10am Saturday morning. Praise the sun.
I changed my mind at the last minute, wore my riding boots into the Triumph store and sat on the Scrambler 400 X and... it's no problem. I easily get two feet flat on the ground, and part of my 'dream riding' is going out into weird places and asking "Hey what's up that dirt fire/truck road?". So Speed 400 is out, Scrambler is in.
Finally went and picked up the bike yesterday! Ended up taking the day off from work so I could just ride. The Triumph shop is out by Morena / Mission Bay, so no matter what, my path home was going to take me through some busy routes. I spent 10 minutes or so in the tiny neighborhood directly behind the shop - it's so small that 10 minutes is all I could do without just riding around the same people's houses over and over. Headed over into Clairemont which gave me another 20 minutes or so of quiet neighborhood riding until I found myself on Balboa, which is a big ass arterial route headed toward Clairemont Mesa, and that's really not where I had intended to go. (People drive like crazy over there...) Luckily being midday it was pretty quiet, and I think I also just exude an aura of 'Noob', since mostly everyone gave me a lot of space and patience while I drove slow as fuck.
Rode into Tierrasanta, knowing I would have no choice but to come back the way I came, because Tierrasanta NIMBY's have made sure to keep the entry/exits to their neighborhood locked down. (Three arterial routes on the west side, one freeway connection on the north side, and no routes to the south or east.)
It was about this time that I realized my helmet is indeed too small for me... the pads on the back of my head started hurting like crazy, intense pressure points on my 'reverse temples', so the rest of the ride home is a bit of a blur, but I managed to get the rest of the way home. (Luckily I know the non-freeway routes home like back of my hand from years of 'wow I cannot be sitting in this freeway parking lot for one more minute, I'd rather spend 1.5x as long on sidestreets'.)
Went out for a second ride a few hours later with my dad's helmet, which I know to be too big for me, and presses on my glasses in a weird way. Headed over to the local community college which is open, but it's summer break (and apparently no summer sessions are even going right now), so all the parking lots were empty. Except that they've installed a lot of solar in the parking lots - good for the kids going to school there now (holy crap that place is BRIGHT AF and hot AF, sitting on top of a mesa), bad for someone who was hoping to have wide open parking lots without concrete pillars all over the place. But still, got a good amount of stop & go practice, stopping at stop signs, turning from a stop, couple Estops, riding over speed bumps.
Headed down what used to be an aterial route but has been replaced by a freeway. It's kind of a weird road with almost nobody on it, but it's still wide enough to practically be a freeway. I was just put-putting along the right side of the right lane, and whoosh, there goes a CRV at like 75 mph. Speed limits like 50, buddy. (I was going like 40, about as fast as I was ready for at the time lol.) Something about CRV drivers... like the freeway is right there next to us and has entries at the top and the bottom of the hill...
Took a couple big streets home. Going up the hill back toward my mesa, hit that point where I'm going like 50mph, and the wind is pushing me back, but the motorcycle is propelling me forward, and it's a little terrifying and a lot exhilarating. 50 miles down for the first day.. didn't drop the bike, didn't have anyone pissed off at me for going slow af, I'll call it a success.
... time to go out again!
(...)
Ya know, just riding around neighborhoods around here is still pretty fun due to the whole mesa / canyon topography. There's a little bit of twisties... at 25 mph. And some nice views of the mountains, and of the city below. I get bored pretty quickly of just being in quiet neighborhoods, so got a little bit of city riding in too. Throwing myself into the deep end, although I don't think it's too deep -- couple of moments of brain trying to downshift nicely while I'm braking and a teensy bit of panic as I wonder if my hands/feet are going to figure it out in time. And one bad start near the end of my ride - I was doing so well, but in traffic getting going from a stop at a stoplight, kinda lost my balance and had to Flinstone Feet a little bit, which is embarassing :)
But overall, everything was fine - another fun ride. My helmet is for sure just slightly too small though ... after a little more than an hour riding I could feel the pressure points building, and even now that I've had the helmet off for 30 minutes I can still feel a little bit of pressure back there. My Shoei has the default 9mm pad in it now, I bought the smaller 5mm pad but it'll take a couple days to get here - I guess they don't keep it in stock at Cycle Gear.
Driving up the same freeway-adjacent former-arterial street I mentioned earlier, once again seemingly out of fucking nowhere there's some asshole in a jeep right behind me. Either he ran the red light from cross-street, or he came speeding through the turn the same way I came, but either way, way the fuck too fast. I think once he figured out I'm a noob he slowed down and gave me space, until I moved over to pull into the college and he went racing past again. With his dog in the car! Like if you crash while driving like crazy your dog is gonna die dude. Maybe I should just stay away from that road...
I'm only 34, but I'm already a grumpy old man driver :)
One more note... I'm so tall on this bike! The scrambler is already pretty tall, and then the standard/upright riding position, and I'm also pretty tall... with result that I'm above most SUV/Trucks, on par with the lifted bro trucks, and it really is confidence inspiring to be able to see everything and not feel like I'm hidden down in traffic. Driving my car afterwards felt so strange, since being a "normal sized" vehicle the ride height is very close to the ground.
