I stopped by Dawn’s house to see if anyone was home, and got some fruit, good coffee, and an omelet out of the deal. It was good to see them, and I look forward to riding back there in a couple weeks for Hannah’s wedding reception.

Once again I will geek out a bit, with an elevation profile and route map, as well as a kmz for anyone who cares. Yarr.

Download the kmz for this ride.

On the plus side, the Garmin GPS works great and the RAM mount is very secure. On the minus, the old cell phone headset I used is hard on the ear, especially under a helmet.

The route, shown below, was about 90 miles long, but looked to have some good twisties and a nice view, and google made the whole thing look like fairly major road.

Imagine my surprise when I hit a stretch of gravel. I figured it was just a bit of gravel and no big deal, so imagine my surprise (again) when I hit the sign warning of a 15% grade. I had a good 5 minute debate on whether or not to turn around, while moving forward at about 15 mph, and decided to tough it out. Maybe a little stupid but the road was dry and in good shape.

Impressively, Google Street View actually has this road photographed, which almost makes up for me not stopping to take any pictures myself. This link may give you an idea of the road. Check out that slope, eh?

I made it out just fine, and a few miles later hit CO-97, which follows the Platte River and is a really fine ride. Everything after that was good times. The first picture here is from after I got back on the good road. There was a fire on the right some time ago, and all the trees were burned out for miles. The second is from the Garden of the Gods area in Colorado Springs.

The Garden was pretty cool, and I took a roll of slides with the Yashica that should come back from the lab tomorrow. The sun was really bright and the shadows kind of harsh, but that’s life. Better light was coming but it was coming with some mean looking thunderheads. I hit the Interstate to get home and ended up racing a thunderstorm. I won by a good 30 minutes.

Oh, and total distance was about 160 miles that day. Not bad.

I spent a good amount of time researching various bikes, debating features, riding positions, bike weight, etc, and eventually settled on the Suzuki SV650 naked. The trouble I had after that was finding one. I tried several dealerships and no one had the naked version. Everyone had the version with the fairings, which has a much more forward-leaning riding position than the naked version.

Eventually I was ready to give up on finding the bike I wanted and nearly bought a used Kawasaki Ninja 650R, which has a similar riding position and engine, but looks more like a sport bike. Right before I was about to do a deal, Aaron found the bike I was actually looking for at a dealer up on Colfax. I went up there, found the bike, and immediately worked out a deal.

I picked the bike up yesterday, as well as some riding gear. I got it home with no incidents; everything felt really good. I credit the riding course for this. The initial nervousness about riding at all went away in just a few minutes (though the general nervousness about traffic did not).

I had read a few things about the throttle in the SV being “twitchy” but I haven’t really noticed anything unusual. It has a much smoother response than the GZ250 I learned on in class, and it is very easy to ride sedately in traffic. Since yesterday I’ve hit the throttle harder a couple of times, and the bike has a huge amount of pull. I could really scare myself if I had that desire, but I’m so very boring.

That’s probably a good thing.

Sam’s arrival was sort of funny. I got a text message with one word: “Gretchen.” I had to think about it for a bit, but then I realized he was referencing “Gretchen Goes to Nebraska,” and it meant he had just made it to Nebraska from Minneapolis. The time of the message meant he would get in around 1 am. Bryan and I got back from Adam’s place around 12:30 or so, and I was beat, so I climbed into bed and Bryan took the sofa. Shortly after I heard a noise that sounded like the Celica (giant fart can!), and soon after that I heard Sam’s voice. I went out and opened the door before he had a chance to knock or whatever. Pretty brilliant.

2008-05-25 GPS Tracklog (kmz)

2008-05-17 GPS Log (kmz)

2008-05-16 GPS Tracklog (kmz)

Distance: 17.5 mi
Min Alt 1.047 mi
Max Alt: 1.076 mi

Download the kmz for Google Earth here.