The roads heading south are starting to thin out as everyone gets back from a great weekend north. Some of you are catching up on DRN, so it's time for ride reports! Here's the spot:
I spent all weekend working around the house for next weekend's Open House for Ben's High School graduation (yes, you're invited, 6-10pm Sunday but you have to find my house).
I did get out on my Adventure this morning. I had wanted to take off yesterday morning to Baldwin with it, but no go. So today, I just started heading north through Ottawa, Muskegon and Newaygo counties. I went north, cut west, then picked up dirt roads in the middle of farming country. I had to be close to Woody's place as well. It was a good alternative to hitting trail. The 950 takes whatever you give it, dirt or pavement. I will say I haven't tried it in sand though, I'm sure that would be challenging.
I had a hornet fly into my helmet and walk right in front of my face on my visor. Not once, but twice!! That got me sweating more than I already was. With the first one, I slowed down, going too fast on a dirt road, before I reached up to flip up the visor. Just as I went to flip it up, the bugger crawled down into the chin guard of the helmet, and I heard him buzzing around. Geez!!! I stopped, whipped off the helmet fast, and he flew off. The second one came right out with a flip of the visor.
It's amazing the stuff you can see in the back roads. Great looking farms, streams that look good enough to probably hold some trout. I saw partridge along the road in some spots.
I also found the coolest wooden bridge up by Newaygo. It's a one-lane wooden bridge. Each side of the bridge goes up at like a 20-30 degree angle for 10-15 feet or so, then flat on top. You CANNOT see if there's another vehicle coming from the other direction. I had no problem going over it of course, but it would be murder on someone's Corvette, or a low-riding RV!
I stopped in Newaygo for lunch, then headed back. I really hit the bike going home, and let's just say I got home very quickly. One can get really illegal on this bike, and even at that point I usually realized I was in fifth and had one more gear left. This bike would benefit from a gear-down and still have plenty of juice on top. In fact, it may be faster geared down so it would pull sixth easier. No need to worry abou that though.
Another nice thing about the 950, or a road bike for that matter. It can be a pretty spontaneous ride, no packing of gear and bikes and trailering for at least a couple of hours to get to decent trail.
As nice as it is, it still doesn't match the thrill of a great trail ride!