Sport-Touring.Net - First official LD ride

I have done several 700+ mile days, but never officially passed 1000 miles, and never documented. With a family of 4 kids, and the youngest being only 1 - I didn't have any time this summer for a decent ride, so I decided to just blast out a SS1000.

Planned my route up to the Canadian border and back, starting in Nevada, IA. The mileage turned out almost perfectly to go up through Minneapolis, Duluth, and turn around right at Grand Portage, MN right at the Canadian border. My father tagged along for the ride as well...a MUCH more experienced LD rider than myself, with several SS1000's, BB1500's, and even a BB1500 extreme under his belt.

My mount was my 2008 Buell XB12XT all stock as far as LD riding enhancements go. I do have the headlight mod that allows both high and low beams to stay on, when high is selected.

Lessons learned:
Take more pics - when I got done I wish I had a few more shots
Get a throttle lock
my fuel tank is 4.4 gallons, not 4.5 like I originally assumed

We took off from our local small town gas station at about 3:55am
First stop was just shy of Minneapolis where I realized we would hit the city right at rush hour...ugh. We ended up losing some time sitting in traffic, but nothing horrible, as we took I35E around the city.
Next stop was Duluth, MN...man at this point it felt like we were flying. Only about 150 miles from the turn around, and still feeling great.
The trip from Duluth to the border was all two lane with LOTS of tourists...time was not being made nearly as efficiently.
Ate lunch at the border, and headed back.
Got a RECORD 50+ mpg when we finally stopped for fuel with 215 miles on the trip meter, well south of Duluth.
We were about 200 miles from the Iowa border, and wanted to stretch our next stop to make it out of MN. My father has a 5 gallon tank, and was getting the same mileage as myself. Up to this point I had been stopping and filling the tank with about 4.3 gallons assuming I had .2 gallons left. To make a long story short...I only have a 4.4 gallon tank, and I ended up pushing the old girl the last ~3 miles into Iowa and our final stop.
Gassed up, grabbed a BIG drink and headed for home.

All in all the trip was pretty easy. We would have been home by 10:00pm if it were not for my poor fuel calculations. We did end up home about 10:45pm though...so still not too bad. My buns were a bit sore...but overall I felt good. Only funny thing was that the ring finger on my left hand was totally numb for three days. I've never experienced anything like that before...not on any trips.

Documents have been gathered, and will be sent shortly.
THanks!

Dad and I just after we turned around - overlooking Lake Superior

Topic: First official LD ride - SS1000 (Read 912 times)