I was expecting to have the bike sold in the next few days so I decided to take one last ride on the Kawasaki. I sure am going to miss that bike. I wanted to drive up to Mt. St. Helens but didn't really have enough time. I kind of wanted to go to Detroit Lake because it's such a great drive, but had just driven that route in the car last week. I compromised and went to Timothy Lake instead. I had planned on taking the "secret" paved northern route on the way back, but the road was closed, probably due to a washout. If I hadn't been selling the bike I probably would have gone around the dirt piles like someone already had. I was tempted. It wouldn't have been the first time. Many of the forest service roads end up being closed for years because there isn't enough traffic on them to justify the repairs. I was a little disappointed because these narrow out-of-the-way roads are usually some of the best ones and I hadn't been on this one for a few years. Luckily there are plenty of other great roads out here.
I went through a big cloud of soft, squishy bugs early on and this is the view from inside my helmet. I forgot to bring any shield cleaner. Bugs along the river in late June? Who could have known? And of course I continued to hit as many of them as I could. I ended up looking through this mess for most of the ride. You can see where I started to try and wipe it off with my glove and then thought better of it. I've played that game before and you never win.
This certainly wasn't the epic final trip that I had in mind, but I was happy with where I went and I rode the snot out of the bike, which is something I hadn't really done in a while. I hadn't even been over 100mph for a while and managed to top 130mph twice on this ride without really trying very hard. I wonder how long it will be until I do that again.
Is it time to take the Sportster to Detroit? I believe the answer is "Yes!" but my butt is already sore just thinking about it.
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