Fathers Day Ride

This morning I took my wife for a long motorcycle ride on LSD.

And by LSD I mean Lake Shore Drive. And I mean the LSD in Springfield, IL, not the one in Chicago. Springfield, too, has a lake . It's called Lake Springfield. This is an example of how creative Springfieldians are.

Anyway, the ride was very nice and so were the stops at Starbucks and the Lincoln Garden, which is really just a small oasis of woods in the endless desert of corn.

While walking the mulch and mud covered trails of the garden we saw a fearless deer, several mooching squirrels, an army of geese who were big chickens and a baby toad that I coaxed off of the trail so that he/she would not become part of the mulch.

The woods were hot and humid and we were soaked by the time we left. The first mile was pretty cool after that.

We rode until our butts were sore and had a great time.

The Triumph doesn't seem to pull differently with two passengers than with one. Braking and handling are a little sluggish with two but the motor just doesn't care. I'm not used to an OHC engine with so much low-end torque. I still feel like I should wait until high revs to shift, but I don't need to.

My Hondas didn't have any real pull until about 5000 rpm. This Triumph starts pulling at about 3000! And it doesn't rev as fast as the Hondas did so I have to teach myself to shift sooner and take advantage of the torque in higher gears. Instead of wrapping 1st out to redline before shifting, I can get in a higher gear sooner and accelerate using a faster gear ratio.

I'm not really sure which technique is faster but I'm having fun experimenting. Either way, this Triumph goes from 0 to 60 in about one gasp.

I'm one happy daddy.