On May 29 and 30, I attended the California Superbike School at Barber Motorsports Park in Birmingham, AL with two riding buddies. The school is geared toward improving riding skills via classroom instruction and on-track coaching and practice. Stephanie was able to watch the track sessions and join us for meals. This was my first experience on a track, but hopefully not my last! Continue reading
Last week, Stephanie and I attended the third annual BMW Tame the Dragon event at the Iron Horse Motorcycle Lodge in Stecoah NC. This event brings together folks from the LT and K1600 forums for 3 days of riding and camaraderie. We had about 70 bikes, 50 of them K1600s!
On Tuesday and Wednesday, we did tips rides for those new to mountain riding. Thursday through Saturday were devoted to riding as many twisty roads as possible:
Stephanie and I led one of the groups – post 357 contains my ride report. Stephanie took 2 photos and I took zero, so we had to rely on OPP (other people’s pictures).
It’s been a while since I’ve written, but that doesn’t mean that motorcycle things aren’t happening. Winter was spent cleaning 2017’s grime from our gear, shopping for and replacing worn out gear, researching new farkles…
After riding a K1600 GTL through Italy last year, we decided that we wanted a smaller, more nimble bike. So we added a S1000XR, keeping it in the BMW family. It’s 250 pounds lighter than the K1600, but still tall enough for Stephanie (I wish I’d taken a picture of her sitting on the back of a KTM Super Duke 1290 GT – her knees were close to her ears).
Justin, an owner of Eurosport Asheville, put about 3,000 miles on the bike (primarily off road) so it was already clad in adventure garb when we bought it. We just added a top case and swapped out the tires for Pirelli Angel GTs.
For the first trip of the year, I met up with friends in Murphy NC and tooled around very wet twisties for a few days. Next up is the K1600 TTD event in Stecoah NC – hoping for sunshine this time as we put the K1600 GTL through its paces!
Stephanie put together a video of Gavia and Stelvio passes. It’s a long video, so I won’t be hurt if you don’t watch it all (I can’t speak for Stephanie since she did all the work), but at least check out the sections around the 1:00 and 24:45 marks.
On the road again (the southeast twisty ones for now)!
Rolling On Two 