Lamonster
SpyderLovers Founder
My ride Saturday was great and I was all pumped up to write about it until I came home and saw the site was hacked. :sour: Now that the site is back up I'll post some of the highlights. :doorag:
The weather started off great but I didn't get out of here till around 10am or so. My first stop was the local BP to get fuel and that's where I ran into a bunch of Harley guys. :doorag: They were giving me the look so I asked them how it was going. Turns out I knew a couple of the guys and they had heard that there was some backward three wheeler running around town but didn't know it was me. One of the guys just bought a new Bushtec trailer so we talked about it a bit and I told them I was heading to Maggie Valley for a rally. They didn't know about it but they told me there was another rally in Hot Springs and a car show in Greeneville and they weren't sure where they were riding to. :dontknow:
I thought about just riding with them but I really wanted to checkout my new risers and I knew I would be riding a bit to hard for those guys so we said our goodbye's and I headed toward Hot Springs on the way to Maggie Valley.
The road to Hot Springs is great (70 and 107) and follows a good size river. I was able to crank it up a bit and test the load on the risers. It took me a few miles before I felt good about them.
Drove through Hot Springs and saw that the rally was just a bunch of bikers hanging out at this camp ground. It looked more like a old school type of rally and not something I wanted to stop for.
Drove through Hot Springs and headed out on one of my most favorite roads in my area. The 209 is a great road with a little bit of everything a biker loves. There are more twisties than you can shake a stick at and a couple of good straightaways where you can really open it up. There's hardly ever anyone on that road and that makes it even better.
As the road got more technical I started to push the Spyder harder. I was working the nanny pretty good and then things got a little ugly. I would blaze around a turn full tilt and there would be a bunch of loose gravel in the roads as I was going through the turn. :yikes: We had a good hard rain and it washed out a bunch of driveways and it was just the day before so the gravel was still pretty fresh. :sour:
The VSS did it's job and the more I hit those spots the less I worried about them. I was able to power right through just like they weren't there. If I had been on my bike I would have had to kick it down a bit.
One of the turns was posted at 15 mph and I was able to check my speed as I went through it and believe it or not I was able to run it at 48 mph. I think it was posted a little low and could have been a 20 mph turn but I was impressed at how well the Spyder hung to the road. :doorag::spyder:
My fun was about to end and my frustration was about to start. As I whipped around one of the turns I ran into a pack of Harley's going less than the speed limit.:sour: I would say there were about 20 of them and the leader was on a Big Dog chopper with a long rake and a good size rider on the back. There was no leaning going on with this group.
I kept looking at my GPS to see how far away the next place I could pass them on was and even though it was only about 4 miles it seemed like 40 miles. :sour: When I did come to a nice passing lane they decided to crank it up so I was only able to get by about 2/3's of them but it wasn't long after that I got by the lot and was able to crank it up again. :doorag:
Got to this little store and had a drink of water and there were bikes everywhere. Turns out the group I was behind was part of some big poker run and they were all meeting at that store.
I had a pretty good crowd at the :spyder: so I played with my remote air a bit and freaked out a few of the guys.
When I got back to the Spyder I went through the same routine as always and it seemed like the Harley guys and gals really liked the Spyder. I handed out a few cards and headed to Maggie Valley. :doorag:
The ride there was uneventful and as I pasted through town a looked over at Wheels Through Time and it looked like there was a good group there. When I got to the rally it looked kinda dead so I decided to push on through to Deals Gap. :doorag:
The ride to Deals Gap was great and I was really starting to dig my risers. They took a lot of pressure off of my hands and now that they are higher I had a little more leverage in the turns. The only down side I see is my hands are at the bottom of the mirrors now but I think when I go to a 3" riser that will fix that or at least make it better.
Got on my next favorite road (The Hellbender-28) :thumbup: Man I love that road. There's some good fast sweepers that I won't even tell you how fast I go on and some good twisties to boot. I was surprised that there wasn't more bikes on that road but I guess they were at all the rallies.
That ride was going great till I ran up on the worlds slowest Sportbikes. :sour:
These guys need to get a scooter if they just want to save gas. I was stuck and there was no getting around them and then they ran up on a truck that was even slower than them.
By this time I just went to cruise mode and that's when something very strange happened with the Spyder. I was in 4th doing about 35 mph or so when I went to down shift and the Spyder just died. :shocked: As I let out the clutch in 3rd the Spyder locked up and went sideways. :yikes: I rode it out but I must say it didn't look good and I'm still not sure what happened. I know that I am in the habit of giving it a little rev before I down shift and maybe I didn't do that this time but you can bet I did it the rest of the day. If I would have been on two wheels I would have went down for sure because it went pretty far sideways all locked up before the motor fired back up.
Got to Deals Gap and had my 150 mile burger. That's how far it was to get there that day. :doorag: Hung there for a bit and talked to a bunch of folks and handed out some cards and headed back down 28 to Maggie Valley again. That road is good going both ways. :doorag:
By now it's getting close to 6 pm and I looked over at Wheels Trough Time and saw the owner Dale standing outside so I stopped by to say hi to him. This guy is the Jay Leno of the south. He's a really down to earth guy with some of the coolest collection of old bikes and cars that I've ever seen and pretty much all of them run because he rebuilt them. We have a good relationship and I'm going to hate to see him go.:sour:
www.WheelsThroughTime.com
After leaving Maggie Valley I headed back to Hot Springs and stopped at the store where the biker rally was going on. Once again I had a bunch of folks around the Spyder asking questions. Turns out I knew some of them too and it was all good. :doorag:
Headed back to Greeneville to see if I could get to the car show before it broke up and I was doing good until this Harley guy had me pull over and we must have talked for an hour about the Spyder and motorcycles and as it turns out he's from San Diego too so that was pretty cool. :doorag:
They had the streets blocked off for the show but I drove in like I owned the place and parked right in front of where they were handing out the awards for the show. I think I may of took away from some of the attention the winners were getting but that wasn't my intent.
Pretty soon a cop comes up to me and said I can't park there but it turned out to be a good friend of mine from church and he was just busting my chops. :doorag: We talked for a bit and I handed him some cards because I guess there are three guys he works with that are looking real hard at the Spyder. I may have some more Spyder buddies here and cops to boot.:doorag: :thumbup:
My cop friend looks up and says it looks like you're going to get wet. Sure enough a big storm blew in out of nowhere and I got caught in it. I didn't even care because I needed to cool down a bit and my day was over, or so I thought. :sour:
Got home and got into some dry clothes and checked my sites and that's when I saw that SpyderLovers had been hacked.:cus: talk about letting the air out of your tires. I have never been hacked like that before and hope I never will again.
So it's been pretty much non stop getting the site back up and running and I couldn't have done it without my good friend Darrel. He moved to TN from San Diego and we have been good friends for years. He runs another site www.MyBikeForums.com and has helped me with a lot of other sites I run. He's a good guy and never asked for anything, he just likes to help. :doorag:
So there you have it. Hope that didn't bore you to death but I couldn't sleep and figured this would be a good way to pass the time. :doorag:
The weather started off great but I didn't get out of here till around 10am or so. My first stop was the local BP to get fuel and that's where I ran into a bunch of Harley guys. :doorag: They were giving me the look so I asked them how it was going. Turns out I knew a couple of the guys and they had heard that there was some backward three wheeler running around town but didn't know it was me. One of the guys just bought a new Bushtec trailer so we talked about it a bit and I told them I was heading to Maggie Valley for a rally. They didn't know about it but they told me there was another rally in Hot Springs and a car show in Greeneville and they weren't sure where they were riding to. :dontknow:
I thought about just riding with them but I really wanted to checkout my new risers and I knew I would be riding a bit to hard for those guys so we said our goodbye's and I headed toward Hot Springs on the way to Maggie Valley.
The road to Hot Springs is great (70 and 107) and follows a good size river. I was able to crank it up a bit and test the load on the risers. It took me a few miles before I felt good about them.
Drove through Hot Springs and saw that the rally was just a bunch of bikers hanging out at this camp ground. It looked more like a old school type of rally and not something I wanted to stop for.
Drove through Hot Springs and headed out on one of my most favorite roads in my area. The 209 is a great road with a little bit of everything a biker loves. There are more twisties than you can shake a stick at and a couple of good straightaways where you can really open it up. There's hardly ever anyone on that road and that makes it even better.
As the road got more technical I started to push the Spyder harder. I was working the nanny pretty good and then things got a little ugly. I would blaze around a turn full tilt and there would be a bunch of loose gravel in the roads as I was going through the turn. :yikes: We had a good hard rain and it washed out a bunch of driveways and it was just the day before so the gravel was still pretty fresh. :sour:
The VSS did it's job and the more I hit those spots the less I worried about them. I was able to power right through just like they weren't there. If I had been on my bike I would have had to kick it down a bit.
One of the turns was posted at 15 mph and I was able to check my speed as I went through it and believe it or not I was able to run it at 48 mph. I think it was posted a little low and could have been a 20 mph turn but I was impressed at how well the Spyder hung to the road. :doorag::spyder:
My fun was about to end and my frustration was about to start. As I whipped around one of the turns I ran into a pack of Harley's going less than the speed limit.:sour: I would say there were about 20 of them and the leader was on a Big Dog chopper with a long rake and a good size rider on the back. There was no leaning going on with this group.
I kept looking at my GPS to see how far away the next place I could pass them on was and even though it was only about 4 miles it seemed like 40 miles. :sour: When I did come to a nice passing lane they decided to crank it up so I was only able to get by about 2/3's of them but it wasn't long after that I got by the lot and was able to crank it up again. :doorag:
Got to this little store and had a drink of water and there were bikes everywhere. Turns out the group I was behind was part of some big poker run and they were all meeting at that store.
I had a pretty good crowd at the :spyder: so I played with my remote air a bit and freaked out a few of the guys.
When I got back to the Spyder I went through the same routine as always and it seemed like the Harley guys and gals really liked the Spyder. I handed out a few cards and headed to Maggie Valley. :doorag:The ride there was uneventful and as I pasted through town a looked over at Wheels Through Time and it looked like there was a good group there. When I got to the rally it looked kinda dead so I decided to push on through to Deals Gap. :doorag:
The ride to Deals Gap was great and I was really starting to dig my risers. They took a lot of pressure off of my hands and now that they are higher I had a little more leverage in the turns. The only down side I see is my hands are at the bottom of the mirrors now but I think when I go to a 3" riser that will fix that or at least make it better.
Got on my next favorite road (The Hellbender-28) :thumbup: Man I love that road. There's some good fast sweepers that I won't even tell you how fast I go on and some good twisties to boot. I was surprised that there wasn't more bikes on that road but I guess they were at all the rallies.
That ride was going great till I ran up on the worlds slowest Sportbikes. :sour:
These guys need to get a scooter if they just want to save gas. I was stuck and there was no getting around them and then they ran up on a truck that was even slower than them.
By this time I just went to cruise mode and that's when something very strange happened with the Spyder. I was in 4th doing about 35 mph or so when I went to down shift and the Spyder just died. :shocked: As I let out the clutch in 3rd the Spyder locked up and went sideways. :yikes: I rode it out but I must say it didn't look good and I'm still not sure what happened. I know that I am in the habit of giving it a little rev before I down shift and maybe I didn't do that this time but you can bet I did it the rest of the day. If I would have been on two wheels I would have went down for sure because it went pretty far sideways all locked up before the motor fired back up. Got to Deals Gap and had my 150 mile burger. That's how far it was to get there that day. :doorag: Hung there for a bit and talked to a bunch of folks and handed out some cards and headed back down 28 to Maggie Valley again. That road is good going both ways. :doorag:
By now it's getting close to 6 pm and I looked over at Wheels Trough Time and saw the owner Dale standing outside so I stopped by to say hi to him. This guy is the Jay Leno of the south. He's a really down to earth guy with some of the coolest collection of old bikes and cars that I've ever seen and pretty much all of them run because he rebuilt them. We have a good relationship and I'm going to hate to see him go.:sour:
www.WheelsThroughTime.com
After leaving Maggie Valley I headed back to Hot Springs and stopped at the store where the biker rally was going on. Once again I had a bunch of folks around the Spyder asking questions. Turns out I knew some of them too and it was all good. :doorag:
Headed back to Greeneville to see if I could get to the car show before it broke up and I was doing good until this Harley guy had me pull over and we must have talked for an hour about the Spyder and motorcycles and as it turns out he's from San Diego too so that was pretty cool. :doorag:
They had the streets blocked off for the show but I drove in like I owned the place and parked right in front of where they were handing out the awards for the show. I think I may of took away from some of the attention the winners were getting but that wasn't my intent.
Pretty soon a cop comes up to me and said I can't park there but it turned out to be a good friend of mine from church and he was just busting my chops. :doorag:
We talked for a bit and I handed him some cards because I guess there are three guys he works with that are looking real hard at the Spyder. I may have some more Spyder buddies here and cops to boot.:doorag: :thumbup:My cop friend looks up and says it looks like you're going to get wet. Sure enough a big storm blew in out of nowhere and I got caught in it. I didn't even care because I needed to cool down a bit and my day was over, or so I thought. :sour:
Got home and got into some dry clothes and checked my sites and that's when I saw that SpyderLovers had been hacked.:cus: talk about letting the air out of your tires. I have never been hacked like that before and hope I never will again.
So it's been pretty much non stop getting the site back up and running and I couldn't have done it without my good friend Darrel. He moved to TN from San Diego and we have been good friends for years. He runs another site www.MyBikeForums.com and has helped me with a lot of other sites I run. He's a good guy and never asked for anything, he just likes to help. :doorag:
So there you have it. Hope that didn't bore you to death but I couldn't sleep and figured this would be a good way to pass the time. :doorag:
:nopic: ....... Don't tell me you forgot the cameras??????:shocked:
pps: I figured you guys are getting wore out on the same old ride pics. :dontknow:
