Quick trip to Galveston

Made a quick trip to Galveston today to see the xmas lights. This was Kathy's first ride on the Golwing. I had to pickup Kathy in Plantersville and in my haste, I forgot the camera at home! Here's a pic of the Moody Garden's pyramid lit up.


Some more pics from this trip are here.

Gravel roads

I took the new Goldwing on gravel roads today. I was not sure how it will handle, one of my friends who tried a K1200LT on gravel said he kept his feet on the ground, it was that bad!

The Goldwing, even though much heavier compared to K1200RS handles better than the KRS (I have not ridden the KLT on gravel so I can't comment).

So the Yamaha FZ6 was the worst on gravel and the lightest bike, next best was BMW K1200RS and the best and heaviest so far is the Honda GL1800.

Here's a pic of the 'wing after my first ride on gravel:


Here's another one of just the road:
http://solorider.smugmug.com/photos/226623399-XL.jpg

Excuse the low quality images, I just snapped them from my handheld.

500 mile ride to trade in my bike

Read the details here.

Bigbend to Houston non-stop

Now I can say my longest ride without a stop is around 700 miles! Kathy had decided she had to be back on Monday so she'll be up early and drive towards Houston. Her early is 4am, I told her

I'll get up my usual time 7am and head out after packing.

Kathy was up around 3am and out, I got up at 7am and was on the bike rolling at 9am.I've never done such a long continuous ride, but feel confident I can do it.

After experimenting with different riding positions, I've found a mix that works for indefinite lengths of time.I take Hwy 170 to Hwy 118, the sun is just coming up, beautiful weather and unbelievable scenery.

To make up good time, I'm going a few MPH over the limit, GPS started out saying I'll be back at home at 6:45pm then dropped down to 6:10pm.

I don't stop for anything, just this one pic and put the camera back on the top case.

I get to Alpine, fill up the bike and get chocolate shake for myself. Back on the road, Hwy 67 to I10 (just want to get back quick). I10 riding is pretty uneventful, I put the cruise around 90 and just cruise along.

I see the gas guage getting low, and reserve hits. No prob, I'll pull up at next gas station.GPS says next gas station is 40 miles in Ozona and I already have reserve hit, not good.

I speed up and tuck under the windscreen. I see a Fina sign to the right, damn GPS didn't show it, too late now. About 12 miles from Ozona I get pulled over by LEO.

No dispute, I was doing 103MPH in 80MPH zone. Told the officor I'm running low on gas, he says ok, but has to give me a ticket as 103 is a little excessive (I'm thinking I'll take defensive driving and don't protest). LEO tells me gas is 12 miles ahead.

I Get back on the bike and 9 miles before Ozona the engine starts to sputter and I'm out of gas (this is never ever happened to me). Not to worry I take the seat off and find the road side assistance booklet in the under seat compartment.

I'm talking to a BMW road side operator who is trying to give me another number to call when the same LEO pulls up behind me. Cool guy, he says not to worry about BMW roadside and calls a wrecker on his phone to get me gas, I say, this calls for a picture, LEO says hangon let me roll up my window!
You see the seat is still off the bike.

I wait about 30 minutes, long 30 minutes, I call Kathy and she says it's storming bad in San Antonio, then gas arrvies. I pay the guy $50 for gas and service fee and I'm back on the road.

I top off at Ozona, time for another chocolate milk and I'm off to Houston.I find a guy in Lexus doing about 120 so I tuck in right behind hoping he has radar/laser jammer.

Finally I have to let the guy go and make another fuel stop in Seguin (don't want to risk it again). Looks like it rained in Seguin, a lady says it rained around 10am. No problem off on the road again.

San Antonio doesn't show any sign of rain but I'm on freeways and over passes. I get near Sealy and see clouds, low hanging ominous clouds. I hope that's all it is, just clouds and press on.

Soon it start pouring down and thundering like there was no tomorrow. I can barely see through the face shield so I turn my hazard on, go slow and exit to stop at a truck stop.

I should have put the rain suit on when I saw the clouds in the distance, now I know better, lesson learned.

Since I'm waiting for rain to go down a bit, might as well have dinner. I order the special, which was nastiest steak I ever had, I put my rain gear on and I'm going to press on.The truckers say "you've got to be crazy to go in this weather", but I have to be back home and at work tomorrow morning.

I press on, I leave my hazard on while I'm on I-10, home was about 60 miles when I stopped, but my speed is causing GPS to recalculate time. I turn off I-10 on to Fry road, rain has slowed down a bit but cagers have flipped and they keep turning without blinkers cutting me off! I take Fry road all the way to 290 to 1960 and I'm home at 8:45pm.

What an experience, am I tired today NO, any sores from the long distance riding (for me it was long distance) NO, does Master Yoda's Riding Position for KRS work? YES!

Bigbend 2007 Day 3 Riding around in the park

All the details here.

Big Bend 2007 ride Alpine to Lajitas

Today we were up early (by my standards) I was up at 6:00 am and all done with showering by 7:00am. We were on the road at about 9:00am, taking Hwy 67 to Hwy 118. Hwy 118 and onwards we were in Big Bend country. This is evident by the weird hills and mountains that are mostly made up of sedimentary rock, volcanic ash and sand, yes this area used to be under the sea at some point.
Elevation changes were significant on Hwy 118 and the road has long sweeping turns and is a perfect black top. Perfect for motorcycles.
Here's a teaser photo. Remember the entire gallary is here.
From Hwy 118 we hopped onto Hwy 170. We took the hilly road to The Ultimate Hideout. Kathy did notice the "Lajitas International Airport", here' s pic.

You can also view detailed forum entry here along with other rider commentaries.

Big Bend 2007 ride day 2 Austin to Alpine

Today was the longest leg of the road. We kept on 290 from Austin, through Fredricksberg and then took I-10 to Hwy 67. The ride through Fredricksberg was great, hills curves, sweepers, etc.

If you've experienced I-10, it's long mostly straight and plenty of cut throughs in the hills to keep the road straight. You have to be careful on this road, every time you go through a cut in the hill the cross winds just gust like a wind tunnel. Kathy thought something was wrong with the car, I told her it's just the wind.

You can visit the entire gallery for day two here.

It was a relieve to turn on to Hwy 67, problem was later on most of the road was under contruction. We stopped at a picnic spot to take some photos. Here's one of the bike at the stop:

Big Bend 2007 Motorcycle Ride Day 1 Houston to Austin

Perfect weather, not too hot not too cold and no rain!

When I pulled the bike out to put all the lugage on, I noticed the tank was almost full. Great, I'll make good time.

Here's the steed packed up and ready to go:

Perfect weather in Houston and it's supposed to be pretty good throughout the trip. Here's another shot:

Click here to view high resolution images from the entire trip (updated daily).

Check the nice weather out, couldn't have planned it better. It's supposed to get cooler in Austin tonight, Pat said it's supposed to get around 60 degrees.

This is the same spot where I took the weather pic. It's a movie theatre's empty parking lot.

I think the link to images work better for higher quality images, embedding the pictures in the blog makes them low quality.

Back on the bike towards Austin. I noticed that the route on Garmin Zumo shows me arrival time as 11:48pm, I left Houston at around 2:00pm, looks like Zumo 550 only shows arrival time to the final destination, not the next way point.

Still have a quarter tank of gas, but I'll pull over at the next gas station and get some water and gas it up. Also will clean off some of the bugs, damn it, forgot to take a pic of the bugs :). Here's the overal route and where I am currently at the gas station on way to Austin.

The pic is kinda fuzzy but oh well. The right hand side shows where the purple route begins and I'm close to my first way point which is LaQuinta at The Capitol in Austin.

This pic is at the same gas station, so now I have a pic of the bike at gas station to post on advrider.com!

Can you tell we've entered the city limits? Not as bad as Houston traffic though! I'm checking in and might get some more pics tonight. Kathy is going to drive up to Austin and meet me here, don't know if she'll want to ride around in downtown and get a bit to eat or if she'd rather take the shuttle.

I'll let her decide. She's going to be following me in her Prius on the way to Big Bend, next waypoint is Alpine which will be the longest leg of the ride. Since Kathy will be following me, I anticipate plenty of pics with me on the bike.

Big Bend PROPOSED Day 1 and Day 2

Ok, I can't wait! Next Thursday I head out on the trip.

Couple of days ago I noticed the headlight was out on the bike, both high and low beams. Got it in the shop and they fixed a faulty ground under warranty. While it was in, I had them change the the dust seal on the final drive, it was seeping.

Everything is set as far as equipment, picked the camera from kathy today so I will be posting pics of the packed bike sometime Thursday before I head out.

Since on the first day, we'll get to Lajita's the Ultimate Hideout pretty early in the day, I'm planning a small excursion. So afte we check in, we'll head out on this trip:




We start at the bottom of the map, head west through Presidio then via Marfa and Alpine get back to base camp. That comes out to 231 miles, hopefully Kathy will be up to it as she wants to ride with me on the motorcycle.

On Day 2 I'm thinking of this excursion:

This is a trip through the actual park. Frankly, I've never been through the park before but I hear it's awesome view. Myself and Kathy will be going through Terlingua on 170 then go South on Old Maverick Rd. I'm not sure, we might encounter some gravel roads but that's ok, the KRS handles great on gravel.

We'll stop over at Canyon Overlook, take some nice pics and head east on Ross Maxwell Scenic Drive, take Maverick Drive west back towards Terlingua and then back to base camp. Should be about 110 miles. Here's a little falvor of the type of drive and terrain:

Haven't thought about day 3, we'll see where we end up.

Garmin Zumo mounting on BMW Motorcycles

Ok, while we wait for the Big Bend trip starting next month, lets talk a little about how I mounted the Garmin Zumo 550.

If you have the Zumo GPS then you already know it comes with several mounts. All you need to do is just mount the cradle on the two screws on the clutch reservoir.

Here's a pic (no additional hardware is required for this setup):

This pic was taken from the riders seat look at the handlebars.

The next pic is from the top down so you can see the screws.

Since the Zumo just ships with total of 4 screws, I used two of the screws to secure the mount to clutch reservoir and the other two screws to secure the cradle to the mount. Since I was short two screws, I doubled up on the nut so it won't get loose due to virbrations. Some locktight was used to further reduce the possibility of screws working themselves out.

The Zumo 550 is excellent, I use 2GB SD card to store ton of music and it connected to my T-Mobile MDA via Bluetooth. I've also uploaded BMW dealers across US which might come in handy incase of break downs on the road.

October 11, 2007 ride to Big Bend

This time, I and Kathy are going to go ahead of the group. I'll be on the motorcycle and Kathy will drive in her car. We'll meet up in Austin and then go through Alpine to Lajitas and enjoy the stay at The Ultimate Hideout.

The rest of the group will be about two days behind us.

Kathy will leave a few days before us, as she has class, and I'll join the rest of the group on the way back.

Here's the route for going to Lajitas. According to the GPS it'll be 661 miles one way, the way back should be longer as we'll do some riding in The Hill Country:

Our last visit to The Ultimate Hideout in Lajitas was such a blast that this time we are going to spend more than just one day. This will be our base camp to excursions around Big Bend area.

The rest of the group will be coming via Uvalde to Lajitas. At this time I believe we have about 13 bikes registered to go with the group. I'm expecting probably around 5 bikes to actually go as most of the days in this trip fall on weekdays.

Last trip to Big Bend was a great success with 14 bikes. Some of the bikes were GS dual purpose and these guys split up from the group to ride on some of the unpaved roads. My K1200RS is stable on gravel roads (compared to the K1200LT) but since I have highway tires, I try to stay on the blacktop.

Here's a picture from last year's Big Bend trip. No you don't want to run out of gas here, which one of the guys on our last trip did. Don't worry Brian I won't tell anyone.

The Equipment

The motorcycle I have now is a BMW K1200RS. This was an upgrade from a Yamaha FZ6.

The bike, as you probably know, has a flat four cylindar liquid cooled engine. It includes ABS, heated grips, standard seat, cruise control and currently I have Maxxis tires that replaced Metzlers. The tires weren't by choice, long story, I might post that story one of these days. The Maxxis are definitly a lot better compared to cupped Metzlers!

I have the BMW side cases along with a Givi top case (everything else is stock). For directions and entertainment I use a Garmin Zumo 550 which hooks into my Autocom for music, directions, FRS Radio bike to bike communication, cell phone and rider/passanger comms. I don't yet have the traffic and weather update subscription on my GPS, but that's part of the thrill!

The pic to the right is from when I first picked up the bike.

As far as riding gear, I have a riding jacket (Joe Rocket), boots and cheap bycicle gloves (they work great and let plenty air through). Finally, I carry a rain suit in the top case. I have yet to use the rain suit as I just ride in the rain with just my riding jacket. Maybe I'll get to use the rain gear on next Big Bend trip.

I bought the motorcycle from BMW Motorcycles of North Houston and have so far been on a few rides to Hill Country, been once to Big Bend last year, been to Arkansas once this year and on October 11, 2007 will be heading through Austin, via Alpine to Big Bend.

While I work on posting the route about the upcoming Big Bend ride, you can enjoy some pictures from previous rides here: http://portal.bmwmch.com/

While we are on the topic of bike pictures, and you don't feel like browsing through a bunch of them, here's a different view of my bike without the top and side cases. The one immediately to the right of my bike is a K1200LT, the luxury tourer, a little too bulky for my taste.