Another nice day for a ride in Iowa

[rjs987]

Was a slightly warmer day today than my last ride. Had the time so took off to a location I have not been to for more than 25 years. The roads have been rerouted to make way for a bypass highway around the south and east side of the metro area and the roads I last took to get there no longer exists but since it is an upscale housing development that has been around for over 35 years they built new roads to get there. Temps were steady around 34-35 F all the way around. This ride was 37+ miles all the way around.  I rode to the Dale Maffitt Reservoir just SW of West Des Moines.

I did connect my heated gloves but didn't need them turned on since the heated grips were plenty even on the lowest setting. During this entire trip the heated grips worked great and did not give any faults or shut down. No flashing red light on the left grip indicator. I rode most of this ride with the heat on the lowest setting but for the last 8 miles I bumped it up to 2 just to see if the fails I experienced a few days ago was due to turning it up higher. The heated grips were set to 2 then also. Now I am wondering if the very cold temps I was riding in caused the system to fail. Or maybe it was due to having my heated gloves turned on while also having the heated grips turned on. I was wondering if the heated gloves heat was being sensed by the heated grips making that system think it was over heating. Or possibly with power running through the gloves wires was interfering with the proper operation of the heated grips sensors.

[jermwars]

  I rode to the Dale Maffitt Reservoir just SW of West Des Moines.

THAT takes me back. I took countless rides to Maffitt on my first bike. Honda Sabre 750. Excellent curves getting there.
Lots of frizbee...
Got stuck in the mud in my Mazda rx-7.

Its weird to think that place has been there this whole time...doing what it does day in/day out

[rjs987]

The ride today was to test Noodoe navigation as well ended up testing range when the "E" starts flashing on the fuel gage. I WAS going to fill up the tank first thing on my way out but the lines at the Costco gas station were 6+ cars deep at every pump so I decided to truck on and see how far I could go. I knew mpg would be lower than normal since the temp on this ride hovered right around 37F the entire way. I wore my Gerbing heated gloves but didn't plug in the heat controller since these are the thickest most insulated gloves I have and the heated grips with these gloves seems to be doing fine just over or under freezing temps without turning on the glove heat. These gloves hold in and distribute the heat from the heated grips better than my other winter gloves.

My trip meter A showed over 90 miles when I started. That's the trip meter I use to track how many miles since last fill up. I plotted a rectangular loop that was 60.2 miles all around. The last white bar dropped off and the red bar on the fuel gage started flashing at 115 miles. Since someone else already sacrificed the stress of going farther than anyone admitted to going on a tank I kept on riding. The red bar dropped off right about 146 miles and the red "E" started flashing. I figured I COULD get back to the Costco gas station which was another 8+ miles but decided to see where I was on gas and filled up at 147.2 miles. I put in 3.155 gallons calculating about 46.6 mpg, using the trip meter miles as I usually do for consistency. Actually a little better than what I was expecting considering the temps right now and also that 30 miles of that tank was used on rides when temps were below 15F!

Since this was a test also of Noodoe navigation I plotted 2 separate routes, one to follow the other, with more waypoints than I would normally set. The first route took me to the gas station that I decided to bypass and then to another place easy to pull off the road to pick the next route. Since I bypassed the gas station and that was the first waypoint set I pulled over right away to eliminate that point since Noodoe kept wanting me to route back to it since I didn't "hit" it. Actually, after removing the gas station waypoint I also had to remove the starting point at home since the way I edited the route I needed to start it over again. I found out a different way to edit the route and it would continue from where I was without restarting. Overall, Noodoe navigation worked great this time other than the need to "hit" every waypoint exactly and having to stop to change a missed waypoint on the phone to prevent being constantly turned back to it. As far as more than one "Journey" to resolve the 8 waypoint limitation I think that will work just the same as I was already doing with Google Maps navigation. Just some tricky differences to get used to. I think the settings I changed (turning off Avoid Highways and setting to Fastest Route) did the trick for me for now. I even forced a recalculate on a detour to get the attached photo during the second Journey route and Noodoe handled it well this time. It's really not a bad thing to stop every hour to pick a different route to continue navigating. That's about right for a drink of water normally anyway. Although I have been known to ride for 2-3 hours straight without stopping for anything on my travels.

[rjs987]

Oh, and a milestone was reached on today's ride. The odometer ticked past 1000 miles on my AK 550 just a few miles from the end of the ride. The odometer now shows 1003 miles.
And the heated grips have lately been working flawlessly.

[Neil955i]

Oh, and a milestone was reached on today's ride. The odometer ticked past 1000 miles on my AK 550 just a few miles from the end of the ride. The odometer now shows 1003 miles.
And the heated grips have lately been working flawlessly.

Couple of very cold day rides here this week and have been glad of my heated grips too.  Effectively extends my riding season by a month at either end easy.

[rjs987]

Still a good day for a ride this Christmas Eve Day here in Iowa. Was 55F all the way around the 34.5 miles. Stopped to fill the tank near the end of this ride. 2.632 gal for 125.1 miles. The red block on the fuel gauge just started to flash when I pulled into the station. Just a little jaunt on some country roads... again. That's where I prefer to ride since I'm close enough to get to those without going through a lot of city traffic. Those are north west or south west. Going anything east takes me into city traffic. My destination today was Culver's for some gift cards to be given tomorrow... normally a 1.5 mile round trip from my home. Still can't get this AK to take the shortest route! 

[Neil955i]

Wet mizzley day here yesterday so no ride. Day before 26th - dry out wet back. Ah well rough with the smooth eh?  Today very wet am, but forecast dry pm so, who knows?

[rjs987]

Snow expected to start in just a few hours. So decided to get one more ride in before that and before the end of the year. There might be one other chance on Friday depending if it does snow and how much or if there ends up being ice on roads. Big snow storm expected this weekend so no riding on New Years Day.

Only rode 21 miles this time to pick up a tag on another forum. Temps stayed right around 15-16F all the way around. Not the coldest this year, nor the last 2 months, but won't be colder the rest of this year (only 2 more days!).

[Iahawk]

Rjs - thought about a ride today in the Iowa City area but there are still patches of ice on the roads from the inch or two of slushy snow we got yesterday. The roads are mostly clear but there are enough ice patches that I will stay safe and warm in my home today.

[Neil955i]

Snow expected to start in just a few hours. So decided to get one more ride in before that and before the end of the year. There might be one other chance on Friday depending if it does snow and how much or if there ends up being ice on roads. Big snow storm expected this weekend so no riding on New Years Day.

Only rode 21 miles this time to pick up a tag on another forum. Temps stayed right around 15-16F all the way around. Not the coldest this year, nor the last 2 months, but won't be colder the rest of this year (only 2 more days!).

Bob, we’re forecast temperatures of 15-16c today and tomorrow, almost unheard of in December, so it’d be rude not to?

[rjs987]

Bob, we’re forecast temperatures of 15-16c today and tomorrow, almost unheard of in December, so it’d be rude not to?

We left those temps behind a month ago (15-16c (59F-61F) ) !
Wish it were that warm now... and for the next few months as well. Don't expect to see that warm until March at the soonest. But then this has been an unusually warm start to the season. So who really knows?

[jermwars]

Oh, and a milestone was reached on today's ride. The odometer ticked past 1000 miles on my AK 550 just a few miles from the end of the ride. The odometer now shows 1003 miles.
And the heated grips have lately been working flawlessly.

Im about to hit 6600 miles and, just as you anticipated, the gas mileage has increased considerably!!

I was averaging about 49.5 and now im getting a bit over 53! (finally broke down and started using a calculator instead of broad "abouts"). I think some of the improvement is probably because im not flooring it as much during takeoff

Time for more scheduled maintenance already!!

Thinking of holding off on flushing the coolant and the brake fluid since the bike is only a few months old...and I still havent done ANY of the indicated "inspections" of the CVT/ect

All ive done thus far for maintenance is change the oil & oil filter (a lot) and blow out the air filters...can you think of any criticality im ignoring?

Also...just to be a decent human...i wont mention that its been about 80 and balmy every day here until last night...got down in the 20s

(sorry...dont know why I do that)

[rjs987]

OK, so it was a bit nippy this morning...

I finally got out for the first ride of 2022. Only 20 miles but it was a bit nippy out. Temp was right at ZeroF (0.0F) (-17.8C). It was colder earlier this morning, a few degree below zeroF, but I didn't feel like getting up that early so didn't start my ride until about 6:20 am. Besides, we are providing day care for our littlest granddaughter yesterday and today so had to be home for that by just after 7 am so wanted to squeeze a ride in today sometime.

I have the feeling this may have been the coldest morning I'll see for many weeks. Tomorrow is supposed to return to above the normal high temps at 36F (normal is 31F).

[Iahawk]

OK, so it was a bit nippy this morning...

I didn't start my ride until about 6:20 am.

You, sir, are a lunatic! At 6:20 it is still dark as night...add in the below zero temps..and...wow. at least there was little to no wind!

[rjs987]

You, sir, are a lunatic! At 6:20 it is still dark as night...add in the below zero temps..and...wow. at least there was little to no wind!

Only the wind I created while riding. And that is usually enough. As posted elsewhere I am still having issues with the grip heaters so have to rely on my heated gloves. Those gloves keep my hands toasty even at these temps. I stayed mostly within city limits for this ride so most of the way there were street lights. But also the LED headlights do a great job lighting up the road. Snow on both sides but not in the lane where my wheels travel so all is good. Well except for the thin strip across the bottom of my driveway but that is only 6 inches wide so no problem coasting over that as long as the bike is going straight and not leaned over.