My 969 mile test ride of a Harley-Davidson Sportster

If you've made it through the last few posts, you know all about where we went on our trip, but I thought before I was done writing I would take a bit to talk about my riding impressions after my 969 mile test ride.
Now, I need to start by saying that overall, I had an absolute blast on this trip, and my comments here are in no way intended to lessen that, nor personally malign anyone who has chosen a Harley, Chris and Heather especially (since it was their generosity that allowed me this experience in the first place). To each their own. I am just saying that after having ridden one for that long, it confirms what I had originally thought - it's a nice place to visit, but I'll likely never own one, nor can I understand why they're so popular with people my parents' age who don't have as much tolerance for abuse to their joints. Below are some reasons why this is my opinion.

Chris and his wife both have Harley-Davidson Sportster 1200s. I rode Chris's bike, which is an XLR. It's fuel-injected, has dual front disk brakes, and has the "peanut" tank (3.5 gal). He rode his wife's, which is a Custom. It has single disk front brake and is carburated, and has a slightly lower seat height and the larger fuel tank.

Ergonomics: Riding a bike for 6+ hours a day, or even an hour at a time will tell you a lot about its ergonomics.  When it comes to riding position and rider comfort, the Sportster's are not good. I mean, a lot of sport bikes have stiff suspension and punishingly uncomfortable rider triangles, but usually this is because they are more focused on maximum performance (and to some extent with the Italian bikes, styling) and rider comfort is a secondary part of the discussion at best. I know that it's not performance with the Harleys, so I can only guess that it's styling. Personally, I think if I ever bought a bike that was this uncomfortable to ride for any length of time, it would be a Ducati, because at least then I know why I'm being punished.
The riding position is just like most other bikes, in that no one element makes a good or bad riding position - it's a combination of several different things and their relationship to each other. The Sportsters have that standard cruiser feet-forward riding position, which is actually pretty comfortable if you're not doing it for more than 30 minutes at a time. However on this specific bike, for someone of my height, the foot pegs aren't far enough forward for me to have my legs straight out in front of me, and the reach to the bars is too far forward, meaning that you're sitting in this awkward clamshell position with your lower back hunched forward. Even if you had a backrest, you'd be hard-pressed to use it without having handlebars that extend further back, or longer arms. When we were on the highway, we'd occasionally rest our ankles on the foot pegs, which would stretch our legs out straight, but that was really only workable on straight roadway, because this put our feet about 6 inches from the road - not good if you have to lean. Also, because these bikes have no wind protection, the wind becomes the limiting factor in your speed. At 70 mph, no problem unless you're following a truck and getting wind buffeting because of turbulence. But a lot of the highway that we rode the first day had a 70 mph speed limit, meaning that keeping up with traffic meant running at between 80 and 85. At that speed, the wind is literally trying to blow you off of the bike, causing you to have to hang on for dear life, so your hands and arms get tired quickly. But worse than that is the effect on your legs. Because of the wide seat and engine plus the distance to the pegs, you're sitting with your legs in a fairly open position, and the inside of your legs is the leading edge that catches the wind. This means that the wind is constantly trying to force you into a full split. So you expend a considerable amount of effort trying to keep your legs more together, which tires out your thighs and hip flexors.
Even if you put the standard cruiser riding position aside for a moment, I really don't understand why Harley thinks it's ok to equip these ($10K!) bikes with such unbelievably uncomfortable seats, other than to ensure that they sell expensive accessory seats that make it possible to ride for more than 30 minutes without your keister going completely to sleep. With the pegs out in front of you, all of your weight is on your tailbone, so the seat matters a lot. Whenever we were not going to be braking or shifting for a while, Chris and I ended up using the passenger pegs (which happen to be almost directly under the rider like a standard center-control bike) to shift ourselves forward and take some weight off of our butts, as well as use more of the natural cushioning God gave us. This also helps to change the position of your legs and torso so that the wind is not catching your legs as much and you're able to lean into the wind and use it as a support. The main tradeoff is that you can't see out of your mirrors anymore.
Soo... there's a reason why most touring bikes have center controls and then people put highway pegs on, rather than the other way around.

The switchgear and displays are pretty intuitive. This is the first time that I had ridden a bike that had separate turn signal controls on each handlebar (vs the single multifunction turn signal on the left grip), and the fact that the right turn signal was right next to the kill switch had me accidentally almost pushing the kill switch on more than one occasion. The turn signal was a horizontal button, and the start and kill switches were a pair of vertical buttons above it. There was no color or texture difference, so it wasn't something you could tell without looking. I'm willing to chalk this up to an unfamiliar bike and a lack of muscle memory, because for a while I'd hit the horn instead of the turn signal on my bike too.

Engine and transmission: I normally ride a 600cc air/oil-cooled four cylinder that is making around 70 hp, but it makes that at 10K RPM. The Harley twin makes about the same HP, but at 5500 RPM, and it makes nearly double the torque. This is somewhat like the difference between the driving experience in my old Acura RSX Type-S vs my Pontiac GTO - it matters a lot less what gear you are in with the Harley, while on my bike, it likes to be wound out, and has no margin for being in the wrong gear. This makes the Harley a very easy bike to ride - you twist the throttle and it'll go. That said, the transmission on the Harley was smooth, shifted easily, and by the second day I was even able to pretty consistently do rev-matched downshifts. I kept trying to shift into a nonexistent sixth gear, because the bike really isn't geared for cruising much above 70mph without seeming overly busy. That would have improved fuel economy as well, because we noticed a pretty significant drop in mileage when we were cruising at 80+. I will have to say that I was pretty impressed that the bikes seemed happy cruising for more than an hour at these speeds, despite the fact that this means that the engine is turning north of 4000 RPM in top gear (redline is 6K). I guess that I shouldn't complain about the ~100 mile cruising range that Chris's bike had, since that was also about the limits of our cruising range given the ergonomic problems I mentioned above, but it does require careful attention to fuel stops when you're not on the interstate.
The rubber engine mounts work quite well at reducing the vibration, and really the only time I noticed it was at idle or if I was in the wrong gear (below 2000 RPM). The engine throws off a lot of heat, but again, it's only noticeable when you are stopped. The fuel injection makes it so that the bike nearly always fires on the first try, and the only fuel mapping niggle that I noticed was that when the bike was cold, if you blipped the throttle and then let it come back to idle, the FI would sometimes have trouble and would drop the engine to a near stall before recovering and bringing it back to normal idle.

On a related note, these bikes both had stock exhausts. I guess you can file it under more things that I don't "get" about Harleys, but I thought that they sounded great, and were plenty loud enough. Even with earplugs and a full-face helmet, I was always able to hear the exhaust enough for it to contribute positively to the riding experience without it being obnoxious. I was even able to hear the crackles and pops on overrun when I downshifted. I guess maybe if you've been riding for years with an open helmet and no hearing protection, you can't hear it unless it's louder because you're half-deaf already.

Handling and dynamics: While the Sportster does outweigh my bike by nearly 100 lbs, I didn't find that to be as noticeable in terms of the handling as the rake and trail differences, and the differences in weight distribution. The front wheel carries a lot less weight than in a standard or sport bike, and so you don't favor the front brake nearly as much - I definitely tried to lock up the front wheel more than once until I learned this. The other thing that I had to learn pretty quickly was that unlike my bike, the low-end torque is quite capable of overwhelming the fairly skinny rear tire, especially if there is any lean angle. This is an order of magnitude worse if it's wet. So you have to be fairly careful with the throttle lest the bike fishtail or do other scary things. Wet off-ramps or other sharp turns should be high on your list of things to avoid on a Harley.
On dry pavement, it does require more work to get the bike to turn than mine, primarily due to the long wheelbase and the long rake, and so even though it's not particularly top-heavy, it still feels like it's falling into the turn, but once it's in the turn it's pretty stable.
The other learning experience for me was the riding philosophy. If you go into riding a Harley like it's a sport bike, or even a sporty standard (like mine), you'll just be frustrated. As I've gotten more comfortable with my bike's handling limits, I now occasionally drag the pegs when I'm riding close to those limits. With the Sportster, you don't drag the pegs if you come into a turn with too much lean, you drag... the frame! While better than dragging the expensive chrome exhaust, still not something that I want to do on a my best friend's motorcycle, and not too forgiving as a method to warn you that you're being a bit overzealous - my pegs move if I need just a little more lean angle. Frames - not so much...
However, ratchet the riding back a couple of notches, from say 9/10ths to 7/10ths, and it becomes a very enjoyable experience again. Curvy roads are still fun, and actually become relaxing, because you're not concentrating so exclusively on every little bit of your riding technique being perfect, nor worrying about an unknown road or hazard creating a problem that you don't have enough margin left to correct for. You still keep a brisk pace, but you can enjoy the scenery as well!
The one big negative for the handling column, just like in ergonomics is in rider comfort. The Sportster uses a pair of outboard shocks/springs instead of the single inboard shock that is more common in modern motorcycles. I don't know if there's a tradeoff there or not, but I get the impression that the suspension on a Sportster is not really intended for someone of my weight, especially with the extra weight of luggage from our trip. I can't imagine what it would be like with a passenger- maybe that's why the pillion seat is such a joke; it's not actually intended for use. Anyway, as I mentioned before, most of your weight is on your tailbone, meaning that impacts from road imperfections that aren't absorbed by the suspension telegraph directly up your spine, instead of being able to use your legs and butt to absorb some of that impact. Couple that with suspension that was far too prone to bottom out, and things like frost heaves and expansion joints are simply painful.
After doing this ride, I have a lot of trouble believing what I see on motorcycle shows on the Discovery channel where Jesse James and Kid Rock jaunt off to Mexico for several days on one of his rigid choppers, or the Teutols go for a joyride on their latest creation. Quite likely, they ride for 20-30 minutes for the cameras, then put the bikes back on the trailer and head for the next photo op. Based on my experience, real distance riding means wind noise and buffeting, bugs and rocks hitting you (often in the face), and comfort is a big deal. I simply can't imagine doing that ride in an open (or no) helmet and no hearing protection. The amount of bugs on our helmets at the end of the day alone would be a deterrent. Maybe I'm just not hardcore enough. ;-)

Other things I noticed - ride height makes a big difference. I am high enough on my bike that I can at least see through the windows of most SUVs, and I can see over top of many cars. This makes it much easier to see far ahead even when you're following someone in traffic. Not so with the Sportsters, and this makes it quite a bit harder to ride defensively because you can't scan way out ahead for obstacles, curves, etc.

Lastly, I hadn't realized until this trip how much I use my helmet lock. Even if you have an expensive helmet (I don't) that you're not comfortable leaving unattended, it serves as a very useful place to hang your helmet when you need your hands free after you've taken your helmet off. For lack of a better place to set my helmet, I put it on the gauges. It was not a secure place for a helmet, because my helmet fell off and hit the ground on two separate occasions, which translates into me needing to replace my helmet now. This would be a pretty significant annoyance if I rode a bike like this all the time.

So concluding a long post, it's a Harley thing, and I don't understand. I'm glad to have done it, and I think that everyone should ride a Harley at least once in their lives, because it's definitely an experience. I learned a lot about what I personally do and do not want in a bike, and that is definitely going to be helpful as I look for a new bike in the future. There's no doubt in my mind that I'll be doing something like this again, it's just a question of when.

Motorcycle trip - day 3, Weston, WV to Richmond

The last day of the trip was Monday. We wanted to get an earlier start to the day so that we could get back to Richmond at a decent hour, since I still had to get back to Manassas and we both had to work on Tuesday. So we were pretty much ready to go before 8:00. The complimentary breakfast that the Comfort Inn Weston was meager, but the waffle iron was serviceable (although it required some convincing to release our waffles) so we stuck (ha ha) with that. I think Chris would have preferred that we eat at the Sheetz across the street though.

As we were getting prepped for departure, we were chatting with one of the other guests who was marveling at the Florida plates on the bikes, and so we explained where we were going and why. He related that he has a bike as well, but he doesn't really take it on trips like he used to because it's not so comfortable for he and the missus anymore, but that they were actually on a road trip currently, with no particular route or place in mind, just driving to see what they could see. Reminded me of someone else I know...

Weather reports looked clear, if a bit chilly. It was in the mid-50s and quite foggy, but we decided to forgo the rain gear. That turned out to be a mistake. I had to stop after less than 15 minutes on the road and put on a long-sleeve shirt because the combination of damp and chilly air was really going right through my summer mesh riding jacket. Our route had us on US-119/33 for about an hour. It was good that we were on a fairly straight divided highway, because visibility was very low, less than 1/2 mile most of the time. We even used the flashers on the bikes on more than one occasion. It was damp enough that we may as well have been riding in the rain, as I was collecting every bit as much water on my helmet shield as I was while riding in an actual rainstorm.

Just as we were getting off of US-33 onto WV-29, we rode out of the fog and into a nice mostly sunny day, and it had also warmed up a good bit. Good thing, because WV-29 is a FUN road! Pretty much as soon as it comes out of Elkins, WV, it gets curvy and starts climbing up into the mountains. You pass through a couple of small towns, and then there is a section where the road curves and climbs about 1500ft in the space of 1/2 mile, and then moves into a section of nice sweeping curves, and even some real switchbacks. The road is in nice shape, and there are passing zones every so often so that you can continue at an appropriate pace. From there, we hit US-250, which is quite possibly even better than 29. If you look at it on the map, it's pretty obvious why. This website is where I found the route.
US-250 took us through both Monongahela and George Washington National Forests, and so the road wound through the trees,with an occasional view of the valley below. The elevation was such that we were able to enjoy the slight touches of color starting to show on the leaves, and the sunlight was just slightly filtering through the tree canopy. The temperature was perfect too. I can't think of a much better way to spend a day. It was absolutely fantastic! The roads were curvy, and we kept a brisk pace, but not so brisk as to be challenging on a Harley. The nice thing was that the pace allowed for me to truly concentrate on my lines through the turns, and I started to see what people are talking about when they say that you "string the turns together." You would start to see the line that connected one turn to the next, and could ride quickly, but still very smoothly. I could have done it faster on my bike, but it would have been much more tiring and less relaxing, because I would have been riding much closer to the limits of my skill.

We rode through Staunton, and then headed for Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National park. Skyline has a $10 entrance fee, but it's absolutely worth it. We rode on Skyline for about 35 miles, took some pictures at 3900 feet, and then headed towards US-33 to get us back to Richmond.
We got into Richmond around 2:30, and the final mileage on the bikes read 969.6 for the trip. We (very briefly) considered going another 30.4 miles so that it would be an even 1000, but then decided that it wasn't all that important. Chris and I hopped in his car and headed for Manassas, where he joined us for dinner to wait out the traffic before he headed back home.

All in all, it was a great trip, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Perhaps with a different bike, but otherwise an awesome experience. The roads we traveled, especially on the second and third day are some that I would recommend to any driving/riding enthusiast.

Motorcycle trip - day 2, Greensburg, IN to Weston, WV

Day two dawned cloudy, but definitely better weather than Kenosha the day before. It appeared from the weather reports that we had gotten ahead of the storm, and it had turned north while we were headed south, so it appeared that we were going to stay dry. After breakfast compliments of the Hampton Inn, we headed outside to pack up the bikes and get moving. It was a good bit warmer this morning than the day before, and we were surprised to find that there was no morning dew to wipe off of the bikes. We dispensed with the rain gear, only to see a few raindrops on the bikes. Fortunately, that was all it was, and we stayed dry today. We realized now that we were able to see the surroundings of the hotel in daylight that it was somewhat strangely located. It was literally in the middle of a cornfield! There was a grain elevator across the street, and a cell tower behind it, but as far as you could see in nearly all directions, it was corn, grain elevator, corn, grain elevator. We were both anxious to get away from the cornfields and into some more interesting riding.

Also, September 19th is the annual observance of "Talk Like a Pirate Day" so I posted all of my Facebook status updates whenever we stopped in some form of Pirate speak.

We headed out on US 421, and picked up State Route 48, which skirted us up north of Cincinnati. It was a nice rural road, with some curves and even a few hills. Chris and I were both amused by the sign when we came onto a part of the road which warned trucks not to use the road due to steep hills and dangerous curves. Sounds like fun! Outside of Cincinnati, we picked up I-71 to get to US-35. 35 is still a divided highway most of the way, but it goes through some cool towns along the way. We stopped in Chillicothe, OH for lunch, for my first experience eating at the Steak 'n Shake. Burgers were good, shakes were better.

From there, we hit State Route 327, which eventually connected to US-50, and both were really great roads. This was really the first of the nice curvy, mountain roads we were looking forward to on the trip. A brief stop for fuel and rest in Coolville (how could you *not* stop there??), and we were on our way again.
From there we caught State Route 47 in West Virginia, which is an amazing road. I found it using this website, and it is strongly recommended for both the scenery and the drive! One thing I will say about the late Senator Byrd and his ability to bring home the pork... WV's roads were in a completely different class from the comparatively awful roads in Indiana and Ohio - almost no frost heaves, and nice smooth pavement even on these little secondary two-lane roads. 47 ended at US-119, which took us into our landing point for the night, Weston, WV. We stayed at a Comfort Inn there that was obviously a converted motor lodge of some sort - still had the external entrances to the rooms, but they had built a new building in the front to house the check-in and breakfast area. We went to the plaza next door to the hotel and grabbed some "Italian" food from a place called Genos. The food was passable, the beer was cold. I ordered an Italian Sausage sandwich, but instead of your standard tube-shaped sausage with peppers, onions and maybe some tomato sauce in a bun, this had sliced sausage, peppers, onions, and the entire thing was covered in cheese, like a pizza, but on a sub roll. It wasn't bad, but definitely not what I was expecting. We arrived a good bit earlier tonight than we had last night, so we were able to get to bed earlier in preparation for an early departure the next morning so that we could get into Richmond in the early afternoon.

I can honestly say that a lot of the roads we traveled today more than made up for the relatively boring, tiring freeway slog that we did the day before.

Motorcycle trip - day 1, Kenosha to Greensburg, IN

Day one dawned bright and sunny and beaut... oh, wait, no... we woke up to a thunderstorm! Just exactly what you hope for when you're setting out on a 900+ mile motorcycle ride, right? So, we set ourselves to packing the bikes and getting ready for the trip, hoping that it would blow over. In fact, it actually got worse for a time, but fortunately by the time we were packed, and had met Heather's sister at the Coffee Pot restaurant for a hearty breakfast (great Corned Beef Hash!), it had mostly stopped raining and the roads were just wet. Either way, it was still looking pretty cruddy, so we suited up in our rain gear, and packed our clothes and electronics into plastic bags to keep them dry. We got a later start than we thought, probably around 10AM, but given the weather, I'm not sure that was a bad thing.
This being the first time I have ridden a Harley (that happened to also be someone else's bike), I was less than thrilled with the idea of starting out in the rain. However, apparently I've gained enough XP for my motorcycle riding skill that I was able to manage the -10 rain and -5 unfamiliar motorcycle modifiers and keep the shiny side up. This is not to say that it was exactly easy. I definitely had a couple of close "saving throws" (ok, I'll stop with the gamer references for a while, I promise) where the bike fishtailed or the front tire tried to lock up on braking, but it didn't put too much of a damper on our travels. Once we got into Chicago, we headed towards Lakeshore Drive, and were able to see the Chicago skyline and Lake Michigan, including Navy Pier, the McCormick center, etc which was really nice despite dampness and intermittent actual rain. Our rain gear kept us reasonably dry, and we drove out of the rain as we got out of the city. As an aside, by the end of the riding day, really the only part of me that was wet was the part of my jeans that stuck out of the bottom of my rain pants, which in turn had wicked moisture down my socks, making my boots pretty damp. Guess there's something to be said for overboots.

One thing to note, because we were avoiding interstates, this also had the practical upshot of allowing us to avoid Chicago and Indiana's repressive toll road system, with one small exception, where we were on a toll road for all of 2 miles to get from one secondary road to another. Chris had an EZ pass, but since I don't have one, I had to pay cash. The smallest bill I had was a $20, so I ended up with 18 one dollar coins as change - fun!

After we got out of Chicago and into Indiana on US-41 and 52, unfortunately the roads were pretty stereotypically midwestern. That is, flat, straight, and flanked by corn. As I will cover more in my actual post on my riding impressions, these are not bikes that really make a 1+ hour run at 75 mph exactly comfortable, so we were squirming a little between stops on this section. The one highlight was that we drove through a portion of the Fowler Ridge Wind Farm. While I have seen wind turbines before, this is the first time I was able to see them from a short distance like this, and it really did give a better impression of their size. I honestly don't understand why people are so worried about the aesthetics of a wind farm - I think they're sort of graceful and beautiful in an industrial sort of way.

We stopped for lunch (and gas - with a 3.5 gal tank, this is a regular occurrence) a bit late, but since we had gotten a late breakfast, we weren't really hurting for having pushed along for a few hours first. Lunch was White Castle. Since neither of us live near a While Castle, I was pleased to have found one right on our route - it's like going to In-N-Out Burger on the west coast - you gotta take advantage of the opportunity when it presents itself. A bit further along the path, we encountered a car show in a car dealer's parking lot, and decided we had to stop and wander around for a few minutes. It was pretty cool. They had the usual cross-section of muscle cars, but they also had a first generation Honda CVCC, which I'm pretty sure is smaller than a first-gen Mini, and a couple of nice choppers. We only spent about 20 minutes wandering around, but it was a nice diversion.

The second half of our trip brought us through the middle of the Purdue campus in West Lafayette. Another unforeseen upshot of getting a late start is the fact that we didn't come through Purdue until well after the football game was over. I don't know how Purdue is in terms of traffic pre/post game, but if it's anything like PSU, we would have been stuck in bad traffic. As it was, traffic was slow on our way out of town because of 2 or 3 different accidents.
Next stop was the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This was mainly a place to allow us to stretch our legs, especially since we were mainly on the Interstate and there was some pretty major construction and traffic outside of Indianapolis, but we did take the obligatory pictures in front of the main entrance. From there, we headed for Greensburg, IN and our reservation at the Hampton Inn. It was well after dark, probably almost 8:30 by the time we arrived, and we were quite happy to be done traveling for the day. Last order of business was to find some food. There wasn't a lot of options, because Greensburg isn't exactly a huge town, but we ended up at Buffalo Wings and Rings, which had decent wings, good beer, and TVs where we could catch up on the day's college football action. We splurged and had dessert in celebration of my birthday, and then headed back to the hotel.
Preemptive Advil applied, we dragged ourselves into bed and enjoyed some needed rest before the next day of traveling. Day two would see us headed for Cincinnati, covering pretty much all of Ohio, and then a portion of West Virginia.

Road trip!!! - the beginning

These next few posts are going to be about a fantastic road trip that I just recently took over the weekend of my birthday. This will serve as the introduction.
Logistics were a bit... interesting. First, I had to fly to Chicago to meet my traveling companion. He had flown to Chicago from Richmond earlier in the week, met up with his wife in Michigan, driven to her parents' house in Kenosha, WI, where we would actually set out on the trip, headed for Richmond.

I was able to use my frequent flier miles on United to get a super-saver ticket, which only cost me 8750 miles plus $5. The only downside is that I misread the times, and booked what I thought was an 11AM flight that ended up being an 11PM flight. Doh! While I was a little disappointed that I wasn't going to be able to meet my Uncle Mark (who lives in Chicago) for lunch, for a free flight, I guess I don't have a lot of choices. Side note - I tried "Mobile Check-in" for the first time, which had me using my smartphone's web browser to display a 2D barcode that could be scanned at TSA and upon boarding. I printed a paper pass too, just to be safe, but didn't end up having to use it. Welcome to the future!

Friday night found me going through airport security wearing steel-toed boots and carrying a motorcycle helmet under my arm, which went surprisingly smoothly. I refrained from making any "this is my insurance in case the plane crashes" jokes until we landed in Chicago.

So, I should probably pause here and explain how this all came about, and why I'm carrying a motorcycle helmet (and jacket) on an airplane bound for Chicago.
Chris, my best friend from college, has been living in Orlando, Florida for the past few years. He met his wife there, and they were married last year. He and his wife both have motorcycles, specifically Harley-Davidson Sportster 1200s. However, when his wife moved to Michigan to start grad school (MSU, but we won't hold that against her), they moved most of their stuff and the motorcycles to be stored at her parents' house in Kenosha, WI, with the assumption that Chris would move into the general area once he found a job up there. Chris just recently got a new job in Richmond and moved up from Orlando in early summer. Not exactly close to Michigan, but closer at least, and definitely closer to me, which I'm ecstatic about. So, I've been after him to bring his motorcycle back down so that we could maybe ride together sometime. However, he wasn't really keen on having to load the bikes into the in-laws' truck and trailer and drive them down from Wisconsin, especially after already having to do that once when he moved their stuff down to Richmond. I suggested that they could ride them down, but he didn't figure that his wife would be overly interested in riding all that way. I immediately volunteered (assuming that they were ok with me riding one of the bikes, of course), and so that rapidly became the plan - we just had to figure out what weekend to do it. Well, coincidentally the best weekend for all concerned was the weekend of my birthday, and my very understanding wife agreed that this would be a most excellent birthday present even if it meant she had to be a single parent for a few days, so here we are.

Chris picked me up from the airport late Friday night in the in-laws' bright orange Ford Mustang GT convertible, and despite the fact that it was probably only 55 degrees out, we rode back from the airport with the top down (and the heat blasting). Nothing like romping on the throttle of a big V8 with an aftermarket exhaust while driving under an overpass with the top down to put a big, stupid grin on your face!

With all of the pre-trip traveling covered, I should talk about the actual trip planning a bit. It's pretty easy to get on the interstates and haul yourself across a couple of states at best speed in a day or two, but a real road trip is as much about the journey as the destination. So, I decided to take a page from my Dad's book on road trips and plan a more interesting route, one that avoided the miles and miles of tedium that most interstate travel represents in favor of secondary highways, small towns, etc - actually see the country instead of just driving past it at 80mph. So instead of just plugging everything into Google Maps and hoping for the best, I started doing some research.
I found two great websites, here and here that had maps/gps coordinates of scenic drives or otherwise interesting roads. I started with a list of candidates from all of the states/regions that I knew we'd have to go through in order to get between Kenosha and Richmond. A number of the routes I found on the Open Road Journey website were actually day-trip style loops, so I had to figure out which part of those to use in order to make forward progress, and then set about changing the route on Google maps to string those together and get a rough route laid out.
Once I was mostly happy with the route in Google Maps, I had to find a way to extract that as something that my GPS would understand, as I wanted to at least try using the GPS instead of a map and paper directions. Google has a button that says "send to GPS" and I thought, "AHA!" Well... all that does is send the destination address, which is pretty much useless. None of the multiple waypoints were coming over, so it was time for plan B. There are websites (little script bookmarklets, actually) that you can use to extract Google Maps directions to a file that your GPS understands, which worked like a charm. Once I had that, Garmin has this cool (free!) program called Base Camp that will use the maps in your GPS and allow you to import and export routes, change waypoints, as well as load the route to your GPS's memory. There was a lot of tweaking to be done, because I discovered that once I actually got zoomed down far enough a lot of the waypoints that Google generated were not technically on the road, so there was a lot of U-turns and doubling back to actually reach them that I had to fix. After all of that was sorted out, I was able to play back the route to determine stopping points based on distance and time so that I could figure out where we were going to stay each night, possible lunch and fuel stops, and the like, based on the fact that we'd basically have 3 days to make the trip.
Highlights of the route included riding along Lakeshore Drive in Chicago, through West Lafayette (Purdue), past the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, through parts of the Monongahela and George Washington National Forests, and a bit of Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park. It took me a good portion of Labor Day weekend to hack on this and get the route the way I wanted it, but looking back on it from this end, it was totally worth it! Next post - Day 1.