First big Ride (planning)...

[Gardo]

On the way out


Below is some of the mapping of the ride I did yesterday




I clocked just about 100 miles on Heist in one direction. It was an interesting day, it was colder than the weather reports stated off the bike, kept warming my hands by the engine when I would stop at a light or in traffic, and the ride took longer than I expected.
During the ride I hit traffic which slowed me down do to road work, I had a road crew guy blow debris at me and the bike (not fun). I hit a section of highway that felt like they put in a speed bump every 50 feet, one caught me un aware riding to the top of the hill and it felt like I was airborne for a few moments. And a woman on a cell phone nearly tanked me when she swerved into my lane. One other thing I didn’t account for was wind. I was pretty buffeted at times but I just tucked in and rode through.

I did manage some video but my batteries died on the camera about half way through the trip. I still managed some good video.

The total ride time was 3 hrs with 2 breaks, one for gas, about 10 minutes, and the other for a bite to eat and rest, 30 minutes. Needed to relax the hands and legs, this was by far the longest I have ever been on a bike.

Some of the things I did before my trip down was checked the bike and did a once over on everything, didn’t help my heat shield which rattled off on the ride down.
I had to wear my half helmet and goggles since my full face was over my brother’s house.

List of my gear:
Long sleeve winter grade mock neck under armor
Full padded kidney belt (The bike is a ridged frame)
Leather jacket
Heavy denim jeans
Helmet/goggles/gloves
Kidney belt
Fork bag (contained another camera and my new tail light, and tools)
Carmex lip balm (if you have an open face you know how those lips start to feel)
Blackberry (the all important mobile, to let folks know I was okay)

I left at 11am and got to the Shop at 2pm. I did quite a bit of highway driving and the bike preformed much better than I could have hoped for I was cruising at 60 – 65 mph and the bike had more to give. At one point I looked down and I was hitting 80, slowed that iron pony right down. I was surprised that I wasn’t getting much or any vibration from the bike. Al from PIT told me the motor has a counter balance.

I had made my first stop about 35 minutes into the trip, for gas and a bottle of water. My next stop, I stopped at a BK for a quick burger, fries and some much needed rest and a Bio break, and more water. This was almost 2 hrs into the ride and that was about 2/3 of my trip down. Now the camera was locked in the fork bag and I totally forgot to take it out to snap some shots. But the video will collaborate my story.

The final leg of the trip, the sun was coming out and felt I pretty good. The stop to rest really paid off. It was a nice stretch of Highway, open and fairly clear. When I arrived at the shop Brett just shook his head and called me a mad man. Al was smiles from ear to ear.
Here on my 250 heist ridged frame I did this ride in non optimal conditions and the bike performed very well. Now at some point I lost my heat shield

After BSing for a bit we put the bike on the lift and checked it out and she was as sound as a crystal bell.

Then I got to work on her and cleaned up the engine area,




replaced the heat shield



and got to working on the rear light.

That was a pain in the @$$ that was. The light is SAE on a metric bike so with the help of tom from the Weaver group I modified the stock bracket to make it fit sanded it and repainted the piece.



I also got to play around with some of the custom Heists that they are building and checked out the Misfit, Hooligan and Ace.

By the time we were done it was getting late and time for me to go home. The trip back was longer and exhausting, but I got it done and was home by midnight, half frozen and road weary.

All in all I would do it again.