25 Apr Mt Lemmon ride

We made it to the mountain again. Five people showed up at the link-up point this morning, none of whom were from any of my internet forums. All had come because I had put flyers on 60-someodd bikes all over post, and one was only there to advertise his bike for sale. He bugged out right when we got started. His loss.

So here’s the breakout: Me leading on the Superhawk, followed by a guy and his daughter on his Road King. Next we have a BMW R1200RT, then a V-max, and finally Amanda on the Ducati. Motley assortment, to say the least. All we needed was a dual-sport, a scooter, and somebody on a dirtbike with lights. Ride to the mountain was uneventful, and everybody seemed to do fine at the reasonable pace I was setting. Got to the Tucson link-up point, and none of the Superhawk peeps from Phoenix made it down, which was a shame. After a slight detour for a couple of riders (the bathroom at the Circle K had been clogged by a drunk…), we were off. Immediately got stuck behind a couple of retards as soon as we hit the mountain, but when they pulled in for the “use the park, not just the road” pay-station, we scooted past.

The ride up was straightforward, with only a few mobile chicanes, most of which pulled over for everybody else to get by after I would bomb past them… Yes, I realize you’re doing the speed limit on the straight bits, but when you’re doing 20 in the corners, pull the hell over. Yeesh. I had the side-mount for the camera bolted up and got some decent footage on the way up. The ‘hawk isn’t exactly vibe-free, so I got into some weird oscillation waves at certain RPM ranges. Overall it was decent footage though.

Here we are, in the main parking lot up in Summerhaven:

The Mt Lemmon Cafe was CLOSED! They had a sign posted that there was a chili-cookoff to benefit the Fire Dept up at the ski resort, so we rolled on up the road. Everyone though discretion the better part of valor, and abstained from the chili, substituting regular hotdogs instead. We left the Harley rider and his daughter there, as they were going to stay and ride the ski lift up to the very top of the mountain. We decided to stop at the main overlook on the way back down and were off again. Since our most ground-clearance-challenged bike had left the pack, and everybody knew where we were stopping, I turned up the wick a little bit on the way back down.

This is why you need to visit Mt Lemmon if you’re ever in Tucson:

The view is quite impressive, especially since there is so much flat nothing surrounding the mountain. At the scenic overlook something else rather scenic joined our little group:

For those not in the know, that’s a Ducati 900 Supersport, which an older gentleman was piloting. We all commented on how nice a day it was to be out riding, generally stood around a bit, and then got geared up to leave. The Duc 900 left out a bit ahead of us, and I was having a little trouble getting my camera started. This of course meant that I had lost some ground on the Duc, and being the “lets play” type of rider that I am, I figured I’d try to reel him in. The BMW rider commented when we got to the bottom that I “opened it up in a few corners, and when he got to a straight section, I was a quarter-mile away…”. I’ve got to hand it to him, he was riding the crap outta that big Beemer, but a couple of sport-twins just would not be denied…

This is my first attempt at YouTube, and as such, I’m working on getting the embedded player to work here on the blog. If this works, you should see a Youtube window you can click to view the video.

If that didn’t work, just click here to view the full-size 640×480 .wmv file I already uploaded.

Oh, and all the way down the mountain I kept hearing my RiderCoach instructor from the ERC I took last Wednesday: “Chest down, point your elbow, chest over first and your butt will follow…” A couple of corners I felt it work right, in that in order to look ‘through’ the turn I only had to look ‘up’ instead of ‘up and over my shoulder’ since my chest was already pointed in the right direction. Wow.