One Picture. One Story.

[hovmaven]

Coming back from a morning ride with friends, many twisties, no deer and no performance awards awarded.  We were headed for pie,  , and ahead I see what I make to be a pirate, with what looks like a squirrel tail hanging out the back of the ride.  I get closer, set the thottlemeister, reach for the camera, feather the brake, and voila,

I call it Doggles:

[Sport-Touring]

[Justin]

Coming back from a morning ride with friends, many twisties, no deer and no performance awards awarded.  We were headed for pie,  , and ahead I see what I make to be a pirate, with what looks like a squirrel tail hanging out the back of the ride.  I get closer, set the thottlemeister, reach for the camera, feather the brake, and voila,

I call it Doggles:

I like the license plate .. "suuuueeeeee!!!"

[hovmaven]

A classic.  

[Orson]

Sardinia 2007

Riding through the Monti del Gennargentu region, the twisties seemed to go on forever! Entire tanks of gas were ridden in third gear. Every now and then I’d have to engage 4th gear to punctuate a short straight or dab down into 2nd for a tight switchback. The rest of the time, the Guzzi's broad torque curve allowed 3rd gear to take on the brunt of the load.

I couldn’t get over how little traffic there was! It was if someone had set off a neutron bomb. I might encounter 1 car every 15 minutes. Quite a change from the chaotic traffic on the Italian mainland! Roads didn’t seem to last for very long before they merged into other roads. It seemed like I had to stop every 5 km to check the map. Lots of head scratching.

There was no respite in the twistiness, no straights to allow any moment of relaxation. A magnificent preponderance of twisties, mile after endless mile. With temperatures in the mid-80s, by 5 o'clock, I was thinking about some relief. Almost as if on cue, a sign on the side of the road alerted me that there was a hotel 300 meters ahead. Within 30 minutes, I was dipping in the hotel pool and sipping a beer from the poolside bar. Bliss.

The perfect ending to a perfect day  

[Raptormn]

October 2009

FJR at the Pacific Ocean.

This trip has a lot of meaning for me. I had just suffered the heart break of my ex calling off our engagement and relationship. I also had decided to head back to afghanistan again so i needed some much needed road therapy. I was talking on the phone with my Aunt about everything and she suggested i come out and visit her in San Diego for a few days. So instead of taking a plane i said you know what i am just going to ride out there. The next day i left on my FJR. This was my first big trip like this. I ran into all sorts of things along the way. Down pour though most of the state of Oklahoma, wind and cold through northern new mexico, heat and wind in southern new mexico, bone cold ride from colorado springs to kansas. While sitting at the Big Texan having dinner i decided in the morning i was just going to ride till i couldnt go anymore. At the end of the day i ended up in Yuma having done my first unofficial SS1000. i could have went on to San Diego but i wanted to see the sites as i rode through. The trip showed me things i knew my heart knew but my mind wasnt sure about and that is long trips on the bike are things we work our jobs for. Other non bikers think i am crazy when i tell them these things only the ones who ride understand. i leave in a few days for vacation and i have a motorcycle trip planned out while i am home.  

[Lawn Dart]

Friendship is...

It was supposed to be just a normal, easy going breakfast ride.  No railing, just a chance for some old friends to get together and hang for a bit, BS each other with new stories, create a few new tall tales and make some plans for the coming months.

Instead I found the back of a Jetta at 25mph and smashed my body quite nicely.  Seven bones broken in ten places meant I wasn't going anywhere.

Greg (1moreroad) put his skills as a volunteer fireman to work, controlling the situation and more important, managing me such that I don't do the wrong thing as a mashed up patient.

Friendship is...sacrificing the rest of your day for the comfort of an ailing friend.  Greg, I owe you one.  Hopefully I can repay it some other way than with a crash!  

[Mr.Black]

Friendship is...

It was supposed to be just a normal, easy going breakfast ride.  No railing, just a chance for some old friends to get together and hang for a bit, BS each other with new stories, create a few new tall tales and make some plans for the coming months.

Instead I found the back of a Jetta at 25mph and smashed my body quite nicely.  Seven bones broken in ten places meant I wasn't going anywhere.

Greg (1moreroad) put his skills as a volunteer fireman to work, controlling the situation and more important, managing me such that I don't do the wrong thing as a mashed up patient.

Friendship is...sacrificing the rest of your day for the comfort of an ailing friend.  Greg, I owe you one.  Hopefully I can repay it some other way than with a crash!  

/thread

[MK96xj]

  Greg is a good Man.

Friendship is...

It was supposed to be just a normal, easy going breakfast ride.  No railing, just a chance for some old friends to get together and hang for a bit, BS each other with new stories, create a few new tall tales and make some plans for the coming months.

Instead I found the back of a Jetta at 25mph and smashed my body quite nicely.  Seven bones broken in ten places meant I wasn't going anywhere.

Greg (1moreroad) put his skills as a volunteer fireman to work, controlling the situation and more important, managing me such that I don't do the wrong thing as a mashed up patient.

Friendship is...sacrificing the rest of your day for the comfort of an ailing friend.  Greg, I owe you one.  Hopefully I can repay it some other way than with a crash!  

[JonS]

Last October, it was time for me to go on a trip and I left for CA, early in the morning. After a long day riding, I stopped in Congress, AZ for the night. The motel was from the 40s or 50s, but it was very well cared for. I love these small towns in the desert and took a couple of photos. WHen I returned home, 10 days later, after an very eventful trip to find that my camera or card had not been taking the images. Most shots didn't work and the ones that had a picture were. With no pictures, I didn't do a ride report. Here is the motel from the first night.

[XLR8]

One of the best threads on ST.N  

I always like this picture because it represents the end of a perfect day of riding. Here we have friends sharing stories from the N. Cascades Hwy and very essence of motorcycling, including topics like:
Why did Ol Rocket ditch us in Winthrop? Did you check out Greench440's Garage Mahal? Dude, where's my oil? Why are there no rooms in this town? There are always rooms in this town. I didn't know you had to pay a registration fee to come in the park. Do you know why I am pulling you over? Are you packing a firearm? You should tell us if you are packing a firearm. Are you sure you aren't packing a firearm? I wasn't packing a firearm.

This of course is Grand Coulee Damn and it is magnificent. The nameplate generation capacity is 6,809 megawatts! For whatever reason on this August evening, we almost had the entire place to ourselves.

[brockep]

At the top of the Beartooth Pass during this years trip to Montana and Glacier National Park.  I was traveling light this day as I had left most of the gear at the hotel in Billings.  This trip was at the end of July during the heat wave that went across the country.  It was nice to be up on the Pass with 50 degree temps after several 90-100 degree days.

I went to Cooke City and then back to Billings just in time for dinner.

[miles]

DagoR6, Atypical1 and I planned a ride for yesterday morning, but Atyp bailed on us, so it wound up being just Dago and I.

I was exceedingly jazzed to be out, since I had just gotten my S1000RR back after loaning it away for almost 18 months (See the 'Great Start' thread in Pit Row for more details).  Its conversion back to street bike was completed on friday, but I had too much to do to get the bike out before sunday morning.  Anyhow, for me this was essentially a new bike.  I'd only ridden it on the street one time, the day I got it.  I did a 600 mile ride to break it in, then handed it over to the race team.  I'd ridden it a handful of times on the track, but that's a different animal.

The ride had its exciting moments from the start.  As I was tooling my way up the freeway, rolling along with traffic at around 80 mph, I went to look back behind me, taking my left hand off the bar to put it on my hip.  Leaning back a little as I looked back behind me, I accidentally gave the bike a little throttle.  As the bike surged forward, I got tossed back, yanking a bit more throttle. The resulting power wheelie got my attention, and my left hand flew back to the bar with lightning speed, I can assure you.  When I got to the meeting point, I switched the bike's power and TC mode from "slick" (as in race tires) to "sport", for wheelie control and softer power delivery.  After all, a 200 rwhp super bike motor can be a handful in the tight stuff...

Anyhow, Dago showed up a few minutes later sporting a set of racing slicks on his GSXR 1000.  "They're feeling a little sketch" he said.  "I think they have too match air pressure."  We tiptoed through Highland Valley Road, a very technical and tight chunk of goodness, then stopped at a gas station in Ramona to fuel up and check his tire pressure.
"I think the gauge on the pump isn't working," Dago said.  "It reads 60 psi."
We went across the street to the auto parts place and bought two different piece of junk pencil gauges (to compare them against each other).  As it turns out, the gas station air pump gauge was reasonably accurate.  Dago's front had 55 psi and the rear was at 60 psi warm.
We shot a quick video of Dago checking the air pressure and the gauge shooting out to it's full length, then let out a lot of air- down to 25 psi red and 30 front.

Dago felt a whole lot better about the way the bike handled after that.  We took turns leading and our speeds were pretty good.  On the wooded section of Mesa Grande, Dago was about half a turn ahead of me (It is very, very tight through there) and when I came around a turn, I saw his bike skidding to a stop with him under it.  I parked, then rushed over to get his leg out from under the bike.  His knee was squashed pretty well, but he saved some damage to the bike!

It turns out he had tipped into the turn (A very sharp left hander) at about 25 mph (which is about as fast as you'd really ever want to go) and ran over a squirrel at high lean.  His front stepped out and he lowsided.  

Thankfully, the bike was still functional, so we resumed our ride.  We hit Palomar, then Rice Canyon and De Luz up to lunch at Texas Lil's in Temecula.  After that, we hit the slab and headed home.  A great day of riding marred by one suicidal rodent.

[stromgal]

Oy!  If he'd had Anakees on that thing he woulda rolled right through the nutlover....    

Glad he's okay.   I was gonna post a pic but the above deserves some time/space.

[kevin_stevens]

I squished a ground squirrel (ok, not ground, just flattened) on Old Julian awhile back.

So the throttle response in Slick mode got you to dial it back TWO clicks to Sport?  What happened to Race?

KeS

[miles]

It was the wheelie control I wanted, more than the throttle softening.  And the TC.  I wanted all the help I could get until I got used to the bike.

[MisterSmooth]

This is one of my all time favorite STN photos.  

There's something essential and beautiful about the composition of the bikes and riders, the majesty of the dam, the quality of the light.  It was my wallpaper for a while.  

[Kootenanny]

I just found this thread.

Here I am, circa 1983:



I was 22 years old, and had just returned from a week-long trip--my first extended trip (and the only long trip I took until many years later).  To this day, I can recall many elements of that trip...for example, riding Hwy 6 up the Slocan Valley, when part of the road was only a single lane clinging to the side of a cliff...

And yes, I wore a FF helmet even back then...gotta like the leather "police" jacket, but it did have thick leather and shoulder/elbow padding...I also owned a pair of proper riding gloves and boots, but as I recall, the pics were an afterthought and I just threw on a pair of work gloves when I went back out for them.

The bike in the pic was my pride and joy, a 1981 Yamaha XJ550 Seca with some mods done by the previous owner (a privateer racer--yes, this had been his race bike).  It was not my first bike or my last, but there was something special about it...

[MonkeyNuke]

A few years ago, My brother Tom and I rode our bikes to our annual family vacation spot.  The plan was simple,  we ride and the women of our lives drive separately.  
We stopped in Vassar Mi. for a little break and some gas.  After socializing with the local patrons, we left about 45 minutes later. We then stopped in Frankenmuth to meet my wife and son for lunch.  Tom soon discovered his wallet was missing. We knew he used it in Vassar, so we headed back retracing our route and scanning the roadway for a lost wallet.
When we returned to the station, we looked all around where we were parked and asked the attendant if a lost wallet was turned in.  No luck.  We then went across the street to a police station to report a lost wallet.  We knocked on the door for several minutes but there was no answer.  We went back to the station to decide our next move.  Tom was in a pickle.  He had a large sum of cash in his wallet along with his credit cards and license.  He decided that he would have to go back home and take care of everything on the coming Monday morning. this is a major disappointment.  But before we leave, we called the police station and left a message about a lost wallet and how to contact the owner.  With that done, we moved to get our helmets on and it started to rain HARD.  So we waited about 30 minutes for the rain to let up.  Just as we were about to leave for good, a police cruiser pulled into the gas station.
The officer gets out of his cruiser and hands over the lost wallet to Tom.  As it turns out, a friend of the officer found the wallet in the parking lot of the gas station.  Since he knew his friend was on duty,  he called him and turned in the wallet.  The Officer was the only person on duty that day.  He just got done with some polic.e business and called his office to check the voice mail. That whe he got the message that the owner of the wallet was still around
All the money was there and Tom left a reward for the finder of the wallet

This is a story of a good cop doing the right thing for a good person with a good ending.

 Praise the Lord!

[miles]

Sorry for the crappy low-light iPhone pic.  I'd planned on bringing a good camera along for this ride, but couldn't figure out how to rig a tank bag in time.

This is the bottom of Nine Mile Road and Highway 395, east of the Sierras, north of the Mojave desert.



VifferVern and I got out for a ride yesterday- a good, long one.  I left my house at 5:00 am, and returned at 1:30 am the next morning.  Besides a few gas, photo and fast food stops, the rest of the 21 1/2 hours was saddle time.
Our pace was so slow (I only did 750 miles) because we rode over Portugese Pass and Sherman Pass at the southern end of the Sierras, both of which were absolutely covered in dirt and loose pea gravel.  It's hard to maintain a high rate of speed when cornering is an iffy proposition!  Seriously, it was really sketchy.  At one point we took a six mile shortcut on a loose gravel road, made all the more fun by its steepness and tons of switchbacks.

Anyhow, the photo was at the end of the fun stuff.  From this point it was 250 miles of slab for me to get back home.

Ah, the price we pay.

[Lawn Dart]

750 miles and a 1:30am arrival time at home...  

So glad some things haven't changed!