19. More miles and smiles...!

I have go to say this I am really loving this bike, I wasn't too sure at first bearing in mind that I am  more used to big cruisers and tourers but as the miles stack up Tina is growing on me big time, I had even toyed with the idea of part exchanging her fr a Harley but not now. Apart from the saddle I have just about got her as I want her. Now the road works have finished I may even get delivery of the larger top box that I ordered,and then I will order the Touratech saddles for her and that is it.

 A couple of weeks back I was chatting to my mate Eric and I asked him if he fancied a ride out to Alicante and to the Santa Barbara Castle that sits in the middle of the town, so I planned a scenic route there and a quick run back, the run there was very interesting indeed we rode up some roads that didn't even look like roads and the twisties were as good as any in any Country we stopped a couple of times to have a break and take some piccies. W parked the bikes on what can only be described as erratic cobbles at the Castle and then went for a wander and a bite to eat before we left for home.

Parts of the ride

Alley-ways of Salem

All in all it was a brilliant day out and we clocked up 190 miles,  This Saturday just gone I took a ride down to a place called Hondon de los Frailes  via Torrellano both south of Alicante for a breakfast meeting with my newly joined MCC. As you can imagine it was an early start to meet some of the guys at Torrellano by 09:30 in the car park of a well known restaurant then on the the Typsy Terrace for breakfast. I took the fast route down to make sure I made it on time then spent a couple of hours with the a bunch of the nicest bikers I have ever met and they are not all Harley Riders there was a good mix of machines, I then took the scenic route home and by god it was scenic.

 It took me a while to get home but I didn't mind as the temperature was hitting 27 the scenery was staggering and I was in no hurry, true biking bliss, it is very difficult to explain to non bikers what the attraction is well there was a badge I saw a lot while in the Harley gang "If I have to explain you wouldn't understand" that just about sums it up, riding my bike puts a smile on my face no matter what the weather is doing. Also I noticed something when I got home from my 205 mile trip...

Without even realising it I had come close to my 5000 target in fact I am just under 10 miles short for the year, well that wont take long to click over, Tina needs a dam good clean and I mean strip and clean she is harder to clean than any of my Harleys were and might be nearly time for a new set of rubber, there is plenty of tread left but the tyres are getting very squared off now.. we will see.

18. Lot of miles so for this month...!

What a month this has been so far I have really clocked up some miles about another 400 since my epic one day trip to see the windmills near Toledo in Conseugra. So first I went for a little..or so I thought..trip round the local area over the mountains and pass a couple of reservoirs, turns out to be over 180 kms. A trip that I thought would only take me an hour and half ended up being over 4 hours long, but it was worth it.

Then a couple of weeks later once I could get past the road works that are infecting our village at the moment I went for another trip this time via the beach at Gandia to go and see the kite flying festival. I was help up for a while  at one of the roundabouts next to the car park as hundreds upon hundreds of scooters turned up and rode down the sea front I wish I could have got my camera out in time. After an hour at the beach I made of inland and headed out towards Cofrente and another Castle to see, the trip was brilliant I found twisties, country roads and some virtually unused roads, this is the beauty of Spain not too much traffic and epic views, I went past Xativa and a few other out of the way places and ended up riding over 200 miles in glorious sunshine in October.

What I didn't know at the time was I was parked next door to a nuclear power station which was just next to the cooling towers you can see in the photo above. In total I rode 305 km and 327 km from the last fill up now that is the most interesting fact of this trip I manages 4.6 litres/100 km or in real money 61.5 mpg which is absolutely incredible from a 1200 cc machine.

Two downsides to this trip, the first being the saddle even after I have done the "Flat seat mod" which has made the comfort factor a little better it's still not good enough for long journeys I did some research on the forums and its the same findings on all of them...get a Touratech saddle! So I am looking into that at the moment. the second was the demise of of my SJCam pro8 camera I have only used it three times and now I can't switch it on at all, so it is boxed up ready t to be sent back to he the manufacturers for repair or replacement, at the the end of the day there is no decent  alternative for the Go-Pro series of cameras so I have bought a Hero 7 black and am looking forward to taking some better videos in the near future.In two days time I am going on a trip to Alicante with my friend Eric and his BMW and in November I have booked tickets again with Eric to go and watch the Moto GP in Valencia I may get to go and watch Rossi do his stuff before he retires after all...another bucket list item ticked!!!.

17, A tale of roadworks and long trips

Here we are in October and I have still not managed to get out on the bike since the storms as they put the roadwork schedule back by a couple of weeks so still not had the opportunity to try out the flat seat mod that I completed last month. On the upside the road works have progressed from...

This...

...to this

The problem is they put heavy barriers each end of the road to stop anyone driving on it but! when it got to the point in the second photo you can see the barriers were changed for light plastic ones so.... early Sunday morning I got up and moved them out of the way and went for a 470 mile road trip. 

Still hard at it finishing the roadworks!!

So early Sunday morning I set off on an epic one day road trip to Consuegra  and back which is near Toledo, and is famous for the windmills from the Don Quixote book and as I am reading the aforementioned book at the moment it seemed like a good idea and of course I hadn't been out the bike for a while.. There is a cross country route but according to google it would take me over 6 hours I will do that route one day but I only had one day to do this in so I took a shorter route, not all motorways but A roads, I stopped off a couple of times for fuel and liquid top ups it was hot. Having said that I wore my new mesh jacket for the first time and it really worked well, too well! It was about 23 degrees when I left home but the Plains of La Mancha are a fair bit above sea level around 1000 metres so at one point I was actually cold brrr!! but it soon heated up to the mid 30's.

New Summer mesh jacket

It took me about 3 and a bit hours to get there I was taking it steady trying to enjoy the scenery as I went, I am glad I  made the trip as I had seen some photo's but none of them do the place justice if I am to be honest, anyway here are some of my efforts.

Tried the panorama setting on my phone

A little video clip

It was brilliant to be back out on the bike put a big smile back on my face and I have to say the flat seat mad works, it's not perfect as I don't believe any saddle is that good, but boy did it make a difference? yet another reason to belong to an owners group the wealth of information is endless.

Trying to become a member of the Motor Cycle News Ride 5000 club means I have to complete 5000 miles in a 12 month period, because of the over-run on the road works I have gotten a bit behind schedule but I am getting back on track, the trip was 756.1 km which is 470 miles.

Again converting km's to miles I now have around 689 miles to go to complete my 5000 which is now looking far more likely than a week ago. there is always a down side to everything and on this trip as I approached home it was very very hot 36 degrees so I had my visor open just a little bit and you know what is coming..something like a bee hit me at around 80 mph got under my visor and under my glasses, dam it hurt I had to stop for a while and try and wash my eyes out with water then hobble home at walking pace where my wife Lorni sorted me out, I knew it was good job marrying a nurse.

The day after and I am still a little sore but I emptied my jacket pockets of petrol receipts and got out my calculator and worked out my MPG from litres and km's and astounding as it may sound Tina is returning me nearly 58 mpg not too shabby for big heavy girl. I am well pleased.That gives me over 250 mile range which is something I have always sought after...Excellent!