Happy Birthday to Bridget The Beemer

2 years ago today, on Friday the 13th of April, 2012, I purchased Bridget, my 2012 BMW R1200 RT motorcycle.  Since then, we have taken some great roads to places I've never been before.  Among those trips, Highway 1 and 101 in California along the pacific coast, Beartooth Pass (3 times), Yellowstone National Park, Glacier National Park, Big Bend National Park, and many others.  We've also ridden countless 2 lane roads in Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas.  We've also ridden to visit my daughter, son in law, and grandkids in Wyoming at least 4 times.  My daughter won't let them ride yet but they got to set on the bike.  Maybe when they're 40 or so.  She has always performed great and been a lot of fun to ride.  Here are a few of my favorite pics from our first 2 years together.

I've promised her we'll still be together when she hits 100K on her odometer, she just keeps getting better the longer I ride her.  So Happy Birthday Bridget, let's go ride.

More Tour Of Honor

I got up this morning and rode down to Ardmore for a Tour of Honor stop.  There were some thunder storms dancing around in south Oklahoma but they all moved off to the east before my arrival.  Here is the memorial in Ardmore.

After Ardmore, I rode over to Durant and had lunch with a retired postal friend of mine, Terry Brooks , who retired as the Postmaster of Ardmore.  I enjoyed visiting with him and his wife, Renee, who was kind enough to bring us lunch.  After the lunch stop in Durant, it was a short ride over to Atoka for a visit to the memorial there on Highway 75.  Here's a pic of it.

The last stop on the list for Oklahoma this year is in Owasso and I started to ride on up there today but came on home instead.  I'll visit it next week and stop in to visit a long distance riding friend, Steve Bracken.  I'm going to interview him for a new podcast a friend and I are starting called Long Riders Radio, stay tuned for more info on our first episode.

2014 Tour of Honor

The 2014 Tour of Honor began today and runs thru November 30th.  I have ridden to the Oklahoma sites the last 2 years and was the 2nd person to ride to all 7 last year.  I rode to 4 of the sites today.  This is a great way to honor those who have served in our nation's defense and I have the honor of being the state sponsor for this year's sites.  I rode to 11 different sites earlier this year and submitted pictures along with GPS coordinates for each location.  Each state has 7 sites selected and those in Oklahoma are spread out enough to take a rider thru various parts of the state and some good riding.

I began the ride this morning with 2 friends, Mark and Tom at Veteran's Park in my hometown of Moore, OK.  This park was heavily damaged last year by the tornado and while the memorial is back in place, there is still ongoing construction on the rest of the park.  As you can see, the day dawned dark and gloomy with temperatures in the 40's and a strong north wind.

Our next stop was the small town of Minco, OK.  I submitted this site not only for the memorial but for Minco police officer Mycal Prince who was killed while serving in the Army National Guard.  His police dog was later adopted by his family.  The flags weren't up yet today when we made our stop.

After Minco, we hit Highway 152 west and Hwy 6 north to Elk City, OK.  This memorial was recently completed in the cemetery just north of town.  To my disappointment, the BBQ restaurant was closed so we settled for one of the most poorly managed, filthiest McDonalds I have ever been in.  The north wind was sweeping down the plains in western Oklahoma today.

Mark had to leave us at Elk City so Tom and I continued on to our last stop at Seiling, OK where we ran into 2 other riders on 3 wheelers who were also riding the Tour of Honor.  I really like the memorial in Seiling.  It's almost a full city block with a mural and some surplus military equipment.  Almost dropped the bike getting it into place on the sidewalk but managed to save it.

After Seiling, we rode back east and I parted ways with Tom in Watonga.  It wasn't the best riding day weather wise but I've ridden in a lot worse, at least it was dry.  Of course when I pulled in my driveway, the sun came out.  4 of the 7 Oklahoma sites have been visited and the pictures submitted, I'll get the other 3, Ardmore, Atoka, and Owasso, later this week.  If you haven't signed up for the Tour of Honor, it's not too late and it's for a good cause.  Here is a little map of today's ride taken from Spotwalla with my iPhone app SWConnect.

Looks Like Spring Has Sprung

We've had several good days the last couple of weeks and in my opinion, not that tough of a winter here in Oklahoma.  Sure, we had some cold weather and some freezing stuff fall once in a while but no major snowstorms and even in the coldest of weeks, an occasional warmer day appeared.

It's amazing how my 2012 R1200 RT is pretty comfortable to ride in colder weather.  As long as the roads don't have any slick stuff on them, you can can ride it and while it may not be pleasant, you can stay warm enough not to suffer if you dress right.  It also has heated grips and seat that are nice to have.  Speaking of the RT, she's coming up on her 2nd birthday and rapidly approaching the 53, 000 mile mark.  I've got a service appointment on the 22nd to get new tires and oil change.  I was going to start  doing my own basic maintenance but since she needs tires too, I'll get all of it done at the dealer this time.  The more I ride this bike, the more I like it, if they make a more comfortable touring bike that is as fun to ride as it is, I don't know what it would be.  The new 2014 model RT is water cooled and pretty tempting but I promised myself I would try to ride this one for at least 100K miles before getting another one.

Speaking of other ones, my 2014 F800 GS Adventure is for sale.  I've listed it a couple of places and am in no big hurry to sell it but I've realized that my style of riding is better suited by the RT and I'll probably never use the GS to it's fullest potential anyway.  I like the bike and it is fun to ride, especially since I put a California Scientific wind screen on it that solved by buffeting problem.  My loss will be someone's gain since I'm taking quite a hit on it versus what I paid for it 2405 miles ago.  Here is a pic of how it's set up and it's priced at $14,750, if you know anyone looking for one, I'd appreciate it if you send them my way.

I've managed to get it quite a bit of riding the last couple of weeks and making several of the bonus locations for the Big Money Rally . As I mentioned last post, the first list of locations includes a list of libraries and courthouses.  The courthouses are those where the county name is the same as a former President.  Here I am in front of the Garfield county one in Enid, OK.

Motorcycle riding in Oklahoma, as well as a lot of other places, involves a lot of riding in strong wind.  This week's rides have been no exception with winds ranging from 10 mph or so and gusting up to 40 mph.  Ron, Mark, Tom, Chris and I rode Tuesday and the wind was really tough riding west across to Medford from Perry.  I can usually just lean the bike into it a bit and ride but when it starts jerking your head around that ceases to be fun pretty quickly.  But the good news is I've gotten pretty used to riding in the wind and if I waited for a calm day, I'd get about 10 rides in a year.
It won't be long before March rides out like a lamb and hopefully we'll have some April showers to end the drought here in Oklahoma.  With my new Michelin PR3 tires I'm getting next week and good rain gear, I'll be ready to ride.  There's no better smell on a motorcycle than just after a rain on a ride in the country.

As I've mentioned before, I am somewhat of a gadget geek.  One new thing I've been using lately is an iPhone app called SWConnect .  This app allows you to track the route you ride and then review or share it from Spotwalla .  It also allows you to post different messages along the route so someone can follow along and see how you're doing.  It doesn't offer the emergency help message sending like a Spot device does but it's a pretty nice way to track your rides and it's free in the app store. As an example, here is a 306 mile ride that Ron and I took yesterday.

So it looks like spring has sprung and I hope you get some good riding in, I certainly plan to take advantage of the warmer weather.

January Riding

The weather in Oklahoma can be iffy at best.  For example, Oklahoma City schools were closed Friday due to extremely cold temperatures of 5 degrees with sub zero wind chills.  Saturday, it was sunshine and highs in the middle 60's.  I've been able to ride quite a bit and have been spending most of my riding time on my BMW F800 GS Adventure I bought back in October.  You're definitely out in the wind a lot more on this bike than my RT but that's been helped some with the addition of a Laminar Lip .  The lip helps solve the buffeting problem and moves the air flow higher up as I ride.  I wish it was a couple of inches taller but it definitely helps.  Here is a pic of it installed on the bike. 
Missy has given it her seal of approval as well. Speaking of Missy, this is just her 2nd ride this year.  She had her right eye pop out of the socket on December 11 and had to have surgery to fix it.  Fortunately, she's back to her normal self now and seems to have full sight in it.  We're taking it easy so far with just short rides around Lake Draper or down to Starbucks.
I've  never been too thrilled with group rides but this year I've been on a couple of rides with some fellow BMW owners, Tom, Mark, and Ron.  We started the year off right with a New Year's day ride and have ridden 3 or 4 other rides so far.  We all seem to have similar riding styles and it's nice to talk motorcycles with fellow riders.  One of our recent rides was to Medicine Park and Mt Scott, 2 of my favorite places to ride in Oklahoma.  Here's a pic of Tom on top of Mt Scott.

He's holding my placard for the 2014 2014 Big Money Rally .  The rally is all done online by submitting photos from various bonus locations around the country.  Some locations include designated libraries, county courthouses with former president's names, and other places.  It's been fun so far and a good reason to ride to places I might not visit otherwise.
I had the misfortune of having my 2nd flat tire of the year on the GS yesterday.  I was riding with Tom, Mark, and Steve and we had just gotten to El Reno.  As I turned a corner, the bead broke on the rear tire and I almost lost it.  Fortunately, a nice retired Marine lived right across from where I had the flat.  He let me park the bike at his place so I could take the wheel off and go get a new tube put in.  Tubed tires are a real pain to repair.  When I finally got the bike home, I ordered the stuff I need to be able to make a roadside repair in the future from Best Rest Products along with a couple of spare tubes.  Maybe if I carry this stuff with me all the time, it will ward off any more flat tires and if not, at least I'll be able to fix it myself.
Winter weather is supposed to blow back in tonight with a high tomorrow in the 20's so it looks like the bikes will stay parked most of this week.  I'm not complaining though, any chance to ride in January is good and we've had several nice days this year.

Gadget and Toys

I've always been a gadget geek, from a transistor radio as a kid, to the high tech stuff of today, trying the latest and greatest is a passion of mine.  As I expand my motorcycling into long distance riding, of course it's only natural that I include as many high tech gizmos as possible.  Now that winter is here, most days you'll find me right here by the fire in my comfy Ekornes Stressless Recliner with laptop table .

I've been an Apple fanboy for a while now because they make great stuff and it just works but lately I've been branching out some.  Most of the long distance rally info seems better suited for using windows devices for routing and planning.  Garmin Basecamp has versions for both MAC and PC and my new BMW Navigator V connects to my MAC just fine but other tools such as ezBake and Microsoft Streets and Trips run much better on a PC.  I've been looking for a while, and picked up an ASUS Transformer Book T100 yesterday.  This little windows 8.1 machine has a detachable tablet and keyboard combo that should work nicely as a routing computer.  I played around some with it yesterday and here's how it looks in action.

I wish there was an IOS version of Basecamp that I could run on my Apple iPad Mini Retina.  There a couple of apps that are nice, Motion X GPS Drive and Motion X-GPS .  I use both of them on the mini and my iPhone 5s to navigate, store bonus information, etc.  What's really nice about Motion X-GPS is you can associate a picture of the bonus location with the coordinates as well as a note about what is expected to claim the bonus points.  It's very handy to pull up at the bonus location to review quickly.  

I'm entered in the 2014 Big Money Rally and it looks like it will be a lot fun.  As you ride to each bonus location, you submit a picture from your phone at that location.  I like that they've included the use of smartphones into the rally.  From the old days of Polaroid cameras, to the modern times of digital cameras, the next logical step is smartphone use.  I know my iPhone 5s takes better pics than the digital camera I have. Most of the time, great apps come to IOS before there's an Android version.  That's not the case with Bubbler GPS , a tracking program that also includes the ability to send quick OK messages to those who might be concerned about your ride.  Joel Tolbert has also developed an app for the Big Money Rally for android, BMR App that allows easy check in from each bonus location as well as picture submission.  Maybe I need an Android phone to try out.  Hmmm.  

As you can see, I'm definitely a gadgetholic, it's cheaper than crack.....maybe.

End of the year update

I haven't done too well keeping the blog current this year, something I intend to do better at in 2014.  I have had a good year motorcycling with just over 25, 000 miles on 2 wheels.  Shortly after the Big Texas Rally, I took my RT in for service at Tulsa BMW and took a liking to a new 2014 F800GS Adventure they had sitting on the showroom floor.  I'd been thinking about one for a while and just couldn't resist so I'm now a 2 bike owner again.  Here's my riding companion, Missy, on one of our morning rides around Lake Draper.

I've only got a couple of thousand miles on it so far but really like riding it....in warm weather.  There is no comparison between it and the RT for blocking wind and cold so I doubt I ride it much between now and spring.  I prefer the RT's big windscreen, heated seat, and grips for the cooler weather riding.  I ordered side cases or I guess the proper name is panniers for the GS and they took almost 6 weeks to arrive but here's a pic of them.

I haven't been on any other trips or rallies since Big Texas and it looks like my RT is going to end the year with just over 51,000 trouble free miles.  She is going to be 20 months old next week so I guess that's not too bad.  I turned in just over 22, 000 miles to the BMW MOA mileage contest this year which ran between April and October so we'll see how that ranks among other riders in the country.  Last year, I was the high mileage rider in Oklahoma but not even a top 25 finisher nation wide.  I use a  Spot GPS tracking device most of the time when I ride.  It allows me to track where I've been, send messages to those who might be worried about me, and send an SOS message if I should have an emergency.  Here's a screenshot of most of my trips made in 2013.

All in all, it's been a great riding year with some great scenery, no mishaps, and a fun time on the bike.  In 2014, I've got several plans made for rides I'd like to take.  The first will be in mid March when I plan to ride to San Diego, get an external fuel cell made, then ride a 50cc (coast to coast under 50 hours) to Jacksonville, FL for the Iron Butt Associations bike week meet up.  Later in the year, I plan to ride in the How The West Was Won rally in Colorado as well the Big Texas Rally again.  I might ride in a couple of others and I need to cover some of the eastern part of the country that I haven't ridden in yet.
I plan to update the blog more frequently as I enjoy riding the bikes and retirement.  Stay tuned for 2014, have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year.