{"id":58,"date":"2009-03-21T19:37:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-22T02:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jim-n-mandie.com\/blog\/?p=58"},"modified":"2009-03-21T19:37:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-22T02:37:00","slug":"lonely-mountain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.galaxieman.com\/?p=58","title":{"rendered":"Lonely Mountain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After putting &#8220;Who wants to go&#8221; posts on both beginnerbikers.org and the Superhawk forum, I got zero responses for my 1st Mt Lemmon ride of the year.  &#8220;Fine.  So be it. I&#8217;ll go by myself.&#8221;  Amanda wasn&#8217;t in the mood to get up at 0600 just to go ride up some mountain, so I went completely solo.<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;ll definitely be wearing it for the trackday next month.  Wasn&#8217;t too bad, but I&#8217;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&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Them-&#8220;What happened to it?&#8221;<br \/>Me- &#8220;Iraq&#8221;<br \/>Them- &#8220;Um&#8230; ok.  We&#8217;ll put &#8216;dust&#8217; down in the reason block&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I had to grab the communal point and shoot since I didn&#8217;t want to lug her RebelXt up the mountain in my tankbag.  Completely forgot my PCCs with the camera, and left the thing on &#8216;small&#8217; (640&#215;480) resolution. D&#8217;oh!  At least the panorama I stitched together of the Huachucas at dawn turned out okay:<br \/><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"Https:\/\/www.jim-n-mandie.com\/blog\/uploaded_images\/Huachucas-at-dawn-772712.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 63px;\" src=\"Https:\/\/www.jim-n-mandie.com\/blog\/uploaded_images\/Huachucas-at-dawn-766189.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>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:<br \/><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"Https:\/\/www.jim-n-mandie.com\/blog\/uploaded_images\/March-21-Mt-Lemmon-010-772730.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"Https:\/\/www.jim-n-mandie.com\/blog\/uploaded_images\/March-21-Mt-Lemmon-010-772725.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>On the way back down, I thought I would stop and take some shots of the other &#8216;wet stuff&#8217; the shadows were hiding waaaay up on the mountain:<br \/><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"Https:\/\/www.jim-n-mandie.com\/blog\/uploaded_images\/March-21-Mt-Lemmon-012-752382.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"Https:\/\/www.jim-n-mandie.com\/blog\/uploaded_images\/March-21-Mt-Lemmon-012-752379.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Got passed by a Ducati 848 and a GSXR-600 who were headed up when I pulled over for that shot&#8230; Man that Duc sounded sweet! They both slowed and did the obligatory &#8220;You okay?&#8221; shrug, but rolled back in the gas when I held up the camera and gave them a thumbs-up.  Bikers are cool like that.<\/p>\n<p>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 &#8220;Guess you took the easy way up!&#8221; as he smiled and nodded at some passing bicyclists.  Yep, guess I did.  Maybe one day, before I leave here, I&#8217;ll try and ride my bicycle up the mountain.  Maybe.<br \/><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"Https:\/\/www.jim-n-mandie.com\/blog\/uploaded_images\/March-21-Mt-Lemmon-015-752398.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;\" src=\"Https:\/\/www.jim-n-mandie.com\/blog\/uploaded_images\/March-21-Mt-Lemmon-015-752394.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Lessons from the ride:<br \/>-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&#8217;t interfere with hanging off the side of the bike in the &#8216;slow&#8217; corners.  Camera mount is NOT going back on, for that reason.<br \/>-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&#8217;t bother to check the camera settings though&#8230;<br \/>-I don&#8217;t care if anybody else comes.  Screw &#8217;em.  I had fun, and even stayed at &#8216;reasonable&#8217; speeds.<br \/>-I need a trackday.  And I need to ride the Ducati more, since &#8216;reasonable&#8217; on the Superhawk is a lot harder to maintain than with the 3\/5 scale motor in the Duc. (996 vs 620).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After putting &#8220;Who wants to go&#8221; posts on both beginnerbikers.org and the Superhawk forum, I got zero responses for my 1st Mt Lemmon ride of the year. &#8220;Fine. So be [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galaxieman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galaxieman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galaxieman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galaxieman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galaxieman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.galaxieman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.galaxieman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galaxieman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.galaxieman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}