Our ride was late today, after 1:30. In part we delayed a bit waiting for the day to get as warm as it could. But we also ran a few errands beforehand. By the time we mounted the bikes and headed out for our ride, my stomach was rumbling louder than my motorcycle.
One reason for the delay was our stop at CycleGear. I asked for some kind of insulated pant to wear for my winter rides, and we were hoping the Rev’It style Bill found online would be available at CycleGear for a try on. No such luck; in fact we couldn’t find any Rev’It gear in the store.
However, the trip was still beneficial. Our route to our next stop was roundabout, but it allowed us to scope a future riding route. In particular we wanted to see if the new Lesner Bridge had a large grate. The bridge only has two small expansion grates, so less chance of slippage. This route would be my first out into real traffic, so we are being careful in our approach.
After delivering some Christmas cards to a friend, we finally headed over to my parents’ garage to ride. The sun was mostly out with a chilly wind blowing. I had prepared by wearing my fleece lounge pants under my riding jeans. I also had on a wool blended thermal, so I was comfortably warm on the bike. I again had a struggle to shift into first, but I may have found a solution as later in the ride I had another struggle for first. Instead of playing the clutch in and out and shifting as I do, I simply let the clutch all the way out slowly then pulled back in before shifting. That worked on the second struggle, so I will experiment next ride to see if it is the solution.
Once I caught up to Bill, we headed onto our twisty road. I was better able to use trail braking on the twists. It may simply be a matter of training my grip to become comfortable with the preload position. I also took breaks to let my hand rest, and these breaks allowed me to work on the preload throughout my ride.
I was able to focus on some training objectives, but I wasn’t able to really enjoy the Christmas decorations as my mind was on my rumbling tummy. Usually on our ride days, I eat a slice of peanut butter toast and that holds me through the ride until we head home for our delicious brunch of blueberry French toast. But since we didn’t head straight over for our ride, my PB toast had to keep me full longer, and it was not up to the task. At several points during the ride, I had to refocus away from my hunger. At one turn, I came in too fast but, because I had been working on preloading the brakes, I was able to slow my speed and straighten the motorcycle, preventing me from going too wide.
That wider than I wanted turn shook most of my thoughts of food out, and I was better able to focus on my ride. I didn’t have any full locks on my turn practice, but I had fun doing some first gear turns without the friction zone. On my other motorcycles with the more typical wet clutches, I have to keep feathering the clutch in the slow speed practices or the bike will stall. With the dry clutch much like a manual transmission car, once it’s running in first, it will stay running in first. I like this as it allows me to rest my left hand which tires more easily on the R Nine T’s clutch.
Since the R Nine T only has an analog dial showing speed, I have no idea how long we are out on our ride. It was probably only an hour or so as we didn’t ride through all of our usual route. Even so, next week I’ll hope we don’t have any errands to run. Next week my thoughts will be on the cold—the high for Saturday is supposed to only reach 33 degrees—yikes! I’ll find out just how good my heated grips really are.
Flutterby Biker 