Motorcyle Blog

Woo Hoo! My first group ride. I went down to Huddle House in Harlem, where I would meet everyone at 8:30am.

I was there more than a few minutes early so I decided to fill up my gas tank at the gas station across the street. I topped off which cost about $2.00. While I was there, some dude who was missing some teeth was checking out my bike the entire time. Felt a little weird. I said hi when I went inside to pay. (Ghetto town = ghetto no pay @ pump option).

It didn't take long for the Scooter Trash bikers to arrive. There were 3 that showed up so we made 4! John, Bill, Mike, and myself. So anywho, we went inside and had breakfast and made small talk.

John had arrived in a t-shirt and jeans on his bike and was commenting about how cold it was. I just had to laugh. I was wearing my leather jacket and jeans so I was slightly warm. Bill and Mike had on full suits. Bill looks like a bumble bee with his black and yellow colors to match his bike (hence his nickname at work of Bumble Bill). It was rather funny walking into Huddle House as everyone looked at us coming in. Some people even stared at us while we were eating. I guess I just have to get used to this.

After eating we hit the road. We went from Harlem to Wrens and then up through Dearing and Thompson then somehow we ended out on Bel-Air Rd and from that point on I have no clue what happened after that. Hehe. We went through residental neighborhoods and also this section of a neighborhood that has the nickname of "The Pass" which apparently is relatively famous to the motorcycling community because of it's twisties. I kid you not, this was like turn city. Sharp curves, mild curves, S curves, etc. It was awesome! We went through it like 3 times. Mike in the group has a GSXR 600 and at periodic points during the run on straights he would open it up and he told us at points he was hitting 120+. He's gone 186+ before. His speedometer freezes at 186 mph.

We rode staggered formation pretty much the whole entire ride except in curvy areas where we pretty much became single file to get a good line through the curves. I was told after breakfast in the parking lot all the hand signals that get used. Pointing at something on the ground w/ the left hand = something on the road to watch out for. Right foot out is the same thing (can't use the right hand as it's the throttle). A left hand out and down with the palm facing the rear is slow down. If you point at the side of your bike, you forgot your turn signal is still on (most bikes do not have auto-cancelling turn signals, we have to manually turn them off). I got to bust John on this during the run. I told him at a stop sign he still had his while pointing at my bike. Hehe.

I forgot to look at my odometer before starting out so I have no idea how many miles were put on my bike. I'm sure someone in the club knows but I'm sure it was over 100. We were basically riding around for 4 hours or so if you discount the time we spent eating and stopping at gas stations along the way to make sure everyone was good on gas.

Here's a few pictures of our bikes where we ended our trip. The Sonic on Washington Rd.