Momentum

Journey to the ST.N National Meet
Day 1 - Cypress, TX to Natchez, MS
~400 miles

Momentum.

It keeps you going when the deserted road you are hurtling down suddenly turns into a one-lane potholed goat trail from hell. A glance at the GPS (traitorous beast) cheerfully guarantees you’ll be out of it in 10 miles. Momentum, yes. A little throttle too. Brakes don’t help when there are 20’ stretches of gravel between patches of broken up pavement. Attempting to negotiate a u-turn would almost guarantee bike droppage.

A long process of building momentum got me here, a hotel room in Natchez, Mississippi.
From the moment I decided to move to Texas, the thought of attending the ST.N National Meet was in my mind. I got the time off, bought needed touring accessories, and planned a route. The process culminated last night at 1:30 AM when I was madly dashing between the attic and the garage, trying to remember where various items were stored.

Needless to say, I did not get an early start this morning. That’s ok, because my planned route for the day was only 400 miles.

I finished some last minute packing and sat down to a breakfast of bagels and lox with my parents before heading out the door around 10 AM.

The morning was spent on familiar East Texas Piney Woods roads. Lunch was at the Texas Star Café in Colmesneil with a sandwich and a pitcher of sweet tea.

I finally reached new territory after entering Louisiana at the south end of Toledo Bend Reservoir. The roads in Many, LA were very torn up, and should have given me a hint of what was to come.

A national motorcycle roads website had suggested LA118 through Kisatchie National Forest. Maybe I misread the map when planning my route, but the road was excellent right up to the town of Kisatchie. At one point in that nice stretch I pulled over for some pictures. I waved cheerfully at a passing cruiser rider, but he was back minutes later to make sure everything was okay.

The cruiser rider was nowhere to be seen when the pavement disappeared. The devastated vegetation in that area should have been a hint. Katrina? Or some other natural disaster?

I guess it wasn’t so bad. There was never a time when I couldn’t see the distinctive red asphalt of a patch of pavement ahead. The ST handled the bumps and loose stuff like a champ. I stayed relaxed on the controls and kept the panic instinct down. I never experienced my usual gravel-induced adrenaline high.

When the sign for I-49 appeared, I was understandably overjoyed. The familiar sensation of the R12ST floating along the interstate helped soothe my nerves.

With the aid of some nice, safe connector highways, I reached Natchez well before dark. After crossing the Mississippi, I explored the town a little, following brown tourism signs. I visited the historic downtown area, with “townhouses” built by cotton barons in Natchez’s heyday. I rode down to “Natchez Under the Hill” and saw a floating casino docked where once riverboat hands swaggered and caroused. One sign, mysteriously labeled “Forks of the Road,” brought me to the location of a notorious slave market. Besides the very tastefully done educational display, the only sign of historical importance was a round of concrete inset with iron manacles.

The front desk attendant at my hotel suggested “Cock of the Walk” for dinner. I highly recommend it for visitors to Natchez. Located in an a maze of an old building down by the river, it’s regionally famous for catfish. The boatman’s den ambiance felt authentic and the service was great. The grilled catfish and skillet cornbread was very yummy. I’d forgotten my book in the motel room, but my waiter owned a GSXR1000 and was happy to talk motorcycles and touring.

He even asked what I was doing later, offering to take me out for drinks. I had to decline. My body needs no encouragement to get dehydrated while on a tour. Also, call me a paranoid spoil-sport, but I view going out casually with a total stranger to be too risky this far from home.

With a long ride up the Natchez Trace tomorrow, I need to get a good night’s sleep. Gotta keep that momentum going…

LA118 - the good part

Natchez, MS

The River

Hitting the Road!

I’m just sitting in bed with a laptop, but downstairs the R1200ST is such
a pretty sight. It’s loaded up and ready to go on it’s first road trip.
This one’s just a little one. I have a week to make it to and from the
Sport-Touring.Net National Meet in Canaan Valley,WV.

I’m so excited. We never made it to the south on family road trips in my
youth, so I’ve never been to most of these places. This one will be a true
adventure, not just a walk down memory lane.

Ok, time to get going.

Business Card

I printed about 30 of them. Not bad. I think next time I'll leave a little more whitespace, but this works for the amount of time I had to spend on it.

I would have preferred to hype my website, but it's badly in need of some TLC. I need to add content. I've got it. I just don't seem to be making the time to add it.

Trip Prep

The preparations for a trip can be almost as exciting as the trip itself. They can also take longer.

In reality, I don’t have much to do, even though this will be my first overnighter with the R12ST (I know… WTH have I been doing all this time???).

• New tires two weekends ago (with pictorial evidence - on the way to get them swapped in) Continental Road Attacks. They rock. They’re also broken in. I’ve got about 500 miles on them. Great wear so far.
• Rewired the Givi tail-light to use a continuous wire instead of the funky spring connections that have only worked intermittently for the last year or two.
• Finally got the headlight modulator installed and working. While I was at it, I swapped an Osram Silverstar that I had lying around into one of my headlights. The removed bulb was carefully packaged and placed into my onboard tool bag as a spare.
• Applied a 3M reflective sticker kit to my saddlebags and trunk. I now have something like 4 square feet of rear reflectivity at night. These sticker kits are really neat. They are black in daylight, but reflect white at night.
• My cruise control is not currently working. I’ve been intensively troubleshooting it for the last few weeks, but no dice. I’ve pretty much resigned myself to not having it for this trip. I guess it’s not so bad. Most motorcycles on the road don’t have cruise control. I keep reminding myself that if B12Bill could go cross country without a throttle lock OR throttle rocker (as he‘d tell me whenever he heard me whining about cruise control troubles), I’m not so bad off.
  
  Sidenote: I’m truly glad that I’m far past the death grip stage in my riding career. I vividly remember riding my CB350 from San Jose to San Luis Obispo (3 hours) with a death grip keeping the throttle pinned. That was painful. I don’t know how newbies do it.
  

I also bought a few new accessories for the road.

• Battery powered toothbrushes have really come down in cost. I picked up an OralB for $5. I used to hate the feeling of using a manual toothbrush when on the road, instead of my deluxe rechargeable. Now my teeth should be squeaky clean morning and night.
• Adapter cord for charging electronics. BMW uses a funky power socket, so while I have one built in on the bike, I couldn’t actually use it. Until now. I’m thinking that my old Giant Tank Bag ™ is going to get strapped to the rear seat and get used as a charging station for all my various goodies. With the ST’s giant saddlebags, the tent and sleeping bag should no longer take up seat space.
• I also acquired a cheap bullet camera for taking onboard video. I’m not going to hype it until I see how it does.
  

Loose Ends:

Among the stuff that will have to wait for last minute:

• Business cards with rocketbunny information to hand out to people I meet. I’ve been meaning to do this for a few years. I have a design in mind and the pre-cut cards to do it with. I just need to sit down at my graphics computer and do it.
• Refresh my ebook collection. I carry a Ipaq loaded with ebooks for night and meal reading. I usually load at least 5 books. The pda is smaller than a paperback, so using it for this really helps save space.
• Load a backup MP3 player. I’ve been meaning to raid Dad’s classic rock collection. This will be for those times when the XM craps out due to canyon or tree cover.
• Oh, and my Givi trunk? It’s a mess. I gotta go in with a trash bag to make space for clothes and the laptop. Of course, nothing in there is really “meant” to be there, it just migrated through repeated use. At least the saddlebags are relatively neat right now.
  
  Ahhhh…anticipation.

Woohoo!

Just got told that I'm getting a "salary adjustment" with my next paycheck. I'm told I fit in higher in the pay scale than my boss thought I would! After only 2 months!

I rock.

May Pie Run & Leading a Group Ride

The TWTex May Pie Run was held last Saturday up in Hico, TX. With the location over 200 miles away, only two riders (me included) from Houston were initially signed up to attend. I planned a nice route and sent map files to the other rider for review. The night before the event, two other riders PM’d me asking for the location of the meet point. I replied with that information as well as gps files of the planned route.

Thus it was that at 7AM on a sunny Saturday, I found myself leading a group of four to a far-off destination. Reason: no one else knew the route.

I. Don’t. Like. Leading. Groups.

And for the most part, I haven’t ever really had to. I mean, how much directing do you need to do when the route is 80 miles, turn left, 50 miles, reverse? Even when we did more complicated rides, like Napa/Berryessa, I (the planner) always led from the sweep position with bike-to-bike radio to the leader.

But Texas is more complicated. You seldom spend more than 15 miles on a road before needing to turn onto something else. That is, if you want to find the twisties.

Anyway.

So I sucked it up and led the way there and back. I can be very self-critical sometimes, and there were a lot of things on my mind during that ride. Let’s just say I had a hard time staying relaxed, and consequently was much more sore than usual after a mere 500 mile day.

I was constantly looking back. I was also analyzing every situation ahead and how it might affect my group. In the forefront of my mind was every action by the leader that I’ve always hated having to deal with when on a group ride.

- On single lane, passing every car in sight and then charging ahead before the group is finished: It means that the last people in the group must speed to catch up. I hate that because I’m usually that last person.
- Not selecting a side of the lane, making staggered riding awkward: The leader doesn’t have the visual clues to remind him/her to stagger, but it’s even more important that he do so. When a leader can’t stick to one side, the rest of the group will have to adjust constantly. Dangerous. And the leader looks like an ass.
- On multi-lane, lane changes that split the group: If the leader puts his signal on, the sweep is supposed to move over and make room first. If the leader just charges in, it tends to split up the group. And then the last people have to speed and make lots of lane changes to catch up.
- Consistent speed on the superslab: If you go too slow, the riders behind will wonder what’s wrong. If you go too fast, they’ll think you’re a crazed speed demon. If you do both, you’ll drive them nuts.

Actually, Bluepoof did a great post on this a year or two ago (a much more entertaining read than mine). I admit I was thinking about it both last Saturday and that day several months ago when I was on a ride with her and a few other ST.Ners. The leader on that particular ride was particularly bad.

With all this on my mind, I'm sure I was a pretty good leader as far as being considerate to the group, but they weren't the only things bothering me. Another reason that I don’t like leading is that I’m not that fast in curves. Furthermore, I absolutely hate it when someone is behind me to observe my awful lines and “parking” whenever I fear gravel or other traction issues.

But really, I had a great time on Saturday. The ride up was uneventful and the twisties on the way home were a lot of fun. Compared to most sportbike riders, the group (a R1150GS, V-Strom1k, and a VFR) had pretty iron butts. We took breaks only every 80 miles and I’m told they could easily have gone longer than that. I focused on keeping a smooth, relaxed pace with only a few hiccups (read “parked it”) on a section of gravelly chip-seal. When we got closer to home, one of the other riders took over because he knew the route from there better than I did. This helped my state of mind immensely and I was able to have even more fun following him.

Do try the banana-blueberry pie at the Koffee Kup if you’re ever in the area. I’ll post a photo or two later.