Cheese Weasels Get Dirty In Utah

[Stichill]

Simply astonishing posts and pictures stichill. What a trip!

I still can't believe you do all this on a 250 lol

Thanks for sticking with it, ferret. After having to abandoned last year's report, I'm bound and determined to finish this one!

Simply astonishing posts and pictures stichill. What a trip!

I still can't believe you do all this on a 250 lol

Ha ha, that's part of the fun! What can I say, for some reason I just love this little bike. Such an over-achiever. There's something awesome about getting so much out of it. I'm amazed at all the places it's taken me. And when I hit the curves, there's not a bike I'd rather be riding. This thing handles like a dream.

Like I said, really it only gets challenged by running up long grades at high speeds and/or against powerful winds. But it never dropped below 55 mph at any point; usually it meant me running 60 while my compadres were running 70+. Not too hard to catch up on the downhill side, and it any case whenever we got separated for other reasons, i.e. someone making a photo stop, we always re-grouped somewhere down the road.

The one downside to running it at wide-open-throttle is that fuel economy suffered, meaning instead of 65+ mpg it dropped to maybe 58 mpg. The guy on the V-Strom 650 reported the same phenomenon. In fact, in terms of power, he fared little better than me with his barn-door windshield, huge boxy panniers, and giant top case. He was a rolling wind block. He really could not outrun me. My son-in-law on the triple FJ-09 was the one who could walk away from us both on the highway, but then he would run into fuel range issues himself. So it all balanced out and we ran together as a pack pretty well.

I had the belly fairing off for ground clearance, which cost me some mph on the highway, and had larger-than-usual H&B X-Travel bags, which caused more drag. With the belly fairing in place and my usual H&B Street Oval aerodynamic bags, wind / air resistance would have been a complete non-issue.

If had been running solo, I wouldn't even comment on the hills/wind in terms of the bike's power. After all, I'm riding for pleasure, so what's the rush?