Had an absolutely wonderful (mostly) ride today, the longest one yet at around 250 miles. I rode from my house up to the beautiful resort town of McCall, Idaho, about 100 miles to the north. I then rode over to New Meadows, on through Council, Cambridge, Weiser, Payette, and back through Emmett to home. A beautiful loop, with all sorts of different terrain, including lots of beautiful forest.
The weather couldn’t have been nicer. It was in the high 70′s at home, and around the mid-60′s at the highest elevations. Nice and sunny. Hardly any cars on the road, which made it especially nice.
Over the past week I installed a couple of minor mods to the bike, which made it much more pleasant for touring – an MRA windscreen with adjustable foil to cut down the wind noise (which is pretty strong on these bikes), and a Kaoko throttle lock. The windscreen looks a little odd with that foil on there, but it’s a very clever design that you can adjust to six different positions, and it really did help with the noise quite a bit. The throttle lock is pretty well designed also, and gives some much needed relief to my right wrist on longer trips.
When I got to McCall, I had to get a shot of the bike with Payette Lake in the background:
Mile after mile of twisting roads, with very little traffic, and beautiful scenery:
The Weiser River, down in a canyon just off the edge of the road:
Perfect weather, and the landscape is now so green!
The bike is now FINALLY past the 1,500 mile break-in period. On the trip, I stretched its legs out a bit more than I had been, as there were some really wide open stretches. WOW this bike has some ridiculous power! And you don’t feel like you’re going that fast, because it’s so upright and comfortable. I’m really impressed.
Unfortunately, not everyone was so impressed with the power of the bike.
While waiting for him to write my ticket, I decided, “What the heck – I take pictures of everything else on my rides. Why not this?” As I was shooting the pics, the officer got on his P.A. system in the car and said “Take it again, Brian. I just turned on all the lights for you.” Nice of him, I guess. 