Friday, April 3
Before we headed west on a moto trip, we probably needed to take a shorter overnight trip.
It came as no surprise that the decision to go on a weekend motorcycle camping trip would be a last-minute decision. My life as a working, married, parent comes with a schedule that is rarely in my control. Brian, my cousin-in-law, is in the same boat. When he emailed on Monday with the suggestion that we do a long ride that weekend, I had already started thinking about how I might fit a half-dozen other overdue activities into the weekend. Knowing that we needed such a weekend trip before we tackle a ride out West, I quickly set the other plans aside and sought permission from my wife. Once the kitchen pass was in hand, I turned my thoughts to what gear I might need for the trip that I didn’t already have.
The main item I would have to order was a mount for the GPS. I ordered it Monday night, from a company in NJ, and expected it to arrive later in the week – it only had to be shipped a few states southward. I already had a new rear tire in hand, since the one on the bike was nearly down to the wear bars. It probably had a few hundred miles left in it, but this trip would easily be over 800 miles.
Tuesday night’s homework was teaching myself how to change a rear tire on my motorbike. After three and half hours, with a dinner break in the middle, I had wrestled the rear wheel away from the bike, fought off the old rubber, negotiated the new rubber on, remounted the wheel, and filled it with air. It appeared to be holding the air. There were no obvious hissing noises – a good sign. By the next morning, the pressure gauged three pounds less. That worried me, but by the time I got home Wednesday evening, the pressure was holding steady. It might be ok after all. I had an air compressor in my tool kit on the bike, so I could monitor it and add air if necessary.
The GPS mount arrived on Thursday. Half an hour of tinkering later I had the custom mount on the V-Strom, centered just above the instrument display. Much better than stuffing it in the map pocket of the tank bag.
After I got my older daughter delivered to school on Friday morning, I spent some time mapping out waypoints for the trip and loading them into the GPS. I then took the time to jot down in a small notebook which waypoints I had created for this trip, to make it easier to find them among all the others in the GPS. Finally, just before 11 am I actually started pulling together the clothing and camping items I would need. I’ve been camping for so many years now that I’ve reduced this whole packing exercise down to just a couple of frantic hours of “Where is ____? I know I put it here.”
Past experience with packing gear for backpacking and paddling trips has shown me that I have a tendency to try to carry too much stuff. My backpack ends up with lots of stuff strapped on the outside. My canoe ends up with gear piled above the gunnels. So I was a little concerned that I would end up making the V-Strom look a bit like the two-wheeled version of the Beverly Hillbillies on moving day.
Packing at the last minute improves the chances I’ll leave out unnecessary stuff, thus making my load smaller and lighter. Right?
Most of my stuff fit into the three Givi cases, two on side racks, and a top case. But I did pack a large dry bag with a Ridgerest pad, the bug tent, and tent poles. I strapped it across the pillion seat. At least in the picture, it didn’t end up looking too bad.
I had intended to get on the road around noon and have a leisurely ride from Cary up to Boone. There was still too much franticness in my packing routine though, and by the time I was really ready to go, it was almost 2 pm.
It soon became apparent that the forecast for windy conditions was dead on. They had been talking about gusts up to 45 or 55 mph. Everyone knows the weatherman is often wrong, right? Not today. The good news was most of the wind was coming at me head-on. But it was easily 20-30 mph steady, with higher gusts. Add that to the 60 mph I was running and the apparent windspeed in the saddle was 80 to 90 mph.
I applied the “grip” in “motorcycle grips” and held on for dear life. The first odd sensation I noticed was that my helmet often seemed to be lifting up, as if someone was trying to lift it off my head. I could feel the chin strap keeping it down on my head. Weird. Then I noticed that my stiff riding jacket was also feeling like it was being lifted upwards. After about 20 minutes, I realized that it was actually bunching up under my arms.
I normally ride with the lower 6 inches of the main zipper undone to make the jacket lay flatter across my lap. The wind had worked the zipper open about halfway up my chest and the jacket had been blown upwards under my arms. I pulled over to adjust things. Of course, the zipper attachments at my lower back didn’t match between this jacket and the pants I was wearing, so there was no chance of hooking them together. Fastening the snaps on the front of the jacket, over the zipper, seemed to do the trick.
I hadn’t experienced such upward airflow on the V-Strom before, so I don’t know if it was due to the high winds, the shape of the side cases and drybag I had strapped on, or the minor adjustment I had made to the windscreen when I adjusted it to install the GPS mount. I only raised the lower forward edge of the windscreen by two washer thicknesses, so that shouldn’t have made much difference.
The winds weren’t completely consistent. Sometimes they were from straight-on, then from a quartering angle. When I got hit with an especially strong gust, I had to work to keep myself in position on the bike and the bike upright and in the lane. I’d noticed previously that the usual problem with milder gusts is not that the bike gets moved, but that the rider gets knocked around. And it’s the delicate inputs from the rider that control what the bike is doing. It’s harder to maintain smooth inputs when you’re fighting just to stay on the bike. The result was that I ended up riding in a perpetually tense state – death grip on the handlebars, knees clenching the tank, butt puckering the saddle.
After two hours of this, I was ready for a change. I pulled over at a gas station in Mocksville and took a short, breezy break. Then I turned off of 64 and headed north on 601 to go pick up 421. I should have known this wasn’t going to be any better. But at least it would be different. Now I had winds blasting me from the side.
Among the tons of things I had read about farkling the V-Strom were numerous threads about fork braces. A fork brace is a piece of metal that straps across the two front fork legs and stiffens the front end from reacting unduly to sideways forces. I recalled now all the comments about how this farkle had worked wonders for improving performance in strong crosswinds. I even recalled the technical discussion about how a strong side force causes one fork shock to compress more than the other, which in effect is like bending the front suspension sideways.
After the second big gust hit me from the side, making the front end feel like it was sliding sideways across the pavement, I knew exactly what unequal shock compression feels like. I also worried I might suck one of the wooden beads from the Beadrider seat cover into a place it wasn’t supposed to be. If I was tense before, I’m not sure what this new state should be called. Fortunately, the wind gusts weren’t so strong that they pushed me out of my lane, but they came close.
Highway 421 came into view mercifully after about 30 minutes and I was able to turn back into the wind. At least the head-on blasts just tried to lift my helmet off, not tip me over.
When I left my house, it was 72 degrees and sunny. I started out riding with my mesh armored pants on, and just the jacket shell. As I gained elevation going west, the temperature dropped. Some building clouds in the west took away some of the heat from the sun, and the winds did a good job of cooling everything off. I stopped for gas in Yadkin County and was able to pull up next to the building and get out of the wind for a few minutes. That was a relief. Having fought the wind for about 3 hours now, I was tired. I took this opportunity to put on the thermal liner under the jacket shell. I considered changing the mesh pants to my solid shell pants, but decided to just tough it out.
As I approached Wilkesboro, I passed an on-ramp where a line of six vehicles was merging onto the highway. The first one was apparently going slower than the rest would have liked. They were all bunched up tight. The last vehicle was a minivan, and as it slid over from the ramp into the right lane, I was just about even with its rear bumper. I had already moved over into the left lane to give them the right lane.
When you’re riding a motorcycle, you have to always be watching out for the Idiots. They’re out there and you never know when they’ll show up. I had a feeling this minivan might be one, so I was watching it closely. Sure enough, no sooner than she had gotten into the right lane she decided she was going around the slow people in front of her. Never mind that there might be other vehicles on 421 that she might need to think about. Without even looking, she swerved into the left lane, where I was.
I know she didn’t look, because if she had she would have seen me. On a bright red motorcycle, with big side cases, a bright red dry bag strapped across the pillion seat, and a tall guy wearing a fluorescent yellow/lime Hi-Viz jacket, how could she miss me? (Only the IDIOTS can miss me, not the regular Idiots.) I braked and swerved to the left side of the lane and found the horn button. I haven’t replaced the stock horn with the Stebel, 139-decibel attention-getter, yet, but since my little horn was only about 5 feet from her head at the time, so she heard it. She swerved back into her lane and looked at me for a second. I didn’t look close enough to see if it was a look of annoyance or shock. I just reclaimed my lane and thought about how nice it will be to get off of four-lane highways.
I made it through Wilkesboro without further incident and approached the mountains. As I started up the final grade to the Blue Ridge Parkway, I could see a thick cloud bank spilling over the mountain crest from the west. Great. The clouds looked dark, especially with the sun setting in the west behind them. From my vantage point a few miles away, it looked like there was fog and possibly rain swirling around the trees on the ridgeline. Nice. I could imagine there might even be a little snow mixed in as well! I turned the grip heaters on for a little more warmth.
The V-Strom zipped up the steep grade with just a little more twist on the throttle. Cool. This was the first extended uphill grade I’d ridden the V-Strom up since I got it over 4,000 miles ago. It’s pretty flat where I live.
Near the crest of the grade, I noticed there were little spots on my visor. Precipitation. Lovely. I turned off of 421 and took a side road a few miles to where I could jump up on the Blue Ridge Parkway. I had heard a lot about riding the parkway. In my first 15 miles of it, I didn’t see any other vehicles. I’m sure I’ll eventually get to ride parts of it in slow leaf-peeper traffic.
At Bamboo Gap, I turned off of the parkway and as I came up to the stop sign, I saw a little white Subaru approaching from the left. It had stopped at the intersection, even though there wasn’t a stop sign. There were several other cars backing up behind it. The driver was holding up his left arm and pointing to his watch emphatically.
It was about 6 pm, and Brian wasn’t going to let this opportunity slip by without giving me a hard time about it. I was supposed to have been at his house by 5 pm. He had just seen me cross the bridge on the parkway. How could he miss me, with my fluorescent Hi-Viz jacket on?!
Brian’s house is up on a ridge not far from the parkway, near Bamboo Gap. The wind was still whipping when I turned into his driveway. I pulled close to the house because I was afraid the wind might blow the bike over in the driveway. Brian had lost a turn signal the week before when his V-Strom got blown over in a parking lot at work.
Once inside, my cousin Donna fixed me a sandwich. Seems every time I visit, the first thing she does is feed me. Can’t argue with that! I was chilled and hungry, so it hit the spot. Brian was packed and ready to roll, but I was just coming off 4 hours of fighting to stay on the bike and to keep the bike on the road, so I wasn’t exactly eager to take off for another two hours of riding. My late departure and later arrival at his house meant it was now dark outside. The wind had not calmed down any, and the temperature had dropped to 46 degrees.
It didn’t take me long to suggest that we should just spend the night at his house and get an early start the next morning. I know how hard it was for Brian to agree to that. I’m always over-anxious to get going when trip companions arrive at my house. I knew it would be a long time before I heard the end of this, but that didn’t convince me to change my mind.
We decided to pull the bikes into his garage, so they wouldn’t get blown over during the night.
Since we were now staying at his house for the night, we had to dig out a few homebrews and relax. After another sandwich and an hour later, I finally warmed up enough to take off my over pants. I was assigned the fold-out couch in the sunroom and we turned out the lights by 10:30 pm.
Mileage for the day: 189 miles
