I am in a Starbucks in San Fran waiting for Jill to come into town so we can ride up to Portland.
Everything has gone well so far, despite some pretty bad weather on the way out. Here are a few things we learnt:
- Cops leave you alone if you stick to 20mph (indicated) over the speed limit most of the time. No issues with cops whatsoever.
- Pack luggage as low as possible on the bike. I had some stability issues with my bike until I changed around the luggage so the heavy gear was low down on the bike. Before my bike would weave a bit when overtaking lorries at high speed (ie over 13* mph). Once I rearranged things the weave stopped and I started getting much better gas mileage. Bike also handled much better in the corners and was less affected by winds!
- My bike does about 200 miles on the tank when the luggage is packed correctly when doing about 80-90mph. Alex's VFR is about the same, maybe a bit better. My worst tank mileage was 130 miles (because of some very naughty speeding in New Mexico).
- Next trip I will get a throttle lock as holding the throttle open for hours at a time makes your wrists sore.
The wind and rain was tough in the trip. The rain started in Mississipi and that continued on an off, less so the further west we got. Out in Arizona and California the prairie wind got to be a bit of a problem - we would be going high speed while leaning right over into the wind just to go straight.
The ocean winds were chilly in CA. We could tell how far we were from the coast just by the air temperature, which would vary quite a bit on the Pacific Coast Highway.
Last night was crazy. Alex, Maria and I walked around downtown San Fran and obviously the Russians did what came naturally - getting massively drunk of course. Maria is actually crazier than Alex. We ended up staggering round downtown drinking out of paper bags til about 11pm then took a tram back.
No comments:
Post a Comment