A Sunday Ride

After the hard time I had riding to Columbus, GA to visit my daughter (a mere two 500 mile days with lots of aches and pains), I decided I needed some more saddle time so I went for a little ride this last Sunday.

A fellow IBRer, Joel Rappoport was embarking on a 100CCC (Coast-to-Coast-to-Coast in 100 hours or less) ride out of Wilmington, NC and needed a witness at 2300 Sunday night. Since I am only 2 hours out I volunteered. The problem was that this was too short of a ride for me to really get in any IBR training and prep, so, in true IronButt form, I decided to add a few miles.


I left out of Raleigh early Sunday morning and grabbed a start receipt for an instate Saddlesore 1000. My route was mostly secondary roads and I needed to make 18 stops to document the corners. My map planning software told me that a 0300 departure would put me in Wilmington about 2200. With all the stops and a drop dead arrival time window (to meet Joel) I figured this would be good rally practice. I was worried about the mountain leg from Ashville, through Murphy, Highlands, and on to Hendersonville. US 64 is tourist haven and in my previous rides on this route have seen trip averages sink like the Titanic. I didn't want to miss the time window in Wilmington and make Joel hunt up an official witness.

I grabbed the start receipt at 0247 with 111594 miles on the odometer. As it turns out the roads were great, traffic was light, and my stops were efficient. I got to Wilmington at 2030, a full 2 1/2 hours early! Now I just had to kill time to wait for Joel. He showed up a bit early, we completed his paperwork and I was off to Raleigh. I snagged my finish receipt at 1255 with 112671 miles on the odometer. BMW miles were 1077 and the GPS showed 1046.

The ride was pretty much a normal 1000 mile day and rather than bore you with turn-by-turn details here are the highlights:

• Deer--between 0300 and 0530 I saw more deer along the road than I have ever seen before. This was the first time I've ridden a deer infested area with the new wide angle Soltek Fuego HID driving light. I can't help but think that they had always been there and this was the first time I could see them.
  
• Ashville to Murphy on US74--this is a beautiful road and beautiful country. A most enjoyable ride.
  
• Highlands, NC. If you have ever traveled US64 in this area on a sunny Sunday you, like me, do not have fond memories of the traffic. I stopped alongside the waterfalls on US64 and there was only one vehicle in the turn out. In the 5 minutes or so I was there NO traffic passed me in either direction! I traversed downtown Highlands at the speed limit and didn't have to wait at the stop light. In all honesty this was pretty scary stuff. I had allotted myself an extra hour to traverse this area and, compared to what I have seen before it was like a ghost town. It may have been too early in the season. I sure hope that was the case and not a sign of the economy.
• East coast heat and humidity--in the afternoon the thermometer was pushing high 80's. When you are AGATT (all the gear all the time), it can be a bit uncomfortable. Getting acclimatized to this heat is part of the training. I was keeping myself well hydrated thanks to one of my new farkles. I added a water pump to the water cooler. It sure is nice to just push the button and have that water flow instead of trying to suck it up a 4 foot straw :-)
• Rain Squalls--Horrible downpour east of I95 on US74 for about 10 miles. It was actually pleasant. The temps dropped 15 degrees and my new Olympia jacket performed as advertised and kept me dry. Much more so than the 20 or so bikers parked under the overpass waiting out the rain. I love it when I ride past them, wave, and smile.

Lessons Learned
This was a shakedown run of the bike and my body. All-in-all the bike is near perfect. I'm sure there will be some minor tweaks but everything seems to be shaping up nicely. I found some things that needed fixing:

• Exercise--I've got to spend more time getting in shape. My desk job may well prepare me for sitting hours and hours but it does little to help with the aches and pains.
• Game Face--This ride was much easier than the trip to Columbus. I guess having a set goal and getting your game face on helps out. Thank Goodness, I was really worrying about the 11 days in August.
  
• Seating--This was the longest run with the new Ricky Mayer saddle that I had bought used. This was a trial replacement for the custom saddle from Cycle Solutions. The seat needs some adjustment and I shipped it off to Cycle Solutions today for a custom rework of a custom saddle. Look for updates on the results in the future.

Further updates coming please stay tuned.
Mike (IBPete)

Shark Evoline First Impressions

I got the Evoline earlier this year. So far I have about 1000 miles on it. It replaced a Caberg Flipup that was okay but I couldn't get a replacement shield for it. Here are my impressions of the Evoline:

First off, I don't wear a full face for safety but for weather protection and if it wasn't so time and space consuming I would carry 2 helmets, one full face, one open face. The perfect helmet for me was the Gallet ISR in which the chin bar was a clam shell set up (open & closed). Regretfully, after 7 years my inner lining deteriorated beyond repair and they are no longer available.

The flipups don't do open face worth a darn. If I left the Caberg open, I would get horrible neck strain, either from the balance point or the wind pushing against the chin bar. That was my main interest in the Evoline, opening it puts the chin bar behind the helmet and out of the windstream. I had some concern that the extra weight of this helmet (~4lbs) might defeat this feature. My initial feeling is that this is the case but it is still better than the Caberg. With my budget I don't have a choice, so we will see if it's just a matter of getting the proper muscles toughened up over a few more days of riding.

Out of the box this is the best fitting helmet I have ever had. The cheek pads a firmly in place but not too tight and I am not getting any hot spots around my head.

This helmet is NOT headset friendly. Due to the inner lining (nice construction), there is no space for speakers. Adding a headset requires judicious surgical work (on the helmet not on your head). I wear custom molded in-the-ear headphones so all I needed to do was to make some room for the wiring and boom mic.

Now to my major problem (which I have had with all of my helmets). The space for my ears doesn't seem to align properly. It feels just fine for a few hours and then my ears get really sore. In the case of the Evoline the problem is where the straps come through the cheek pads. I think the strap is touching my earlobes causing the eventual irritation. I have removed some of the foam from the cheekpads to let the strap move away from my head but this has not yet solved the problem. More foam surgery is going to happen but again, due to the excellent construction of this helmet, not an easy process. FWIW--it took me several tries to resolve this problem with other helmets so it may just be my ears that have the problem.

Noise--The earplugs coupled with my hearing impairment make me a poor judge. That being said, it seems this helmet is pretty noisy. I know when I have the chin bar open and close the face shield it seems to have a lot of wind noise.

Bottom line--if you want the benefit of an open face and full face helmet this fits the bill. For me there is no other alternative and this benefit outweighs all of my other observations.