After putting “Who wants to go” posts on both beginnerbikers.org and the Superhawk forum, I got zero responses for my 1st Mt Lemmon ride of the year. “Fine. So be it. I’ll go by myself.” Amanda wasn’t in the mood to get up at 0600 just to go ride up some mountain, so I went completely solo.
Other than the old woman in a Cadillac who unexplicably floated over halfway into my lane (from the oncoming side) just north of Sonoita, the ride to Tucson was uneventful. I figured it would be a good day to try out / break in my new back protector, since I’ll definitely be wearing it for the trackday next month. Wasn’t too bad, but I’d prefer to wear it for 20-minute sessions as opposed for the entire 5 hour up-and-back trip. Since I took my camera to BestBuy for warranty service…
Them-“What happened to it?”
Me- “Iraq”
Them- “Um… ok. We’ll put ‘dust’ down in the reason block…”
I had to grab the communal point and shoot since I didn’t want to lug her RebelXt up the mountain in my tankbag. Completely forgot my PCCs with the camera, and left the thing on ‘small’ (640×480) resolution. D’oh! At least the panorama I stitched together of the Huachucas at dawn turned out okay:
Made it to the top okay, but about 7/8 of the way up I ran onto some damp pavement, as the shadows were allowing some of the road to stay wet. Ratchet the right hand back a couple notches, and all is well. Being solo, I had to use the camera timer and whatever reasonable height flat spot was around to perch the camera on for pictures. Kinda glad I was by myself, because I probably looked pretty funny running back and forth across a parking lot in my leathers:
On the way back down, I thought I would stop and take some shots of the other ‘wet stuff’ the shadows were hiding waaaay up on the mountain:
Got passed by a Ducati 848 and a GSXR-600 who were headed up when I pulled over for that shot… Man that Duc sounded sweet! They both slowed and did the obligatory “You okay?” shrug, but rolled back in the gas when I held up the camera and gave them a thumbs-up. Bikers are cool like that.
One more shot, this time from the main overlook on the way back down. I pulled into the spot, got my helmet off, and one of the elderly gentlemen standing at the walkway rail looked over and said “Guess you took the easy way up!” as he smiled and nodded at some passing bicyclists. Yep, guess I did. Maybe one day, before I leave here, I’ll try and ride my bicycle up the mountain. Maybe.
Lessons from the ride:
-I need a ram-mount for my camera instead of the gas-tank-top solution. I took the camera mount off, and was able to move the tankbag forward such that it didn’t interfere with hanging off the side of the bike in the ‘slow’ corners. Camera mount is NOT going back on, for that reason.
-Check the camera. Check the camera. Check the camera. I did think to bring spare batteries, which went in right after the first 4 shots for the panorama, as the old ones were toast. Didn’t bother to check the camera settings though…
-I don’t care if anybody else comes. Screw ’em. I had fun, and even stayed at ‘reasonable’ speeds.
-I need a trackday. And I need to ride the Ducati more, since ‘reasonable’ on the Superhawk is a lot harder to maintain than with the 3/5 scale motor in the Duc. (996 vs 620).
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