As you can see from the route map, I had to stitch about five different Google Maps screenshots from my browser together to get the whole thing in one usable image. If I zoomed out to get it all, everything was too tiny to tell anything. We were riding for about four hours out of the six we were gone. About two of it was sitting in the restaurant. Serving twenty people takes a bit. Good thing we got there when we did though, because as we were leaving, a tour bus pulled up and about thirty women got out, all piling into the restaurant. Good lord.
It was a good ride. Nothing unplanned happened, everyone made it through okay, but I did come away feeling like I needed an ass replacement. My seat isn’t good for cross-country touring, evidently. But hey, I got to talking to a gal who rides with the group who has an Indian Scout herself. But when she bought hers, the guy who sold it to her had put on some mini-apes, and thus had taken off the windshield he had for it. It won’t fit on the apes. So she asked if I wanted it. Well, duh. So now I have a new windshield. Like new, anyway. Zing!
Part of me is torn, because the bike looks so bad ass without the safety features. The windshield and highway bars seem to take away from the general it-means-business look of it all. But I guess I can live with it. It definitely makes a difference. I got up early this morning and took a ride out to the lake, where I like to sit and have a breakfast bar and an OJ and look at the lake. There’s a two-mile stretch of bridge that goes over the lake where I like to open it up a little. I’ll get up to 85 or 90. This was the perfect litmus test for the new shield. I’ll be keeping it on.
So now that I’ve gotten the shield, I can start thinking about my next investment. The lady I was talking to told me about the option of putting on an upgraded digital speedometer, which has a gas gauge on it. That would be handy. On one of the stretches we rode 151 miles yesterday, which goes a good bit above where I estimated my mileage would allow. I figured at 40 miles per gallon, in a 3.3-gallon tank, I’d get 130-140 miles. So you can imagine, I was getting a little antsy. The road just kept going and going, and there was nothing in sight. Thank God, we finally rounded a curve and there was a fueling station. Maybe my next investment should be a two-gallon gas can.