, maybe bigger.

The park was crazy! Maybe it's me, but I really can't understand what makes people want to stand in a line for over 70 minutes for a ride that takes two to three minutes tops. I couldn't believe how many people were at the park. I hate to think what the park looks like during a busy day during the summer. Nearly everything had at least an hour wait until you get on the ride. Thankfully we finally figured out the fastpass thing and we were able ride a couple of the rides that we missed on Monday. We purchased the five day tickets, but after four days of Disney, we were spent. Teri and I made the decision to pass on day five of Disney. The fact is, we were only going to go to a park for a few hours since we had planned to ride 400 miles to Andalusia, Alabama.

We got an early start today, a first for us on this trip. After eating at what had become our regular breakfast spot, we left the local Waffle House aboard our BMW motorcycles. This is what people don't understand about motorcycles, you don't have to wait in a line for 90 minutes and the ride can be as long as you want. Today that ride was eight hours long, not two to three minutes and it was, at least for me, every bit as thrilling as a Disney ride.

When I think Florida, I think beach, surf, waves. Everything related to beaches, and part of that is how Florida itself promotes itself in advertisements about Florida. However, today as we passed through Central Florida, I saw a part of Florida that reminded me of Virginia, complete with horse farms and hay bales. As I passed through the area, I couldn't help but think that the tourism bureau of Florida needs to promote that part of Florida. One thing has impressed me about Florida and that's the amount of parks. Seems you can't throw a rock without hitting a park, makes me kind of wish we had done a tour of those types of parks instead of Disney's parks. Oh well, we have bikes and know how to travel. Maybe next time. :-)