Warning: Very long post follows. Okay, the longest post EVER. Grab a snack and a beverage and then dive in. I think you will enjoy it.
Today is Monday the 1st of June, 2009 and I'm just getting a couple thoughts down before heading up to Lake George. Today starts
Americade for those that have preregistered and I'm heading up with Scott to check in and catch lunch. I don't know how much is really in full swing on the first day, 'cause I've never been there on the first day before. I've always feared that paying for the whole week in advance would pretty much ensure a week of rain, but I took the plunge this time. Today looks good and right now Thursday and Friday look nice, with Tuesday and Wednesday looking a little iffy.
Perhaps I've paid my dues already and will get a break. I went out for our Sunday ride yesterday with Scott and Ed and the RADAR showed lots of green crud coming this way, but it was very hard to tell which way it would track. Different RADAR seemed to show different locations. So it was bright sun when we met at 09:00 and decided if we would go north or south. North didn't look so good, so it was SE. This run brings us right back out here in my part of Rensselaer county and we ripped around the local roads and mountains for awhile and then stopped at a convenience store about 5 miles from home. As we were getting ready to head off on the second part of the run, it started to sprinkle...
We decided to push on eastward. After a few miles we had left the light rain behind and returned to our regularly scheduled program. About 20 miles from my house, we ran into rain. It was harder this time and had I been alone, I would have done an about-face and gone back the way I had just come. But.... we kept going. And it kept raining. Got harder. After awhile you start to feel the rain in different places. First issue is that your faceshield gets covered with droplets and the common way to clear this is turn your head to the right and then the left and the wind clears your shield IF you are moving above 40mph or so, which you may not be. depending on road conditions. Second, I felt it pelting my arms on the part of my leather jacket where the sleeves are ventilated with a mesh. Then I started to feel it coming through the mesh in my riding pants. Next I started to feel it running down my chest where it had saturated the mesh in the upper part of my jacket. Finally, I realized my cell phone was in the pocket of my ventilated pants... I'm now getting intermittent results with my phone and the next day or so will tell if I need to replace the battery or the entire phone. Maybe it will make a miraculous recovery.
We split up and headed for home about 20 minutes later when we got back to Brunswick, and as I approached here the rain diminished, the sun came out and indeed the roads were not wet where the trees hung out over the roads. I got home and cleaned my jacket (think about the stripe up a kid's back from the back tire of a bicycle), tossed my riding pants and gloves into the dryer and changed clothes. Then I had to wash and wax the bike. Oh, sure, I'd said I was going to do this prior to Americade, but probably wouldn't have...
Monday evening now. I met Scott today and we went up to get our wristbands. Long lines. It was maybe 30+ minutes to get to the area where they split you into alphabetic lines to be allowed inside to complete the registration. There was no waiting in the R-Z line for some reason, so I was sent right in and then had to wait another 45 minutes for him to get through. Then we grabbed lunch and watched bikes for a couple hours, and then went up to Roaring Brook Ranch to see what was setup. The answer to the earlier question is that nothing is running on Monday, just pre-registration.
Due to the crappy economy, this will be a crappy Americade.
BMW,
Triumph,
Aprilia and even
Honda -- the founders of this event back in the '80's -- will not be there with demo bikes this year.
Suzuki hasn't come in years, nor has
Ducati.
Yamaha still comes but long ago sold their soul, and haven't brought sport bikes in a long time.
Kawasaki is there with the full line so I expect to take out several. I sat on a bunch of them today and plan to take out a 650 Ninja, the ZX-14 mostly just to say I have been on one and maybe a couple others. I took out a ZX-12 a couple years ago (same engine as my bike) and enjoyed that okay, so the ZX-14 should be doable.
KTM is there and I hate their bikes but maybe they'll be giving tee shirts away again. Maybe I'll get up the nerve to take out a
Can-Am Spyder. May have to wander down and see if Yamaha brought the FZ1 and FZ6. Other than Kawi, it's seriously slim pickin's this year.
I plan to go up tomorrow morning, and Thursday and Friday look good right now, but Wednesday looks wet. Phone replacement day.
So today was Tuesday. Another day of vacation successfully in the bag. I met up with Scott at 07:00 and we headed up and got to Roaring Brook Ranch a little before 08:00, which is the time that the signup lines start processing. We first went to KTM, assuming that we'd be able to catch a Kawasaki ride later, which we did. Later we signed up for a second KTM, and then a second Kawi ride as crowds were light. It was shaping up to be a full day, and I think that this ties my all time high for rides in one day. Many days I only get one.
First ride at 09:00 and both of us were on KTM 990 Super Dukes.
I rode this bike twice last year and thought it sucked. The seating position is okay now, as I'm used to it after a year with my ZRX1200. Last year when I took it out I kept scaring myself in corners as I was uncomfortable riding aggressively in such an unnatural upright position after a couple decades of sportbikes. This year I charged with the best of them. Being a V-engine configuration, the thing shakes like a washing machine and has a very abrupt on/off throttle. Massive engine compression braking and an overall mushy feeling power delivery, though it handles very well. No free tee shirts this year for suffering through the ride.
At 13:30 I had a ride on a ZX-10. I wasn't intending to ride one of these as the last time I did I spent a large portion of that ride fixated on not breaking the rear tire loose. This time the bike seemed a lot more ridable.
read more
here:
Riding this bike back in '05 was what cemented my decision to buy the GSX-R750 and not a liter bike as they are just crazy powerful now. No one was choosing the ZX-10 at signup so I took one as my second choice, which was my second ride of the day. Well I'll tell ya -- OMG this thing is a beast. I was grinning ear to ear the entire ride, when I wasn't yelling and laughing out loud inside my helmet. It just accelerates like nothing I've experienced before and it's very maneuverable. I kept it 1 gear too high in 3rd gear when we were on the backroads as I didn't want to have too much torque on tap in a lower gear, but it never lugged, just pulled. When I got done with the ride I told Scott that the past few years I've been saying I'd never own another liter bike 'cause they were just too much bike was ignorant... I want one.
The smart move of the day for me came when it was time to go mount up for the ride. There was the lead rider on a ZX-10, followed by two ZX-14's, followed by two ZX-10's, then a few ZX-6's and Ninja 650's, which Scott was on a 6. I went over and was standing by the second ZX-10 since I didn't want to slow down the other 10 rider, so I thought I'd let someone else have the first one in the line. Well, this guy much older than me walks up and I recognized him from when we were signing up, and at that time I had sized him up as being waaaaaay over his head to be asking for one of these, and now here he was on my ride, and potentially right in front of me. He asked if the bike in front of me was a ZX-10 and I said yeah, might be, but why don't you take this one and he did... and I moved up to the one in front of him. As we started out of Roaring Brook and then down the first section of Rt 9 heading back towards the Northway, I realized a few things: a guy and a woman on the two ZX-14's in front of me were going to be really quick, I was really liking being on this ZX-10, and the guy on the 10 behind me was a small dot of headlight in my mirror, holding up the rest of the riders in the line behind him. That was one of the few times I'd see him at all during the ride.
After we got back, I gushed about the bike to Scott for awhile and then it was time to get ready for the 14:15 ride, which for me was a ZX-14.
this thing was created to be a
Hayabusa killer
Feeling more confident now coming off the great ZX-10 ride, I choose the first ZX-14 in line behind the lead rider and when I sat on this bike it at first felt huge, partly from coming off the sportier ZX-10 and 'cause it's huge, but once we got rolling it felt very comfortable. Very familiar and yet more comfortable than my big Gixxer. Smooth and solid. The Anti-Duke. Scott was on a ZX-6 about 6 bikes back in the line. We run up the ramp for exit 21 North and I was doing about 120mph in second gear when I merged onto the Northway. For a moment, I saw the headlights of the guy behind me on the green ZX-14 and also the the ZX-10 behind him, but not for long. I don't know how to put this bike in context since I've never ridden anything this powerful. It doesn't seem to accelerate as quickly as the ZX-10 did from the low end, but once you get it above 6 grand or so on the tach, it takes off. It doesn't launch like the 10, feeling like the front wheel will come up at any second, but threatens to just pull out from under you and made me remember that these are the same people who make bullet trains...
After we got off the Northway and into the twisty section of the ride, I realized that the green ZX-14 was no longer behind me as a single headlight was coming up and I thought that the guy on the ZX-10 must have passed him. I looked over as we sat at a stop sign and it was Scott on the ZX-6. He'd passed -- you are told in the pre-ride briefing not to pass anyone -- 6 bikes over the course of the ride. We hit the mountain and the bike performed pretty well, but took some more effort than the ZX-10 did for sure, as this is not it's element. Still, I'm pretty sure I could run with anyone I usually ride with on the twisty bits, it would just take extra effort. And nerve. I was able to smoke Scott on the hyper-handling ZX-6 by using the 14's massive power in the straights. This bike is on my short list.
Two just absolutely awesome machines.
Then it was back to KTM, this time I was riding the smaller 690 Duke
Not my cup of tea at all. I have nothing positive to say about this bike. Well, it was slightly more entertaining than my riding mower. But less useful.
Wednesday in Review
Things do not always go as planned. I got up at 05:45 to check the weather and was suitably convinced that even if it rained here, it was not going to rain up north, so off I went. Actually, it now appears that this will be the first year in longer than I can remember that the weather was great all week. I met up with Scott and Ed and we rode up. Ed went to register for Wed-Fri and Scott and I went down to the village to see if we could catch a Yamaha ride. They actually brought an R1 with them for maybe the first time ever:
I've wanted to ride one of these for years. I was shocked to see they had it and jumped at it while Scott took YZF-R6S, which was the other sporting bike they brought. Then we went back to Roaring Brook and each grabbed two Kawasaki rides and met up with Ed and a few other people. Around 10:30 we decided that with all remaining rides in the afternoon, we should head down to the village, since a couple guys wanted to look at
Harleys and that new 1200.
We walk back to the bikes and get suited up and just as I'm about to mount up, some guy behind me says that my back tire is a little low on air... I look and sure enough, it was 1/2 flat. CRAP, CRAP, CRAP. I just bought this tire 2 weeks ago. Is it just unseated from the rim somehow and leaking? I roll it back and coming quickly into view is a chunk of metal about 1/2 the size of my pinky finger sticking out of the center of the tire. First, it's very good that I didn't try to ride off as that likely may have resulted in bad things happening quickly. Secondly, I hadn't rolled very far with that sticking out of my tire and likely rolled over it in the last 10' as I was parking there. Here is my new souvenir:
I hoof it back down to the
ROK hospitality area and explained my situation. They reported the incident and a tow truck was dispatched to get my bike. The flatbed arrived and the 3 of us pushed it onto the truck and the Tow Truck Guy secured it. I then told TTG the destination and that we needed to drive to the vendor area, and I was told through Ed by Dunlop that I could get in at gate 3. Off we went. When arriving at gate 3, we were told that there was no room to park the truck and offload, and that we needed to drive on down close to gate 2 where there was a small lot and then I could push it in from there. That entailed about a football field of pushing on my part and by then the tire was totally flat, and a 500lb bike does not roll well in the hot, breezeless sunshine with a flat tire. Scott and Ed were there to meet me and help push the final 20 yards or so and I made arrangements, then we headed off to get something to eat at the food tents at the other end of the vendor area. It was about 11:30. I checked back in (visually as I have no phone) after we ate and they hadn't gotten to my bike.
After milling around awhile Scott and I headed off to Yamaha (just down the street a 1/2 mile or so) for our 13:45 ride. The ride route sucked. It was bumpy and slow and the leader may have been ex-Honda as they were keeping to about 5mph over the speed limit. This bike is not designed for 5mph over the posted speed limit in Lake George, NY. While being a supersport and all that entails, it did not compare favorably to the ZX-10. It is a harsher ride, harsher throttle response and slightly buzzier, and the underseat exhaust was cooking my left thigh. Fun, sure; I wouldn't kick it out of my driveway, but I wouldn't buy it with my money either. When we got back to the Yamaha area, the factory stooges stroll over to ask what you thought and I lied but Scott did not. He told them the same things about the bike he was on. I walked away after 5 min to go get my bike and hopefully make my 15:00 ride at Roaring Brook.
I got back to find that they were just putting my wheel back on. The two guys that were working on the bike seemed to be conferring about something and called a 3rd guy over as I was paying... I guess they figured it out as I was able to finally get the bike out of there and haven't had the rear wheel fall off yet. I made it back to RBR and got to Kawi in time for my 15:00 ride on a ZX-6
I've enjoyed riding this bike at Americade since well into the last millennium. It is light and powerful and just a blast to go thrash as you can point and shoot and rev it high without too much fear of it spinning the rear wheel out of corners. I love this bike. This year proves no exception as it is just more of the same. It has the best brakes and sharpest handling of the bikes I've ridden there. It doesn't matter what bike you are on during these demo rides, you would be very hard pressed to pull away from a ZX-6 for very long.
I will need another ride for research purposes as during this one I was placed near the end of the line. I feared for the worst when the bike right in front of me was loaded up with a passenger.... As it turns out, that guy and passenger rode very well and were not the problem. The problem was the guy on the ZX-14 in front of the ZX-14, in front of the guy with the passenger, in front of me. He could not keep pace and was clearly over his head with the 14 and at least smart enough not to push too hard and crash. Would have been nice if he'd pulled over though and let us by. While I can understand the position people like this find themselves in, it does not make it any better for those of us stuck behind them with the "tho shalt not pass" rules, as our ride is now blown.
At 15:45 it was time for my ZX-10 ride and this time I was dead last in the line. I really wish they'd make some attempt at managing this, though I fear some lead/chase guys do this deliberately to slow the line. Guy in front of me was on the ZX-6 that I had just taken out on the last ride. As I was running up the Northway onramp at about 60mph, 1/2 what I would normally be doing, and noticed when we merged that the entire line had disappeared up the Northway and left me in the gap, I knew I had to get around this guy. When we got off at exit 22 and were waiting to make a sharp turn, get back on and head back down to exit 20, the chase rider tapped me on the shoulder and said it would be okay for me to pass this guy when we got on the Northway as the rest of the group was moving faster. We ran slow down to exit 20 as traffic was heavy but when we got off at 20 to run up the back road to exit 21, I pulled up alongside him and left first, putting me in front of the ZX-6 (I did not pass as we were not moving... it was a holeshot. Ask Scott...). I joined the rest of the pack as we hit the initial right hander and that was the last I saw of the 6 until the stop sign at the other end of the road.
Thursday was kinda lame. Scott could not go up in the morning, but planned to join Ed and me in the afternoon. Ed wanted to ride a V-Max so we headed over to the Yamaha area and got in line with 100 or so other people. It took almost an hour to get through and we signed up for rides at 16:10, which neither of us intended to keep, but we'd invested the line time. We then went up to RBR and I signed up for a ZX-10 to go with the ZX-6 I pre-registered for the day before. Both rides sucked, either because of lame, slow lead riders or lame, slow participants in front of me, or traffic.
I am also getting very tired, and a little sore, from the commute up and back which is like 140 miles total. It is getting to be an onerous task taking 2 hours of my life each day. On the way home, Scott said that he needed to stop for gas and I said I would proceed on ahead as I was running a hair late for getting Colin off to a soccer practice. They stopped at the Mobil station and I was so distracted by that, combined with the fact that I've been getting on the North bound ramp during demo rides all week, that I completely missed the South bound ramp. Not sure how best to play this cool, I proceeded along thinking I'd just turn around, but traffic was way too heavy to try crossing all the lanes.... so I decided I'd just head down Rt 9 and pick up the exit 20 onramp.
Well, that turned out to be a whole lot longer strip of road than I had hoped for, and there was traffic and lights to contend with, two guys leaving some bar and dumping their Harleys on Rt 9, messing up traffic even more... I was counting in my head: "Okay, now Scott is at the pump", "Now he's pumping gas", "Still pumping gas", shit -- another red light, "Finished pumping", "Hitting the Northway", and so on. As I finally reached exit 20, I'm crossing the overpass and I look north and dammed if I don't see Scott and Ed coming down and passing right under me... I think for a second that maybe I should park 5 minutes and not have to explain all of this, but I am running late now so I swing on, roll the throttle up to about 100 and fall in behind them, much to their confusion.
Friday. The Final Day. *sniffle*
Ed allowed as 2 days of this was enough for him and he was not going to attend Friday. I met up with Scott and he informed me we had to swing by the Dunkin Donuts at Exit 12 to pick up Randy. Randy wants to demo the KTMs and heads off for that while Scott and I go through the Kawasaki line twice. Everyone is commenting on how short the lines are and where is everyone? It's Friday and Friday is always the crazy day up there.
Scott manages to catch a standby kawi ride on a ZX-14 and Randy has somehow managed to sign up for 4 KTM rides before lunch and gets another standby. He declares that he intends to buy one of them. Scott and I are both on the 10:30 ride and both on ZX-6's. I grab the one at the front of the line in about the 3 spot back from the leader and Scott is at the back. I think the guy leading us today is one of the younger people who runs a fast pace.
We head out onto 9N to the Northway and get on the ramp north, blast up the ramp and tool along to 22, then off and back on down to exit 20. At some point the line is splitting behind me and I don't see any bikes back there. We wait around a little at exit 20 then start out on the twisty section which Google maps lists as Gurney Lane then a couple other names. It starts off easy as it climbs uphill, then about half way there are a couple of big sweepers and then one huge 90 degree sweeper to the right and one final left before coming back to Rt 9. We ran through this last section at nearly 100mph and that's the fastest I've gone through there all week. About a full minute after we were sitting at the stop sign, the second half of the group rolled up behind me.
The ride at 14:30 I was on a ZX-14 and Scott was on a ZX-10. I was the first bike behind the lead and Scott was #6. It took perhaps a minute to get on to the Northway at 21N waiting for a break in traffic so we could make the left turn onto the ramp. As I was shooting up the onramp, I nearly lost control for a split second as when I short-shifted to second at around 60 and gunned it, the bike nearly jerked out of my hands and for a split second I was connected to this bike only by my knees squeezing the tank. This time when I merged onto the Northway, Scott was right next to me... I don't know how he does it. The traffic was very heavy and there were cops shooting LASER everywhere. Again, there were people missing from the back of the line.
When we got back on at 22S, we did the customary accelerate as hard as you dare for a 1/4 mile then merge left and follow the ramp down. Our leader was dogging it once we hit the Northway as there was a Trooper with someone pulled over, and he kept looking for the other riders behind us. He was going 50mph in the center lane, looking over his shoulder for most of the way down to exit 21. I felt like a sitting duck out there with so much traffic running past us on both sides. I noticed that there was a helicopter keeping pace with us for several miles... When we got to exit 20 we waited there for a minute also for the rest of the line to show up, but they never did.
We started off on the twisty section and came up behind a pickup truck doing maybe 15 mph. Staring at BIG digital speedos, there is no question when someone is doing 15mph. There was the one final blast in the sweeper section after the truck pulled off on a side road, but then we sat at the stop sign waiting to get onto Rt9. Finally, our lead rider pulled out across the road and blocked it and we went on without him. The entire ride left a bad taste. Turns out that one of a group of 4 clowns dressed for bicycling realized that he was over his head on a ZX-14 (here, put down that .22 and try this .357) and refused to enter the Northway. The trail rider pulled over with him and then the rest of his 1/2 helmet buddies pulled off somewhere else, and they never rejoined the ride.
One of my favorite quotes of all time was from a very famous Mayor of a small California town: "A man's got to know his limitations" and at another time: "Dyin' ain't much of a living, boy".
I was speaking with Scott and Lucas after the ride saying how uncomfortable the entire episode had been and offered them my ZX-10 ride at 15:15 as I didn't think I really wanted to go out there one more time. There was just too much traffic. They called for the 15:15 ride and since I really wanted to ride the Kawi's as much as I could, I decided to go. I’m weak. There were a few open spots as some people didn't show and a few guys on standby were put in the line...
I was on a ZX-10 (I love that bike) that Scott had moved up to 2nd in line, behind a ZX-14 the lead rider would be on. One of the standby guys with a half helmet decided he wanted it and bumped the leader to a ZX-6. Well, this can't be good. I had an older guy behind me on a ZX-14 and assumed he would fade in my mirrors and further figured I'd jump past the guy in front of me the first time he wavered, as this is the last ride for me and now Scott has me thinking "I'm a pirate!". Turns out he started out strong and went ripping up the onramp. Maybe he rides a V-Rod. As I turned my head to check before merging at triple digit speed, I looked back and see the guy behind me is now partly alongside me on my right and this makes me nervous as I don't know this guy and how he rides. We drop the speed and settle in with cops all over, and as we get off at 22 and loop to the right, there are 2 local police cars sitting there. At this point I am thinking that after a week of Kawi demo rides screaming around on the Northway, the cops are going to shut it down. We enter southbound at the posted limit and proceed down the Northway at about 67mph.
We get started on the twisty road and start out slowly; maybe 50 percent over the posted limit for the first mile. Then he starts to increase speed. The guy on the ZX-14 in front of me is showing some stress and is clearly slowing too much for each corner, while I have a nasty habit of late and trail braking. So I start to drop back and give him space and slingshot him in the corners and the ZX-14 behind me is following. I had done this on a couple corners and was setting him up for a small rise coming up where you can get some air under the front wheel if you hit it at the right RPM.
This hill occurs right about where the "A" in Adirondack above is on the map. I start to reel in the ZX-14 ahead of me, just as a line of Spyders is coming at us in the other direction. I see the lead rider drop over the hill, then the 14 goes over the hill and I see his brake light come on, but he's done that all along. I come up over the rise and see we are coming to a stop as there is a car waiting for the Spyders to clear so he can turn into his driveway. Whoa... hard on the brakes as does the guy on the 14 behind me. I come to a stop, the 14 stops, I reflexively look in my left mirror to see who is coming up from behind. About 100 yards back I see two more bikes come over the hill and I do not know what they saw before now seeing us coming to a stop. Then I see another bike come over the hill and he is in the center of the lane, slotting to the outside of the bike before him.
I know he must be looking at the group of stopped bikes, the car now crossing the lane to the left in front of him and trees to the right. I see and hear the bike fishtail hard twice as he's target fixated, weighted the front-end and locked the rear wheel. Then he gets high-sided off the right and lands flat on his right side as the ZX-10 he's on flips up and makes that big crashing sound as it smacks down on it's right side in the oncoming lane. I think that I was moving again at the time I was seeing all of this. Our factory guy and the first ZX-14 have already gone around the next lefthander but pulled over so he must have seen it in his mirror also. We all pull over and run back. The guy is up and out of the street and the chase rider and another guy get the bike out of the road.
He was wearing his safety tee shirt but didn't seem too bad; low abrasions since he got smacked down and didn't slide. We were instructed to keep going back to RBR, which we all did at a slower pace. On the way we were passed by 2 police cars and 2 ambulances. I saw the bike before I left for home tonight and was told the guy was taken to the hospital just 'cause, but no one knew his condition. This guy hit the pavement maybe 100' behind me. If he'd kept going and plowed into us there would have been other issues. If anything had come over that hill in the first 30 seconds after that accident, there would have been other issues.
Well, this concludes another Americade. Best weather I can remember having up there. 698.7 riding miles commuting to and from Lake George, and 12 rides for around 180 miles. It was fun to do all of the demo rides, mostly. After riding the Kawi's, Ed says he's thinking about getting a small sportbike now rather than fulfilling his lust of a $14K Ducati, Scott says he thinking about getting a ZX-6 and Randy says he wants to buy a KTM. Me, I'm back oncall next Tuesday.
