Thursday
Miles today: 0
Hours in the saddle: 0
Theme music: rain and thunder
It rained almost all day, so we stayed in today. Started out with some ambitious post-breakfast reading and naps. (I finished Recursion and moved on to my next victim.) We had a nutritious combination of leftover chocolate cake and frozen pizza for lunch. We were rebels and did not wait the requisite 30 min after eating before getting in the hot tub. It was on the screened-in porch so we got to watch the lightening and hear thunder from the hot tub while it stormed outside. That was pretty cool.
We had dinner at the hotel restaurant and both got the venison dish. Neither of us had had venison in a while. Apparently, deer eat rosemary and the venison backstrap was garnished with rosemary. We had the same server for dinner as we’d had for breakfast, just a really sweet older woman. She took care of us for breakfast on Friday as well. So that was a nice touch of hospitality.
Back to the cabin after dinner to start packing and watch an episode of Black Mirror that Jaron downloaded to his ipad before we left. I love me some dystopia.
Friday
Miles today: 271
Hours in the saddle: 6:02
Theme music: 90’s hip hop, Metallica
We rode home today. It was a good trip, a nice way to spend our anniversary and a much-needed detox from working too much. Gonna hafta work on that.
We rode back the way we came but ended up riding more miles than on Sunday because of a bit of an adventure getting gas. We were saving our gas stop for when we needed a break and ended up running low. The fuel light comes on with between 50 & 60 miles to E. We stopped at the next gas station but it only had 87 available and the BMWs take 89. So we kept going and were headed for a gas station 11 miles away. Well, the turns kept putting us on smaller and crappier roads and we came to a turn with 1.7 miles to go, but it looked like it was private property and the road quality was just not what it needed to be. So we turned around and went back to the gas station with only 87 and figured it would be better than nothing since the next town was another 30+ miles away and we were not going to make it, particularly with the riding up and down steep hills that we were doing in lower gears which revs higher and burns more gas. Fortunately this gas station was also a service station and we were able to buy a bottle of octane booster and got a gallon of gas each. (Putting that on the packing list for next time.) Then we hit up the next big gas station we saw and it was fine.
So this trip was a touring test (ha) for the BMWs, which are both road bikes. Jaron’s is a sport touring model, and Julie’s is the roadster version of BMW’s boxer engine. The 1200cc engines were great for touring. Even with 60# of additional load and additional drag, we barely noticed a lag in acceleration. We had to get used to the increased braking distance of course, but we have racing-quality linked brakes on these machines. The wind pushed us around more than usual and Julie definitely noticed a difference in the handling from the drag due to her larger, non-OEM side cases.
But, we ended up having to turn around several times (like more than 3) because we ended up on shortcuts or roads that were not paved well enough for these nice road bikes. If we had been on the ADV bikes that we took to NM, this would not have been an issue. Fortunately most of the places we went had paved roads, and when the lots were not paved they were packed gravel. Additionally, the ADV bikes take 87 octane gas which is easier to find around the world for the exact situation we were in today. Julie looked up a gas siphon hand pump on Amazon and it turns out that you can use the same one for both oil and gas. I thought that they were different diameters bc of the difference in viscosity, but I guess we’ll try it with the one I already have that I’ve used for oil. Both of Julie’s gas tanks are a little smaller than Jaron’s because of the difference in models. So I’ll put the hand pump on the packing list for long trips.
We rode 1062 miles over 6 days, with one day off. That’s consistent with our usual pace of 1k miles/week. Jaron has had this bike for almost 2 years now and has put 15,600 miles on it. Julie has had hers for 1.5 years and crossed the 9k mark while on this trip.
We are very happy to report that no bikes were dropped in the making of this vacation. Julie came very close when she hit some mud on the gravel road to the cabin, but has learned that the answer is always more gas.
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