Best. Ride. Yet.

 

Pretty bold statement, considering all the riding we've done this summer.  A truly fine ride this morning.

The weasels are calling for a windy day, so I chose to get out early again; it also helps with any traffic on the fun roads.  The feature of this morning's ride was, once again, Iron Mountain Road.

"What is it about that road?" you ask.  Thanks for asking.  The road was designed to be "feature-filled."  Back in the 30s.  It is meant to be a leisurely drive, with the occasional view of Mt Rushmore.  I've listed the stats before, but here they are again...

• 17 miles
• 314 curves
• 14 hairpin turns
• 3 pigtails
• 3 tunnels
• 2 splits
• 4 Presidents

It is a fun drive... and an even more exhilarating motorcycle ride!  The curves are banked just right.  The road surface is good.  And getting onto Iron Mountain Road reasonably early in the day sometimes means you can pretty much have it to yourself.  Timing matters.  It's a great ride either direction, but I prefer to ride it from the south (Custer State Park) to the north (Mt Rushmore/Keystone).

There was a good rain in that area last night, so it smelled fresh this morning (another thing that is great about motorcycle riding: the smells).  There were a couple spots where gravel had washed onto the road from a side road, one place that had some mud that slid onto the road, and some rogue pine needles.  But, no cars or other vehicles in my lane, and fewer than 20 cars or bikes that came from the other direction.  It was a delight!  I could ride as fast or as slow as I wanted.

Yes, I have had several of these "light traffic" morning excursions on Iron Mountain Road this summer... but, for some reason, this just felt special.  The CTX is a fun bike for this kind of riding - you can ride it in Sport Mode while will give you the accelerating and shifting in a sporting manner, and still shift gears up or down as you want with the paddle shifters.  The CTX weighs about 500 pounds, but it carries the weight fairly low, due to the forward canted (62º) twin parallel cylinders.  Pushing it into the curves feels good, and no issue with anything dragging at sane speeds.

Some might be surprised to hear me say that I could take this road just as fast with the Vespa.  That's only partly true: I could take the curves just as fast, but on the straight stretches, the CTX is much faster.  I had to wrap the Vespa full out, where the CTX has more to give.  The engine braking I get with the CTX allows me to enter a curve faster with more control.  Both are fun to ride on a road like this.  People don't expect the Vespa to be as fast as it is on a technical road like this.

Oh, and people on motorcycles are waving again.  :-)

No, I did not take any photos or video of this morning's ride.  But, I did take this photo of my big furry boy this morning, out on the patio, sitting on his Momma's lap...

The long fur on his chest and belly tends to make his legs look shorter when he is standing; this shows those striped legs and white paws.  Just in case you think this blog has gone completely over to motorcycle and scooter riding.  It's still about Rufus, too!  ;-)