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Post by bikermandg on Jul 23, 2005 6:22:24 GMT -5
About 2 years ago in the early Fall, my son-in-law called me at 5:00am on a Saturday morning to see if I was up for a long ride. Does a bear crap in the Woods?? I took a quick shower, grabbed my leather riding jacket and helmet and was out the door. I checked the tires, oil, and chain on my 81 XS650H, met up with my son-in-law and his 1200 Suzuki Bandit and we were off. As we headed east out of Alliance towards the Penna. border the sun was just coming up and the fall colors of red, yellow, gold and brown were giving us a good show in the early clear blue sky. We stopped for a coffee and donut about 8:00 and then continued into Pa where we were going to find a road going south onto the West Virginia panhandle. MY son-in-law wanted to check out a camp sight and fishing hole down in W.Va. About 1:00 we stopped and had a quickie burger, topped off the gas tanks and continued south in PA. where we came accross an old general store and gas station out in the middle of nowhere. As we pulled into the parking lot to have a look around, about 300 bikers started pulling in behind us, they were on a poker run for charity and had raised about $4.000.00 for the kids at the local burn unit. I have to say for a bunch of Harley riders, they were the nicest bunch of people you'd ever want to meet. Not a bad word was mentioned about Jap bikes. After that encounter, we continued south into West Virginia and pushed deeper south towards the camp sight we were looking for, only to find out it is much over rated and not worth mention. But no matter, were were having a good time, the weather was perfect and the bikes were running good. It was getting late afternoon and time to head home, so we crossed the West Virginia border into Ohio on an old steel toll bridge at a little river town called Chester,and rode west along the Ohio River. It was now getting late so we topped the bikes off with gas and headed home, we had a good 3 or 4 hour ride ahead of us. We pushed the bikes hard along the river and turned north towards Cleveland on RT.43 and turned the wick up even further. It was getting dark and there were about 45 miles of twistie roads ahead of us before we could catch the roads we are familiar with. We got back home about 8:00 pm, and had been on the road 14 hours, ate three meals and a snack on the road, put three tanks of gas thru the bikes, and had one of the best times of my life...all on a Saturday ride. The XS650H performed flawlessly, it never missed a beat, it always started, the battery was up all day, and the engine was fresh and crisp. Myself on the other hand, was tired and ready for a shower and some rack time. But I'd do it again today if I had the chance. I just love a Saturday ride!!
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Post by onomrbill on Jul 26, 2005 20:34:50 GMT -5
What a day! Sound like you had a blast. With your son in law no less too. My father in law also rides. Maybe one of these days, I'll call him at 5 in the morning and see if he'll accompany me with my xs650d and go for a long ride also. He has a 98 softail. Although he won't be as nice as the riders you met. He'll bust my chops about riding "jap Scrap", as he likes to call them. That's ok though, I can take it. I'll be getting a softail myself next year anyway. I'll still ride the xs650 though.
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Post by grizld1 on Jul 27, 2005 11:44:25 GMT -5
"Jap Scrap," huh? Next time ask him how come Harley uses Showa forks, Hitachi ignitions, etc. American Iron, yeah; the frames are still made here! Heard the new H.D. corporate mission statement? "Offering the dream of yesterday's technology, at tomorrow's prices." (No real HD-bashin' intended here; just some defensive counterpunches. I hate to see a fellow ricerider with busted chops!)
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Post by onomrbill on Jul 27, 2005 19:39:25 GMT -5
Good point!
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Post by bikermandg on Jul 28, 2005 5:16:22 GMT -5
The experience I had with Harley was not a good one, it was a hard starting, poor handling, oil leaking, bad stopping, ground dragging, chain stretching, non reliable S.O.B. I rode it for an hour and worked on it for three hours. The up side was that it looked great in a profile shot. I like to put 300 miles on a bike during an average day ride, so it's little wonder that riders like myself migrate to the Jap bikes. My V-Star for instance, you can ride all week, wash it on Sunday and ride it all next week...all without lifting a wrench.
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jbl302
Junior Member
Posts: 10
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Post by jbl302 on Dec 24, 2007 20:55:40 GMT -5
I can remember years ago me and a friend of mine use to ride alot together, we were close friends before we rode together. more than once he would ride up in my yard 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, rev once or twice, i would roll out of bed ,he knew I was a bike nut, so waking me out of a dead sleep just didnt bother me. I'd dress, grab helmet, look over bike and we were off till morning. ridding down the coast road, nowhere in mind , just going where ever we end up. funny how some rides just stick in your mind.
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jbl302
Junior Member
Posts: 10
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Post by jbl302 on Dec 24, 2007 22:02:56 GMT -5
Here's a story I feel bad about now but at the time it was funny to me. I grew up on the water, boat docked in the back yard, we use to ski a lot, me, my sisters, dad and my brother in law. you have to have a look out in the boat if some one is skiing , other than the driver of the boat for safety. or driver with a rear view mirror will do. some times it was just me and my brother in law that wanted to ski. we just needed a mirror, didnt have one. I use to ride the back roads alot and this one saturday morning I saw an old cadillac sitting by some old migrant worker shacks that they used every summer at harvest time. it was an early 70's caddy, not too bad of shape, grass and weeds were a little high around it, just looked abandoned to me, i rode up, got off the bike. opened the door to the car, checked out the rear view morror that i needed, grabbed a hold and snatched it off, and rode home. later i mounted it on the boat and we skiied all summer. well i found out later the car wasnt abandoned, and some old black man lived in that shack. i just imagine that old black man watching me the whole time through the cracks in that shack, thinking that is some brave cracker there. i guess im lucky he didnt have a shotgun, i wouldnt be here to tell this.
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jbl302
Junior Member
Posts: 10
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Post by jbl302 on Sept 11, 2009 21:36:20 GMT -5
This happened to me a long time ago, and I bet no one has been through this. I was on my way home one night coming from my girlfriends house on my new Honda CL 360, yea that long ago. It was about 11 at night. I was sitting at the main highway waiting to pull out, I waited for this truck to go by before I pulled out. I let it get down the road a bit, I had learned a while before, the hard way not to get to close behind trucks, like dump trucks, or being from NC corn trucks. Back then, I haven`t seen this lately, they use to have a tray across the back of the dump bed, at the bottom,after they dump their load this tray would be filled with rocks or if it was a corn truck corn that was just picked. you be behind them and they hit a bump in the road and it shakes loose all that stuff in the tray, rocks, or corn. this stuff is bouncing all over the place, and you get a face full, like some one is shooting you with a thousand BB guns at once. You will do that once, and you learn. Well this night, that truck I let go by, what looked like a milk truck,with a hugh shiny tank. I caught up too, he wasn`t going that fast, I found out he was fully loaded, and heavy. I was trying to get buy, but there was traffic, so I slowed up to wait to get around. I noticed the top of this truck had several lids that were not on and water was splashing out on the road, Im thinkin, ok water I can handle that, and then, jumping out of the top of the tank, eels, frickin eels started to scatter at over the road, try and dodge those things. It was an eel truck. In NC eel potting is a good business, like crabbing. Trucks come down from up north to pick these things up. they had to be kept alive, I heard up north, back then it was a delicacy, not sure about now. But these were eels, not those little ones you catch sometimes, these were about 3 feet long and some as big as your arm. Try dodging those things at night.
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