Got up fairly early and hit the road by 7:15 a.m. Dreary day with dreary prospects. Knowing today was going to be the last day of the trip I said "to heck with it" and committed to the interstate, opting to just get it done. Frankly, without going pretty far out of my way there's not all that much on the Gulf coast which captures my interest. I didn't even stop at the casinos for some poker. Weather forecasts indicated I could expect more rain riding and the thought of going into a casino in wet riding togs just didn't appeal at all.
Speaking of weather forecasts, why are they almost always right in the negative? If they say it's going to be bad, it usually is. The other way they seem to miss as many as they make. The result is a bad day in either case. Maybe that's why we don't take them very seriously.
Pulled into Mobile with the weather starting to close in. Like I said, a dreary day.
Wanted to take a picture of something so I pulled into Battleship Parkway and shot this pic of the U.S.S. Alabama.
I was fortunate there was no ground fog. It could have easily happened. Instead, it was up a hundred feet or so.
A Katrina casualty? Probably from one of the hurricanes that came through a couple of years ago.
Headed below Mobile bay.
And down.
And up.
Plugged on with slight, intermittent showers starting after Mobile and into Mississippi. No big deal...for a while. Just east of Lake Charles, the slight and the intermittent went away. It became a full-fledged downpour. Adding some excitement was a few lightning strikes, but, fortunately, all were at least 1/2 mile away from me. The good news here was the heavy rain cleaned the love bugs from the windshield. Yep, they were out. As you go down the road you see these small dark shapes coming toward you only to be diverted by the air stream from the windshield at the very last moment. Well...diverted most of the time. They come flying in looking like little mini-Messerschmidt Bf 109s bearing down on the tail gunner of a B-17. Every now and then, just as in the skies over Germany, one actually veers right into the target. Many German pilots actually survived such an incident. Can't say the same for the "passenger" flying with the love bug males. None survived as far as I can tell. And I'm not sorry. They're just not as tasty as some people say they are.
Motorcyclists lie. Almost all say the rain doesn't bother them or isn't so bad. This is only true about light sprinkles on hot days. The rest of the time, even with excellent rain gear it's not what you want. It can be scary on many levels. First, the traction becomes suspect. This is not a good thing when you are only putting two wheels on the pavement. My experience is traction is about the same as a car as long as you are careful about applying power, especially on turns.
Then there's the visibility thing. I don't know how the full face shields hold up under such conditions, I wear goggles that fit over my glasses. The lens of the goggles is "shooting" yellow to provide brightness. They do that well, and it's a good thing, but they still are covered with water and visibility is always less than optimal. I am constantly looking upward so the air bouncing from the brim of the helmet "pushes" the water down the lens clearing the top sections. This works pretty well until a major downpour. Once it reaches a certain intensity you're basically looking through distorting sheets of water. As I rode through such a downpour today and started seeing all these cars pulled to the side of the road and under overpasses, I questioned if, perhaps, I should do the same thing. Nah...macho motorcyclist thing...those folks sitting in their nice, dry cars saying, "Boy, I bet that guy on the motorcycle is miserable," would then know they were right and we can't have that, can we? Motorcyclists lie.
Betsy looked more like a wet puppy than a Kaw.
But at least we were in Texas.
The bad storm cells ended by the time I cleared Beaumont. From then on there were just a few sprinkles and it was over. I pulled into my driveway, once again unhappy that a trip was over.
Can't say enough about Betsy though. Yet again, she pulled through all of it with zero problems. Cranked first time, every time, and did all asked of her. Any problems I've had with this bike have been with after-market things, i.e., the dealer wiring installation on my after-market horns, or the slits which developed on the after-market exhaust pipes this trip. But the Kawasaki stuff has worked and worked damn well. I'm proud of Betsy.
No comments:
Post a Comment