Group ride: Ninja 250 board members

Posted April 11, 2004

You can see all the pictures I took on this trip in the gallery.

One of the users on the Ninja 250 board posted that there was a ride happening today. The post was simple and to the point -- there would be a ride, starting at 10:30, leaving from the Cycle Barn parking lot. I decided that it would be worth checking out. If it looked like a group of kids intent on dragging their knees and pulling wheelies, I would introduce myself, excuse myself, and leave them to their fun.

Fortunately, the group looked fairly mature and talking briefly with them confirmed that this was a group of reasonable riders. I decided to ride along with them and see what would develop. Including me, there were five of us, making for a compact group.

A new route

Because the ride was being led by someone who lived Not In Seattle, he had some interesting new roads that he liked, but which I'd never ridden before. He proposed that we ride up I-5 to Arlington, where we'd ride over to Highway 9. From there, we'd take some back roads to Lake Cavanaugh, loop around the lake, and head back to 9.

Beyond that, we didn't really have a plan. We'd just make it up as we went along -- looking at the map, there was plenty of interesting riding in the area.

New gear

I had recently acquired some new "touring" type gear that I was interested to test out. I had a new tank bag that was more capacious, and promised to be a bit more user-friendly for long rides. I had just acquired a CamelBak Classic the previous night, along with a Nalgene water bottle, so I would be well-hydrated. I had recently acquired a better tiny tripod for taking those road-side pictures.

I packed up the tankbag with the new goodies, and filled the CamelBak about half way with water for its first test (not feeling any need to test its claimed 2l carrying capacity just yet). I was ready.

"I met them on the Internet!"

I left my house a few minutes after 10 am, and made it to Cycle Barn by 10:25. I rode around for a minute, but quickly located a group of 4 other Ninja 250s. I introduced myself really well, pulling to a stop, shifting up to "neutral," and killing the engine by letting the clutch out in third. D'oh!

First impressions safely out of the way, I introduced myself around, and met most of the group. A few more people showed up after I had arrived, and when everyone was there, we were five.

As I mentioned, the group seemed fairly mature and reasonably safe in attitude. We got our route briefing from Creaky (the leader), and we were on our way. I think the time was around 11:10 when we all pulled out of the parking lot.

On the road

The ride up I-5 was interesting. Traffic was heavier than I had expected, and we had a hard time keeping together. Everyone was trying, but traffic was conspiring to keep us separated.

Eventually, we found our exit at Arlington, and broke east from the freeway on Highway 530. We were able to group back up again, and the ride got a bit more cohesive. We arrived at the intersection with Highway 9 in short order, and headed ourselves north.

As we arrived at what I was soon to learn was Bryant (a town consisting of a gas station/store and a family of sarcastic hicks selling bales of hay across the street), Creaky pulled over into the store's parking area and shut off his bike. We were at our first rest stop.

I took a few pictures, and Creaky described the next phase of our route. The hicks across the street were sarcastic at us. It was fabulous.

It was also hot -- the temperature was climing, and sitting there in the sun, it was downright toasty. We got back under way, headed for the lake.

Creaky had picked a good set of roads. The traffic was very light, the curves were well laid-out, and the pace was good. No one got left behind, and the ride around the lake was pleasantly in and out of the sunlight. Alternating with the sunlight was deep shadow as we passed into the forest.

After several hours of riding, we found ourselves in Conway, a small town on I-5 (exit 221, to be exact). We stopped at a gas station that also contained a couple of fast-food restaurants (a sub shop, and a restaurant that completely mystified me, despite the many signs they had up -- I think "Hot" was in the name).

I took the opportunity to fill up my tank (although I needn't have bothered, as it only took 2.4 gallons). I joined the group inside, and ordered myself a little sub. We discussed various modifications to our bikes, and life in general as we ate lunch.

Please, the group shot

I told Creaky to keep his eye out for a good location where we could take a group shot. As you can see, he found a pretty good one. It was just beyond a little store, overlooking Lake McMurray. We lined up our bikes, and I set up my new tripod across the street so we could all be in the picture.

We discussed our next steps, and most people wanted to head for home. Creaky would be headed back to I-5, and the rest of us would continue down Highway 9 to return home via some interesting, non-freeway route.

We bade Creaky farewell at Bryant, where we had first stopped. He headed for I-5 as planned, and we continued on 9. One of the other riders (sorry for the vagueness, I have a terrible time remembering names) parted company with us near Lake Stevens, and then we were three.

I finally split off from the group at Highway 2, and headed east. I didn't really have a plan, but I definitely wanted to be off 9, which by this point was full of traffic and far too warm.

On my own

I cruised along 2 for a little while, and noticed Harvey Field and the town of Snohomish to my right. On a whim, I took that exit, and found myself sitting in a parking lot in Snohomish, looking at my map. The best route I saw to get back to "civilization" in an interesting manner looked like one of my favorite roads, High Bridge Road, on my map. Of course, the way to get to High Bridge was to get back on Highway 9.

Anyway, I got myself onto my favorite road without further problem. I was surprised to find that it was under construction, and a temporary stoplight was installed. I stopped at the light, behind a minivan, and with a couple on a Harley behind me.

The Harley (driver and passenger in leather vests and puddin' cup helmets as their sole nod to safety) had its left hand blinker flashing, so I signaled to the driver that it was on. He apparently thought I was waving to him, and waved back. So, I tried pointing at his blinker, but he didn't get it. Finally, I turned my blinker on, pointed to it, and pointed to his flashing beacon of ineptitude. He finally got it, and in a slurred voice said, "ok, I finally got it, this time." I bowed my head for a moment, hoping he wasn't drunk.

Eventually, finally, the light turned green, and we were allowed to go. A 50 foot section of the oncoming lane had been removed. I mean really removed, at least 12 feet deep. I was impressed.

Of course, now I was stuck behind this minivan, with a drunk Harley rider behind me. On top of that, a motorcyclist coming the other way had indicated a speed trap ahead, so I had to maintain the extremely sedate 35 MPH speed limit.

On the whole, that wasn't the most fun traversing High Bridge that I've ever had. Still, it was bearable.

Pass me, will you?

Midway through the road, there were suddenly two high-powered sportbikes passing me. I never saw them approach, just all of a sudden they were screaming past me. Soon enough, their friend on high-powered sportbike number 3 was behind me, but we were back into the curves, making passing difficult to impossible.

The minivan pulled off at some point, making truly reckless high-speed motorcycling possible. The two sportbikes were ahead of me, but they never pulled so far ahead that I lost sight of them. Despite being much higher-powered, I was able to keep up with them through the curves, finally proving to me that the Ninja was as able at corners as everyone claims. They eventually pulled away from me because they were surprisingly willing to dive into blind corners where I had previously encountered either gravel or slow-moving vehicles. I was not so daring.

One more picture, ma

As I was tooling along the road, after the "big boys" had pulled out of sight on the straight, I passed a little turn-out that looked incredibly scenic. I thought to myself, "I should have stopped, and taken a picture with that beautiful scenery as the backdrop." Then, I thought to myself, "heck, I'm not on a schedule. I will turn around and do exactly that."

So, I did. I took this lovely picture. Ain't it grand?

Then, I turned myself back around, and rode off through the dappled sunlight to return home.

Stats

The GPS turned itself off for a short period of the trip, so these numbers are perhaps 2-3 minutes short of reality. I really need to get that power socket installed, so it doesn't keep doing that.

I left the house at 10:10, and returned home at 4:25, so I was out for a total of 6 hours and 15 minutes.

Distance travelled: 172 miles
Total riding time: 3:58:30
Average speed: 43.4 MPH
Max speed: 79.6 MPH

The fill-up in Conway got just over 58 MPG. And that was with at least 30-40 of those miles (out of 140) being in-city commute riding. The second tank came in at almost exactly 57 MPG.

Lessons learned

I'm not terribly fond of riding in groups. I had suspected this, but I'm glad I rode with a group, and really found it out. It may be different, riding with a group of uniformly experienced riders, I'm not sure. There weren't any issues I had with members of this group in particular, but it was a mishmash group by its very nature. It sounds horribly cliche to say, "I ride alone," but that's kind of how I ended up feeling.

Of course, I do ride with Jesse, but riding with one other person is definitely a different experience than riding with "many." I suspect that with some practice, and with a group that had ridden together a few times previously, group rides could be more enjoyable. Trying to put together a group from scratch is hard.

I think we could have improved this ride if we'd spent 5 minutes going over some group ride basics, such as riding in staggered positions, passing etiquette, etc. We all had our own ideas of how to ride in a group, and it occurred to me after the ride that if we'd agreed on one idea, it would have been better.

Hydration is good. I really liked having the CamelBak, although the right-angle bite valve was difficult to use. I believe a straight one would work better, but there were none to be found at the store where I bought this one. Using it, even half-full, I was able to keep myself from ever getting thirsty during the ride. I was surprised to find that, exactly as promised, the system has no taste I could discern.

The Ninja seat sucks as much as I thought it did. By the time I arrived home from the ride, my tailbone was indescribably sore. The Ninja seat is definitely designed to fit a multitude of riders. I'm considering seeing if I can find a spare seat on Ebay, and experiment with doing some foam-laying/cutting on my own. It wouldn't be as glamorous as a Rich's seat, but I bet I can do a reasonable job on it. (In fact, I just found one and bid on it -- we'll see if I've won in 4 days.)

20 litre Mr. Pockets tankbag: some good, some bad. I'm going to write a more formal review, but a few brief comments. The map pocket is too small to fit any standard section of my map. The "interchangeable base" system makes it very difficult to actually disconnect the base with the bag attached (such as when filling the tank, or if you think, as I do, that unzipping the base is annoying). Having external pockets makes things like finding my camera or cellphone much easier. The 10 litre default size (vs. 7 for my other tank bag) means that I'm able to carry more stuff before opening the expand-o-zipper. The tensioning shoestrings should make the bag more stable when it's expanded, although I haven't tried them yet.

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Created by Ian Johnston. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.