Lamonster
SpyderLovers Founder
I got to tell you my last day home from my trip out west on the RT was a nail biter. I took a route that I normally wouldn't take back trying to miss some of the storms I had been watching on the Weather Channel and I did pretty good till I got to Dallas TX. I had just finished up a 750 mile day from Deming NM to Dallas TX in triple digit heat. Most of the time it was anywhere from 104 to 107 degrees going down the road and after filling up at one station and sitting in traffic my temp gauge on the RT was showing 111 degrees. It was just too hot and my butt was dragging. I will say the RT did better than I did.
I think I may be getting old because my fuel stops couldn't come soon enough. I went from stopping every 120-140 miles to stopping between 100 and 120 miles. I was drinking water like crazy and I don't think I had to pee more than once on this trip. Keeping hydrated is really important when you travel in heat like that. I could tell when I didn't have enough water in me because my vision would get a little blurry.
The fuel stops are always a great way to break up a ride and talk to folks about the Spyder and as beat as I was I didn't mind so much this trip. It's funny but ever since I put the graphics on the RT it has really drawn in a new crowd of folks admiring the Spyder. I find more "Harley" type guys coming up to me and asking questions than before I did the graphics. I even had a "outlaw" type biker ask me some questions at one of my fuel stops. When I told him the RT had ipod integration and XM radio he said "I don't need any of that crap on my bike", then I said when you're doing 900 to 1000 miles a day in the saddle it sure helps to break up the trip. He was blown away that I was putting that many miles down in a day and said he would be lucky to do that in a month. I thought that was kind of funny and just smiled and said have a safe trip back home.
From El Paso TX to wherever the speed limit was 80 mph but the RT likes to run at 75 mph, that's seems to be where everything is happy and as this video shows I got 29.7 mpg with the cruise control looked in at 75mph. I love my cruise control and that's no lie. I'm not sure I could do the miles I do without it.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBP-AA2ctck[/ame]
I got a good laugh at the next fuel stop. After fueling up I went into the store to grab something to drink and to snack on. I got a energy drink and some trail mix. Now understand I'm in Texas and these folks have quite the southern draw and I'm not hearing that great because of being on the open road for hundreds of miles. So I go to the checkout and this gal rings me up, to my left there's an older "Texas" gal and she ask, or what I heard was "Would you like a little "sex" with that?... I look at her without answering and she says it again and I just smile, then she realized what it sounded like and asked if I need a "bag" for my drink and trail mix, what she was saying was "sack" not "sex" but maybe I just heard what I wanted to, who knows. We both just laughed and I told her they really do have full service stations in Texas. That was so funny I just had to call my wife and share the moment with her. You just never know what a fuel stop will bring.
Back to the weather part of the story. I was shooting for Fort Worth TX but Dallas wasn't much further and I wanted to get as far down the road as I could in good weather because I knew I was in for it the next day. I waited a little too long to pull off and the only hotel I could find was a Motel 6 and if it wasn't so late and I wasn't so tired I would have gone to the next place to bed down for the night. The first thing I asked was if they had a good high speed internet connection, they assured me they did so I took the room. I had a mass mailer to do for work and I needed a good strong connection to get my work done. Guess what? no internet connection in my room and I had to get this out right away. After the desk jocky messed with the modem and router for about an hour I decided to just do my work from the lobby. I did have a good connection there so I spent the next 3.5 hours getting caught up with my work while I'm watching the radar on my iphone.
Got all done with work and went to bed and had the TV fixed on the Weather Channel. It was looking real ugly right where I was headed and I didn't see any way around it. I didn't get much sleep worrying about the weather and I guess the hotel allows pets because I had two dogs in the room next to me barking at each other all night. When I did decide to get out of bed it was 5am and I was headed right to the middle of a red zone in Little Rock and then Memphis TN. I posted something of Facebook and SpyderLovers.com and asked to keep us travelers in prayer. I got all my rain gear on and headed into the mouth of the beast but as it turned out the beast kept moving. At my first fuel stop I checked the boards and Facebook and there was a great response of folks that said they were praying for me to have a safe trip. That's really all I wanted, I was counting on getting wet for sure but I didn't want to have to deal with the tornado's and hail they were predicting. At every fuel stop I would check the radar on my iphone and the bad stuff had either passed or it was right above me. I couldn't believe that I made it as far as I did without getting so much as spray from the road on my RT.
At this point I knew that these prayers were working and I took off my rain gear in faith that I wasn't going to hit any of the nasty weather.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn_zxnjcmBQ[/ame]
Everywhere I went there were nasty clouds all around me but either the road turned away from them or they just blew through. About the worst thing I did hit were swarms of cicada's in Nashville TN. Them are some big ugly bugs. I was fine when I was moving because the windshield did a good job of blocking them but when I was stuck on the freeway they were bouncing off of me while I was sitting there. I was glad to get moving and away from them.
So I left Dallas TX at 5:30 am and got to Greeneville TN around 10:30 pm without so much as a drop of rain. When I watched the Weather Channel when I got home I saw where Dallas got hit by a tornado and baseball size hail that day. I'm sure glad I left when I did and I'm sure glad you folks decided to take some time out of your day and say a little prayer for me because I'm here to tell you it worked. Thank you
I think I may be getting old because my fuel stops couldn't come soon enough. I went from stopping every 120-140 miles to stopping between 100 and 120 miles. I was drinking water like crazy and I don't think I had to pee more than once on this trip. Keeping hydrated is really important when you travel in heat like that. I could tell when I didn't have enough water in me because my vision would get a little blurry.
The fuel stops are always a great way to break up a ride and talk to folks about the Spyder and as beat as I was I didn't mind so much this trip. It's funny but ever since I put the graphics on the RT it has really drawn in a new crowd of folks admiring the Spyder. I find more "Harley" type guys coming up to me and asking questions than before I did the graphics. I even had a "outlaw" type biker ask me some questions at one of my fuel stops. When I told him the RT had ipod integration and XM radio he said "I don't need any of that crap on my bike", then I said when you're doing 900 to 1000 miles a day in the saddle it sure helps to break up the trip. He was blown away that I was putting that many miles down in a day and said he would be lucky to do that in a month. I thought that was kind of funny and just smiled and said have a safe trip back home.
From El Paso TX to wherever the speed limit was 80 mph but the RT likes to run at 75 mph, that's seems to be where everything is happy and as this video shows I got 29.7 mpg with the cruise control looked in at 75mph. I love my cruise control and that's no lie. I'm not sure I could do the miles I do without it.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBP-AA2ctck[/ame]
I got a good laugh at the next fuel stop. After fueling up I went into the store to grab something to drink and to snack on. I got a energy drink and some trail mix. Now understand I'm in Texas and these folks have quite the southern draw and I'm not hearing that great because of being on the open road for hundreds of miles. So I go to the checkout and this gal rings me up, to my left there's an older "Texas" gal and she ask, or what I heard was "Would you like a little "sex" with that?... I look at her without answering and she says it again and I just smile, then she realized what it sounded like and asked if I need a "bag" for my drink and trail mix, what she was saying was "sack" not "sex" but maybe I just heard what I wanted to, who knows. We both just laughed and I told her they really do have full service stations in Texas. That was so funny I just had to call my wife and share the moment with her. You just never know what a fuel stop will bring.
Back to the weather part of the story. I was shooting for Fort Worth TX but Dallas wasn't much further and I wanted to get as far down the road as I could in good weather because I knew I was in for it the next day. I waited a little too long to pull off and the only hotel I could find was a Motel 6 and if it wasn't so late and I wasn't so tired I would have gone to the next place to bed down for the night. The first thing I asked was if they had a good high speed internet connection, they assured me they did so I took the room. I had a mass mailer to do for work and I needed a good strong connection to get my work done. Guess what? no internet connection in my room and I had to get this out right away. After the desk jocky messed with the modem and router for about an hour I decided to just do my work from the lobby. I did have a good connection there so I spent the next 3.5 hours getting caught up with my work while I'm watching the radar on my iphone.
Got all done with work and went to bed and had the TV fixed on the Weather Channel. It was looking real ugly right where I was headed and I didn't see any way around it. I didn't get much sleep worrying about the weather and I guess the hotel allows pets because I had two dogs in the room next to me barking at each other all night. When I did decide to get out of bed it was 5am and I was headed right to the middle of a red zone in Little Rock and then Memphis TN. I posted something of Facebook and SpyderLovers.com and asked to keep us travelers in prayer. I got all my rain gear on and headed into the mouth of the beast but as it turned out the beast kept moving. At my first fuel stop I checked the boards and Facebook and there was a great response of folks that said they were praying for me to have a safe trip. That's really all I wanted, I was counting on getting wet for sure but I didn't want to have to deal with the tornado's and hail they were predicting. At every fuel stop I would check the radar on my iphone and the bad stuff had either passed or it was right above me. I couldn't believe that I made it as far as I did without getting so much as spray from the road on my RT.
At this point I knew that these prayers were working and I took off my rain gear in faith that I wasn't going to hit any of the nasty weather.
[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn_zxnjcmBQ[/ame]
Everywhere I went there were nasty clouds all around me but either the road turned away from them or they just blew through. About the worst thing I did hit were swarms of cicada's in Nashville TN. Them are some big ugly bugs. I was fine when I was moving because the windshield did a good job of blocking them but when I was stuck on the freeway they were bouncing off of me while I was sitting there. I was glad to get moving and away from them.
So I left Dallas TX at 5:30 am and got to Greeneville TN around 10:30 pm without so much as a drop of rain. When I watched the Weather Channel when I got home I saw where Dallas got hit by a tornado and baseball size hail that day. I'm sure glad I left when I did and I'm sure glad you folks decided to take some time out of your day and say a little prayer for me because I'm here to tell you it worked. Thank you
hyea:
