So last night at midnight, my 1 month ban ended, and I figured I’d celebrate by taking a short ride at least to the local McD to grab a coffee and back…
Temperature check…
Road looks good… showeled the snow out of the way in the yard… salted the hill… donned the subzero gear… pushed the starter… cranked, briefly sputtered, died again! Then cranked for a bit more… died.
Get charger, attach to battery, go to bed…
This is what -15C weather does to a brand new battery… especially when you don’t shift the bike for a month.
Update: managed to get her fired up today and went for a 60 mile ride in -10-15C weather. Beautiful day, blue skies and sunshine, great fun carefully cruising around in the dusted winter landscape, and not even that cold! Sufficiently bundled up the only bits that got cold were the tips of my thumbs… and that’s @ 100 mph on the Autobahn.
You wouldn’t want to go much faster, too many dodgy ice patches and humid spots to avoid in the left lane, but 100 mph / 160 km/h is very very sustainable even in this cold.
Coming back at sunset, the colors of the sunset were breathtaking, a psychedelic trip of white, red, and orange…
So all of you leaving the bike in the garage because it’s “too cold” – man up and get out there, you are missing a lot of fun!
I find winter riding horrible but i just get on with it as i don’t have a car - my thumbs went completely numb yesterday after only 20 minutes.
The cold weather has also held up the maintenance work on my Kawasaki - I was supposed to be putting my ZX7R back together over christmas/new year but a freezing garage has put me off - I could do it if I had too but the cold just saps your enthusiasm.
