Well, on the one month anniversary of trading my Old Wing for my 2014 Connie, I set out on an adventure.  I had a long weekend, so I decided to go visit my cousin and her husband in Southern Pines, NC.  He's in the Army and they move a lot, so I gotta strike while the iron is hot or they ruin my plans by moving or deploying!  God bless him and everyone like him that keeps us safe!

So I started out of South Bend, IN on Friday morning.  It was raining pretty hard and the radar wasn't looking like it was going to let up any time soon so I started out anyway.  The weather was nasty, and inspired a sentence for my travel memoir:

The sky spiders jumped lithely through the clouds, spinning their plasma webs of electricity as I forged on.

Outside of this post that is also probably also the last sentence I'm going to write of my travel memoir.

So when I started riding a couple of years ago, I just bought a pair of "waterproof" work boots to ride in.  Generally they worked well enough.  But on this trip, waterproof they were not.  By the time I got to Indianapolis, my feet were so wet that when I wiggled my toes, I could feel the water squishing out of my socks.  My hands were soaked too, and I had way to many miles and hours to go to have cold, wet,  hands and feet. 

I remembered there was a large chain motorcycle gear store on the north side of Indy, and it just happened that I was passing right as they opened.  I bought a pair of waterproof motorcycle boots, dried my feet in their restroom, got a change of socks from my bag and man, were my feet happy to be dry.  I got a nice pair of Alpine Stars waterproof gloves too.  They seem pretty nice, with a good gaiter to go up over my jacket cuffs.  Since I now had a full compliment of functional rain gear, it of course stopped raining.

I rode I-70 out of Indy to Dayton, and then down to Charleston, WV and on.  It was 758 miles down.  I've put a few farkles on the bike, Helibars risers, a ram mount with the finger grip phone mount, a Sena 20S bluetooth headset, a Kaoko throttle lock, Cee Bailey Ultra tour, and worked the Kawasaki top box into the deal when I bought the bike.  So far I'm pretty happy with everything I've got, though the Sena headset is a bit quirky.  I'm still trying to figure through some things with that.  But I think my next change will be a smaller fuel tank.  Because I need more stops to get me out of that stock seat!  Though I've heard some rumors of aftermarket seats...

I spent Saturday with the family and left Sunday for home.  I decided rather than just ride slab the whole way home, I'd take a more interesting route.  I took US 421 from Winston-Salem, NC to Manchester, KY.  This includes the section from Bristol to Mountain City, TN known as the Snake.  It's 489 curves over 33 miles.  http://www.421thesnake.com/  It was a blast to ride, even fully loaded, and the Connie was sure-footed, even on the stock rubber.  I can't wait to see what she'll do with some Michelin 55's on her!  I really recommend the 421 ride through KY (easy boys) and TN into NC.  I think I might plan a trip there with the wife and stay in Boone, NC where Appalachian State University is.  It looks like a cool little town.

The route home clocked in at just over 800 miles.  Only downside was that I got a late start, and adding the extra miles and the twisties in there, it got pretty late and the temp dropped to 48 degrees.  This early in the season, I didn't have my heavier gear, so it was cold at highway speed.  I was trying to shorten my trip a bit, and luckily wasn't too far over the limit when I saw the flashers behind me.  Luckily for me, he happened to be a biker, and was more interested in my trip than giving me a ticket!  At least as lucky was that it was during that mild part of my ride, and that the troopers in Kentucky and Tennessee were occupied with something other than me while I was making full use of their fantastic roads.  All in all a great trip and a really great introduction to long-distance touring on the Connie.