5000 MILES!!!

So I've had my bike for 5 months now and have put 5000 miles on it so far. Riding to work everyday and going on 2-4 hour rides on the weekends adds up quick. I'm trying to decide what my next upgrade will be on this bike. My options are new front pulley, new seat, sissy bar, luggage rack. I'm leaning either towards the new seat or the front pulley, but we'll see. Until next time, keep the rubber side down.

Nice Long Ride

So last Saturday, me and Mark, a buddy from work, went on a long ride down in North Mississippi. It was beautiful weather aside from the lack of sunshine. Perfect temperature. If any of you haven't discovered MAD Maps, you should totally check them out. http://www.madmaps.com. These guys have made maps of routes around major cities that are very scenic. They mark along the way many attractions that you can stop and check out. They also show a few places to eat on each route. The route we took was about 200 miles and took about 5 hours round-trip. Great time. Also, I hit 4000 miles on the way back to Memphis. Having a great time with the bike. I'll post more pics soon.

2000 Miles

Just wanted to post that I reached 2000 miles on the motorcycle yesterday! Less than 2 months in, and it's been awesome so far.

Saddlebags

So, I bought some saddlebags this week. Even when you think it might be an easy install, there's always something that goes wrong...Two of the bolts that hold the brackets on got stripped as I was attempting to remove them. I was able to back one out with a drill and a bolt extractor, but when I tried to get the other one out, the drill bit broke off in the head of the bolt. I tried relentlessly to get it out with no luck. So, I took the bike to a local machine shop, and they grinded the head off the bolt and then used vise-grips to get the bolt out. After that ordeal, I got the saddlebags on, and they look awesome! (If I do say so myself). Here are a couple of picks with the bags on the bike.

New Stuff

Today I put a couple of new items on the bike: a license plate cover and a decal on the windshield. Here are pics of both.

1000 Miles!

Just a short post to say that I hit 1000 miles on the Vulcan yesterday! Doing the first service myself but taking it in to do the oil change on Friday.

My Dad and My Uncle

Last weekend, my dad rode his motorcycle up from Houston, TX and my uncle rode his down from Akron, IA. We spent the weekend riding all over the place.

On Friday, we rode out to PickWick State Park, which is about 100 mile East of Memphis. We had a great ride out with excellent weather. It became apparent that for me to do longer trips, I'm going to have to get a more comfortable seat.

We spent a few minutes admiring the view and taking a few pictures.

Me and my uncle at Pickwick

Some ducks at the lake

On the way back, we hit some rough weather. The storm that blew through knocked out power to a large portion of the Memphis area. When it began to rain, we pulled off into a gas station in Oakland, TN and waited. When the really bad stuff passed, we decided to go ahead and ride the rest of the way in the rain. Needless to say I got soaked. They both had full rain gear and stayed fairly dry, but I just had a rain coat. My boots were soaked through the leather and had turned from brown to black. They never recovered.

On Saturday, we made a shorter trip out to Shelby Forest and saw the Mississippi River bank. Here are a couple of pictures from that ride.

Engine Guards and Windshield

Recently, I added two accessories to my bike: engine guards and a windshield. Both installations were fairly easy to do and only required a small amount of adjustments to the bike. I had to relocate the horn for the engine guards and I had to bend the cable brackets on the front fork to fit the windshield mounts on. Here are the results.

My New Bike!

So, I'm doing this post two weeks after the fact, but I bought my new bike. It's a plasma blue Kawasaki Vulcan 900. This was the day that I brought it home from the dealer.


We had to fill out the paperwork four separate times because we kept making mistakes (oops!).

MSF Beginner RiderCourse

Back in May, I took the Beginner RiderCourse at Southwest TN Community College. It was a three-day event that began on Friday evening in the classroom. On Saturday, we began the day outside on the course. They started off very basic (how to turn the bike on), and by the end of the weekend, we had learned a lot about riding, enough to be able to ride on our own. All-in-all, everyone did quite well. Only one person dropped out ( she had back problems and couldn't continue) and everyone else passed! Here is a picture of the class out on the range.

Did I mention that it was really hot? We're all in long sleeves, but it was 95 outside!