Another winter ride this week with temps at 34 with a 10+ degree wind chill but, dressed properly, it was easy to enjoy the cold ride. This week I was back on the BMW G310 GS as illness caused us to stay at home. That meant riding around my neighborhood, so I had the fun experience of returning to my first bike while riding new old roads.
My first challenge was to get the motorcycle out of my garage. This entailed removing the lawnmower and my bicycle, backing the motorcycle out, making sure the motorcycle was stable, returning the lawnmower and bicycle to the garage, and closing the garage. That was the easy part. I then had to turn the motorcycle around pushing it forward and back over my lawn as my driveway is just two narrow strips of concrete surrounded by bumpy lawn. It was a bit of a workout, but I managed to get the bike turned toward the road.
After some assistance getting my new Rev’It gauntlets on, I was ready to ride. I duck-walked the bike down to the street having to navigate it between our cars and the neighbors’ cars. I made it to the street and, with a wave to Bill, took off. The first striking difference between my neighborhood roads to that of my parents’ is my roads are much narrower. In the Pembroke neighborhood, two cars can pass each other even with cars parked on either side of the street. In my neighborhood only one car fits on the street where the cars are parked on either side. That just meant I needed greater awareness of oncoming traffic.
My neighborhood is also much smaller in scope, so I had many more stops and much shorter roads to cruise along. I didn’t mind as I had the fun of seeing my neighborhood from the motorcycle. I went cruising about close to home, staying within a quarter of a mile of the house. I drove into the Greek church parking lot to practice U-turns, but there were too many curbs in the lot for me to practice any slaloming. So I took off for more exploring.
Now my neighborhood is intersected by what is a popular through street connecting two main roadways in the city. But it is a nice long street that would allow me to cruise for almost a mile. So I headed out onto the road, but I quickly realized there was too much traffic. As soon as I could, I turned left back into the neighborhood and went exploring. Now I’ve lived in this neighborhood for more than 20 years. Yet it was only today that I discovered how connected the roads were, cutting through to a connector to Wards Corner. It was quite a pleasant discovery, and I had fun driving around back in the neighborhood. I decided that I could brave the busy road if I was heading back toward my house because I could always turn right if the traffic got too busy.
Of course as I was heading back up the busy street, I turned left instead, up this narrow, quiet little road that looped back to the main road. I saw a patch on the side of the road for a little “off-roading,” but I only looked as this was my first ride around the neighborhood.
Now I did have some issues returning to my beginner bike. I stalled the bike twice in traffic; once because I was still in second gear and once because I didn’t twist the throttle enough. There is a big difference in how much throttle the G310 needs over the Scrambler. There is also a big difference in how much easier it is to find neutral on the BMW, so easy in fact I went into neutral when I wanted to go into first at least four times.
I returned to the Greek church’s lot to do some S-turns, and these went well, so well that I felt I could handle the box in the MSF course should I ever take the course again. I tried slaloming around the curbed bits, but their length prevented that from being a challenge. So I headed over to the nearby high school’s parking lot which, for whatever reason, has large orange cones set up. These made a perfect slalom, and I enjoyed weaving through them. And the slalom was a perfect end to my new ride on my old bike. I headed home, dabbed the bike up to the garage, reverse engineered the lawnmower and bicycle to park the motorcycle, realizing as I did so that it was cold outside. I had felt a little cold air on my throat at the beginning of my ride because my neck tube had shifted down when I put my helmet on. But I was having so much fun and concentrating on my new traffic patterns, that I completely forgot the cold temperatures. It took the cold wind blowing as I walked toward the house to remind me. I am an all season rider after all.
Flutterby Biker 