Hard Road and Hung Up Wet
After being sans scoot for about the last ten years, I started thinking last fall that it was time to buy another bike. With gas rising quickly towards $4 per gallon and the Xterra only getting 16 miles per, that idea started making more and more sense. I'd been looking at the Suzuki Intruders and their successors, the Boulevards, for years (I've ALWAYS ridden Suzukis - '82 GS450L, '82 GS650G) and tried a couple of times to get by local dealers to look at the S50s (for some reasons most motorcycle shops seem to have limited hours - guess they'd rather be riding).So everything came together perfectly when I got a notice on MySpace from a friend from high school that I'd friended a few months ago that she was selling her 2003 Intruder Volusia (she just bought a Road King and ya can't ride two at once). I drove down a week ago last Sunday to give it a test ride and got a ride down this past Sunday to do the deal. The forecast called for 30% chance of rain but I hadn't gone 2 miles before hitting the back end of a thunderstorm. Rode through a driving rain to my sister's house in Harrisburg and stopped off for a few minutes hoping the rain would pass. And I did manage to get a few miles of dry pavement before catching up with it again. Of the 130 miles from Mint Hill to Chapel Hill, only about 25 of them were dry. Sounds miserable and I know I could milk it all for sympathy, but frankly I was so damn happy to be on that bike that I didn't really mind. It didn't hurt that I had 50-60 other bikes out on NC49/US64 all wet and keeping me company. I figure if nothing else, that's probably the worst ride I'm likely to go on and we (myself and the bike) both came through it just fine.
I'll post some pictures later - got the tags yesterday and the weather's looking good for riding W-F this week. I honestly bought it mostly for commuting - I figure if I can average 3 days per week I'll save almost $100 a month in gas. But I won't try to kid you - it's going to be a hell of a lot of fun too!
Labels: Scoots
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