It was a gift of a day for motorcycle riding; bright sunshine, barely a cloud in the blue sky, and temperatures rising to 60 degrees. I was able to take the lining out of my jacket and wear my Rev’It Ignition 3 leather pants. Bill took advantage of the beautiful day to wax the tank on the R Nine T (see picture). Last week we noticed two lines on the tank, so Bill wanted to add that extra protection. I thought through what might be causing the lines, and the only real difference between me and Bill on the bike is that I attached the cord for the Helite vest before mounting the bike and he always connected after. So today I made a point of waiting until I was astride the motorcycle to clip the vest in to see if that kept lines off the bike.
I also made sure to adjust the knee protectors in the pants before we took off—more on that later. The day was so pretty, we saw plenty of people out walking and riding bikes. I shifted easily into first gear, but as we headed down the curvy road, I had a shifting kerfuffle and found myself wondering what gear I was in. Most modern motorcycles have a gear indicator light; both my BMW G310 GS and Ducati Scrambler have gear indicators. But since the R Nine T is a retro bike, and has a clock not an LCD display, there are limits to the information available. There is an indicator for neutral, but that’s it. As nice as a gear indicator would be, I like learning from the experience of the ride. It turned out I was in third gear though I had thought I was in fourth. I decided what I needed to do was feel the motorcycle more. If I shifted too high up a gear, I should feel the shuddering of the bike to tell me that.
As we headed down the curvy road, I found myself using my preloaded front brake briefly. I entered one of the curves a tad too quickly, but with the preloaded brake, I was able to drop the speed safely. This particular curve was near a driveway with large brick posts, and my mind went to target fixation, imagining how that would work. I could have been focused on the post instead of slowing my speed in the curve, and that could have led to an accident. Luckily, because I have been working on my skills, nothing of the sort happened.
During our ride, we did a lot of figure eights. As we spun around in one court, a little head popped up from some bushes, a young boy helping his mother do some yard work, and watched us intently. As we headed out of the court, I gave the boy a honk of the horn and wave. In the court with the realistic cat figurine, I saw a tall great blue heron perched on a dock railing. It was amazing to see the long, thin bird stretching its neck to the sky.
I remembered to go off-road a bit as we did our on-street U-turn. It was strange feeling the grass under my tires again but good practice for me. My U-turns on the R Nine T are getting tighter. I worked on making sure my head was completely around, and I felt confident enough to try the tight U-turns in the gravel lot with the large wooden beams. I had to dab on one turn, but the other turn went great.
The whole ride was going very well until my left knee protector shifted in such a way as to press down on my kneecap, causing me great discomfort. We were heading toward the hospital overflow lot, so I made a quick adjustment to lessen the pain until we got there. Once there, I was able to shift into neutral and quickly dismounted the bike. I walked around to try and adjust the pants while Bill rode over to see what was going on. We decided to head home where I got practice in parking the bike at the top of the driveway, then restarting to pilot the motorcycle into the garage.
We were all smiles as we finished the ride on this beautiful day. Next week we won’t be so lucky—rain forecasted all week except Saturday, but temperatures in the low thirties. We’re not out of winter yet.
Flutterby Biker 