The 2005 riding season is coming to a close here in the Midwest, at least for this “fair weather rider.”

I’m sure all the usual sources will be providing their “year in review” articles in the very near future (I sure miss the ones Dave Barry used to do!), so I thought I’d get a jump on them by providing you with my 2nd Annual "Season in a Nutshell." Here are some of the stats and highlights of 2005:

Stats:
Miles logged: 2,180 Most miles in a day: 365 on 7/23
Hottest Day: 7/23/05, 101 F
Coldest Day: 3/6/05, 45 F
Drops: 0
Other ‘rolling blunders’: 1
$ spent on HD clothing & bike accessories: 1175
Highest gas price paid: 3.01 per gallon

Most Improved Skills:
Using head and eyes to “look where you want to go.”
Overall awareness of traffic, surroundings, & potential hazards

Best mod or accessory added to bike:
Buckhorn handlebars for improved riding position
Willie & Max saddlebags for carrying STUFF

Bonehead Move of the Year:
Tangling with the gate arm in the parking garage at work (don’t ask)

Milestones reached:
Purchased first HD
First overnight trip in July
First girls-only trip in July
Most miles in a day, ever – 365 on July 23
Most hours on the bike in a day, ever – 12 on July 23

Best Day Riding:
Saturday, July 23 – awesome day!

Worst Day Riding:
No major mishaps this year… worst “day” was the whole month of September when I didn’t ride even ONCE til the 30th, for no good reason!

Prettiest new vista:
Hiway 6 & County Road F45 from Altoona to Newton through Colfax.

Locations visited:
Albert Lea, MN
Boone & Scenic Valley RR – Boone, IA
Clear Lake, IA
Livonia, MO
Newton, IA
Pella, IA (Cordova State Park Observation Park)

Full Circle: Toy Run 2005

Just finished up with the ABATE of Iowa Dist. 4 Toys for Tots Run, 2005. It was a great day - about 58 degrees, partly cloudy but partly sunny too... Steve says he thinks there were fewer bikes this year, but I'd still estimate about 1,500-2,000 bikes, every bike donating at least one toy to the USMC Toys for Tots program, and many bikes donating multiple toys. (The lead bike was towing a trailer made to look like Santa's sleigh, packed with toys!)

We did hear reports of two "incidents" this year - one person apparently lost it taking a curve and wiped out, not seriously injured, so that's such a relief. I hate to hear about this kind of stuff. And one person dropped their bike in the parking lot of the destination point, trying to maneuver. As large as this event always is, I'm frankly surprised there are not more of these types of things happening. I'm glad my fellow riders are okay!

HERE is the photo album with all the pics.

Ride Report: Albert Lea - WOW!!

Wow, what an awesome weekend!! I just completed my first "real bike trip" riding my own! My plan was to meet up with some of the gals in my online "biker sisterhood," then we were all going to go on a ride together around southern MN. A friend of mine here at work, who also rides her own, asked if she might go with me as far as Clear Lake, where her parents live, so this became our first ride together, the first overnight trip for both of us, and the longest trip to date for both of us.

We had several people from the online group scheduled to meet us in Albert Lea. We weren't sure what the weather was going to do - we knew it was going to be hot, but not sure what we would do if it poured rain as some were predicting.

Susan, my work buddy, (who rides an '03 pearl white Sportster 883) eventually decided to forego the visit to her parents and ride with me on up to Albert Lea. We left Des Moines at 7:30 Saturday morning. It was warm, but humid, so the air was moist and once we got moving it was pretty enjoyable. We rode north up Highway 69, which was absolutely beautiful - the fields are full, and all looks really healthy and green. We traveled 88 miles before our first stop, which was in Belmond. We topped off the gas tanks, drank some water, and then from Belmond we rode straight into Albert Lea, arriving at 11:30 a.m. We navigated through town up to Bergdale Harley Davidson where we bought some souvenir t-shirts, then headed over to the truck stop to meet the other folks.

As it turned out, only one of the other gals could make it down to meet us - the others all got pummeled with a major thunderstorm in the Twin Cities/Minnetonka area. But Lynn arrived and the three of us had lunch and then headed out for our planned ride with her in the lead... we went east out of Albert Lea on Hwy 46, picked up 90, then 63 south at Spring Valley... found a convenience store off 63 and took a long break... then back onto 63 south down to Hwy 56, a designated scenic byway. We travelled on 56 back to the northwest, through Le Roy, Tapaoi, and ending at Rose Creek, which is a few miles south of where 56 meets up again with 90. It was about a 100 mile loop, mostly east and south of Austin, MN.

We gassed up at a little mom-and-pop gas station in Rose Creek run by this older couple, who were pretty interested in the three biker chicks! Then Lynn took off towards home about 5 p.m. and Susan and I took a round-about way back to Clear Lake where we had booked a room to stay overnight. We had decided to avoid I-90 on the way back, so instead we took 218 south into Iowa, passed through St. Ansgar and Osage, then picked up Hwy 9 and went through Manly, Fertile, and finally arriving in Clear Lake about 7 p.m. We totaled about 325 miles for the day.

The hotel was decent, and the manager let us park our bikes right outside the office window so they and the security folks could keep an eye on them for us. We had supper at Perkins, then back to the hotel to sleep. (In bed by 9:30?? What happened to those wild biker chicks?? LOL)

We were up early, packed, checked out, and were warming up the bikes by 7:30 Sunday morning; south down Highway 69 we stopped again at Belmond for a potty break, then again at Jewel for gas and to watch a train go by (not much choice in that one... LOL) then one more stop outside of Ankeny (close to home) to say good-bye... again a beautiful ride because it was early and still somewhat cool with the wind. My mileage was 460 for the entire trip; Susan had another 15 or so on top of that because she had to ride up to my house for the start and then home at the end.

It was a beautiful, trouble-free weekend and I can't WAIT to plan something else!!

Couple photos here

Finally Met My Rumble Sisters!

HOORAY! I finally got to meet some of my Rumble Sisters! The Rumble Sisters is an invitation-only, online sisterhood of women riders that has grown out of the “Women Who Ride” discussion forum over on www.delphiforums.com. I’ve gained so much inspiration and motivation from this group, and yet it’s only yesterday (June 28!) that I finally got to meet two of my sisters in person. Marty and Kathy are on their way back to California and Arizona as part of their two-week vacation to Tennessee and all points in between; they stopped in Newton, Iowa, about 40 miles away from me, and invited me to come up and visit. I was able to take a couple hours off work so we wouldn’t be coming home in the dark, and we took off on the bikes for Newton.

What a lovely ride! We chose not to take the interstate because it was late afternoon and traffic on I-80’s at it’s worst at that time; instead we took “old Highway 6” and a Jasper County Road, F-48, which turned out to be scenic Iowa countryside at its best: sweeping turns among lush green cornfields, hills from which you could see literally several miles ahead, pretty acreages with rustic barns, and a lovely little town called Colfax where we found a helpful cashier at the Casey’s and a corner ice cream place called Grumpy’s.

Meeting my online friends was awesome. They have been on an amazing trip to and from Murfreesboro, where they got to meet even more Sisters, and between them have many years of riding experience to share. For a few more pictures, see my bike-related album over on Webshots: http://community.webshots.com/album/198453902TIeGRU.

Read more ride reports!

New bike!

We brought home my new bike on Friday the 18th – it’s a 2000 Harley Sportster 883! The weather hasn’t been terrific – it was only 40-some degrees all weekend – so it was a cold ride home, and then a cold parking lot practice session, and then a cold ten-mile ride on Sunday just for the heck of it… but what a great bike! I was very concerned that I would not like riding it – the Sportster has a higher center of gravity than what I am used to and I’d heard them called “top heavy” – but this bike has already been lowered and as it turned out the different center of gravity didn’t give me any problems except for a very short “getting used to it” period.

We brought the bike home on Friday night (Steve rode it home for me in 40-degree post-rain dark!), and on Saturday I took it up to the high school for some even colder parking lot practice. On Sunday it was just a tad warmer (upper 40’s), so I took it out for a 10-mile trial ride which left me absolutely grinning from ear to ear! It’s quick off the start, and at 60 mph it doesn’t feel like it needs a 6th gear, which was a problem with the Honda. A couple of problems we’ll deal with in time: the clutch is very hard to pull in, and it needs different handlebars to bring them back closer to me. These things are easily fixed, and we’ll have them taken care of by the time the riding season sets in for good. For now, it was an awesome preview of a fun summer ahead!

Read more personal notes!

Assholes Abound, Even on a Beautiful Spring Sunday

First ride of the year, March 6! It’s been almost four months to the day since I last rode my bike, and even though it was windy, yesterday was too good to pass up. We took a short ride down to visit friends about 15 miles away, then took a long way home. Very nice ride, very nice to be back on the bike again!

We did have a slight adventure, which leads me to want to rant a little. WHAT IS IT with cars and trucks who will not take their foot off the freakin’ gas pedal for even one second to allow you onto the interstate?? What exactly is that about? Is it so important to be FIRST that you would purposely risk another human being’s life? I was leading as we entered the Interstate. My husband was a few seconds behind me. I had plenty of room to merge, but there was a complete me-first asshole coming up who a). would not change to the left lane or let up off the gas to give Steve room to merge and b). in fact accelerated so hard behind Steve that you could see smoke billowing out behind the vehicle so he could… what? Force Steve off the road?

I’m curious – if this guy was so angry at the thought that a motorcycle might end up in front of him on the interstate, why didn’t he just change lanes and zoom around us, even flip us off? And – if he had in fact succeeded in forcing Steve off the road and into the ditch, would he have stopped to help? Or would he have happily continued on, knowing that he had successfully put himself first once again and believing that the guy deserved to die because he was on a motorcycle?

I know I am preaching to the choir here, but I’ll say it anyway: SHARE THE ROAD. If you can safely change lanes to allow another vehicle to merge from the on-ramp into traffic, please do so. If you have to lift your foot off the gas for a second to give the merging vehicle a little breathing room, please do so. And DON’T gas up to prevent another vehicle from merging ahead of you. And, when you're on your bike, look out for the jerks who don't practice common safety and courtesy. In your car or on your bike, it’s more important that everyone make it home alive than it is to always be first.

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Toy Run 2004 - WOW!!

I distinctly remember sitting in my car at an intersection about 10 years ago, trying to get to Sunday Dinner at my Grandma’s house. We were held up because a column of motorcycles was being allowed, with Police escort, to proceed through a major stoplight intersection en masse. As the thunder rolled and the light changed from red to green many times over, I noticed that the column of bikes stretched quite a ways down the road – and I noticed that each of these big, burly, bearded “hardcore bikers” sported a brightly-colored box or large teddy bear strapped to their bike.

I didn’t know the reason at that moment, but the image of those tough guys and their teddy bears made me smile – and made me wait a little more patiently than I might have, suspecting as I did that something I didn’t fully understand was going on. When I got to my Grandma’s I mentioned the bikes to my sister, who informed me that the motorcycle group was called ABATE (A Brotherhood Aimed Toward Education) and the ride was a benefit for the United States Marine Corps’ Toys for Tots organization. I had just seen my first Toy Run.

Last year on October 10, I got to experience the Toy Run from inside the column – and not as a passenger, but as a rider. Although I’ve been riding my own bike for three seasons now, this was the first large-group ride I’ve been on. I can assure you that getting my first glimpse of the sheer strength of our column gave me chills – we were over two thousand bikes, and at one point our column stretched the entire 10.2-mile distance of the Toy Run route: the first wave was arriving at the destination as the last wave was leaving the State Capitol where we had gathered.

The biggest challenge as a rider was getting out of the big parking lot at the gathering point – it seemed like all 2,000 of us were trying to leave at once. I found that if you just staked out your spot and held your ground, everyone else was doing the same and so the whole group just kind of moved as one. Once we were out on the street, things spread out a little – we rode two bikes wide in a single lane of the four-lane street – but you still traveled closer than normal to the bikes around you, so paying full attention (and often riding in only 2nd or 3rd gear) was a must. The police escort was there to block every intersection so we could proceed as an uninterrupted group. I’m certain that some of the folks in those cars were ticked off, but hey – one hour out of one Sunday a year isn’t asking too much, is it?

I’ve posted a few photos in my Webshots album, but believe me: they don’t capture the thrill of being part of something so large, so loud and so big-hearted. If you have a chance to ride in a local Toy Run, please do – you’ll be helping the Marines reach nearly 7 million needy children nationwide who don’t always experience the magic of toys at Christmas. And, if you don’t have a local Toy Run, consider contacting Toys for Tots to get one started. You’ll find you’ve got a lot of soft-hearted bikers right in your own community!