Finally went motorcycling in Scotland

As you may know, I've been really bad about not posting anything for a few months. There have been things goind on, so here's some highlights. I went back to the US for couple weeks at the end of June, Dena and I took a weekend trip to Paris the first weekend of July, then two weeks of vacation in France mid July, and then a weekend trip to London the first weekend of August. I have lots of pictures that I need to get uploaded to my Flickr site. I just haven't had anything REALLY exciting to post about until now. Well, maybe I have, and I've just been lazy. :) Back to my motorcycle ride.

Yes, I've been here for over a year now, and Dena and I have been for little rides on both bikes out of and around Aberdeen, but I have not been on a serious motorcycle ride. I haven't had any business trips planned for a couple weeks, so on Monday, I asked one of the guys at work with a brand new 2008 GSXR 1000 if he wanted to go riding this weekend. He agreed, so all we had to do was hope for good weather. It rained all week, but finally on Saturday things started to clear and the sun came out. I cleaned the Kawi, and Sunday was looking good! I wanted to get my TomTom set up to record the route we would take, but I didn't download the software in time for this ride, and I still have to wire an adapter for 5V power.

We met up at work this morning, and he brought another friend of his along with a '06 GSXR 1000. Both of them were in leathers and both had scuffed knee pucks, so I knew I was in for a good time. WOW, could both of them set a pace!

The ride started about 11 am and I just got back at 5:30 pm. We put on roughly 250 miles. The roads over here are incredible! Very few truely straight stretches. The pace was close to the ton most of the time, and quite terrifing. I was probably riding at about 90% of my ability most of the time trying to keep up. I was always following because as long as either one of them was in front, I could jugde the corner speed. Most of the corners are blind, but somehow they just knew how quick they could ride through them. Unlike the US, the corners are not posted with a suggested corner speed sign. Here, there were really just 3 items to help judge corners, and they were "SLOW" painted on the road, and either a sign indicating a corner or a sign with black and white alternating arrows pointing into the really slow corners. In my opinion, not really helpful, but with all the corners, they'd have to put up a LOT of signs.

I just about ran off one of the corners early in the day. After a series of 80+ corners, this one was much slower, and I braked really hard for it leaving a nice black skid mark from my rear tire. I did get slowed down in time, but ended up jamming my right foot down as I skidded with the front tire briefly on some gravel as I was almost stopped. My right big toe is now purple from jamming the nail to the inside of my boot. Then, about midday, I ended up running a little wide on a corner, but luckily there was no car coming. Overall, I had a blast! The roads over here are excellent. I just wish the corners were marked a little better. I'm hoping there are a couple more sunny weekends to go out riding. Everyone keeps telling me I need to go ride some of the roads on the west coast. So, I guess I need to go plan and ride some of the roads on the west of Scotland. :)