We left the Two Wheel Inn right at 6PM.....my GPS was frustrating me as it said I was not going to be home until 1:10AM? It had always been a 6 hour drive before.......why was it going to take 7 hours? I found out the darn thing had not yet made the adjustment to Daylight Savings Time. I change the setting in the Garmin....and it then showed an accurate arrival time. It would have been nice to have left earlier - but the weather on Sunday was the best of the whole weekend and there was riding that "needed" to be done. We didn't get on the road until 11 AM on most days as we felt 23 degrees was just too cold to ride - so the short 7 hour riding days meant our trips were only about half as many miles as we ride in the long summer days.
Most of our riding was done in the 30 - 40 degree range, with some short afternoon temps a bit above 40. A base layer, ski pants, sweat shirts and a good windproof jacket proved to keep us from getting really cold - hands were a different story and when the temps were in the low 30's and we were riding at 50mph speeds cold hands were a problem. I have somewhat poor circulation in my hands from the time I ran air hammers/grinders in the steel mill and I do have trouble keeping them warm - Stew and Bailey didn't have a good set of winter gloves (they live in the south) - my winter gloves are a $15 pair from Tractor Supply and they worked pretty well. Riding with the winter gloves made clutch/brake/throttle use cumbersome - the thick padding made your fingers a bit stiff and it was hard to feel the levers through the padding. Heated grips or heated gloves may be the ticket to resolving that issue. I bought a Milwaukee battery heated vest - it worked well and at the low setting it would help to keep me warm for 6 hours. The battery that comes with it is a 1.5 A/H, I am going to buy a couple of the 3 A/H Chinese batteries and I should be able to use the medium or high settings - and the vest is 12V so I am going to try a direct connection to the power outlet on my bike. (The only concern I have at the moment is that the charging system on the bike is between 13.8 - 14.0 volts when the bike is running.....I need to do a voltage check on the Milwaukee Li-Ion battery and see what the charged voltage is).
The riding was good. Traffic was light, 3 out of 4 cars would pull over and let us pass - we only had about 3 folks who just refused to pull over and made us pass them on the curvy/double yellow line roads. We rode at an enjoyable calm pace as the roads were cold and often covered with leaves - we never had a problem with icy roads.
I will post the few pictures I took tomorrow when I am at my office - I can post pictures so much easier there as this computer and internet access is slow and cumbersome (today is the Veterans Day holiday for me and I have the day off).
I am glad we went.....I had a good time!
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