Sir Grump Munch

March 30, 2006

Going to Cincinnati

Riding down to Cincinnati tomorrow for the WKRP rally. The weather looks dicey at best, calling for a mix of strong wind and showers at various times throughout the day between Chicago and Cincinnati (about 320 miles if I recall correctly). Fortunately I get to ride a bigger, faster, brand-new scooter, a PGO G-Max. Here's what I posted to the Chiscooterlist Group:

I'm going to take my chances with the weather and ride the PGO G Max 150 (a mini-maxiscooter looking thing, supposed to be good for an honest 65+mph) tomorrow. It looks like I may be able to just miss most of the rain but not the wind, this bigger bike should handle it a lot better than my shit Vespa.

The PGO 125 "Buddy" I've been riding around is really quite nice performance-wise, good acceleration, good brakes, good balance and cornering, about 70mpg around town. Had it cruising at an indicated 65+mph on the Kennedy last night, not bad for a 125.

Anyway, I want to leave around 8am or so. Anyone else riding? Ron, Flossmoor Mike? I think Mike isn't leaving until noon, so that probably won't work. If someone wants to meet up and ride together, let me know, otherwise I'm going it alone and putting my faith in Taiwanese engineering, which by all accounts appears to be damn good. Should be a great rally!

In other recent news, I've been working a lot on the reassembly of the Ramblin' Man and riding that Buddy 125 scooter around for the past couple of weeks. Still seeing Jen and that is going well.

Vanessa is having a pledge drive at Chicago Public Radio right now, they are always in need of funding and if you're in Chicagoland it would be really nice if you supported their good work with a donation (as well as Phil Ponce and the crew at WTTW Channel 11).

Otherwise, not much to report. It's finally starting to look somewhat spring-like around here as of the last few days, but it's been a pretty cold spring up until just recently. Wish me luck on my ride tomorrow, I'll get there and back safely if the Good Lord's willing and the creek don't rise.

Since I'm practical in a worst-case-scenario kind of way, I'd also like to add that I appreciate the opportunity to take the G-Max cross-country and that if I should die or be mangled out on the high-way, that burden should not fall on the generous folks who let me demo the scooter; it's nothing to do with anyone buy myself and chance. So don't anyone go suing anyone (unless some other idiot hits me and it's their fault), I purchased full-coverage insurance on the scooter and assume the risk of this journey.

That is all, now we can all sleep easily. Happy spring to all, should be an adventurous weekend and a great rally.

***postscript: Cincinnati Rally recap:

I made it there and back without incident, though there were hellacious winds on Friday (20 to 50mph apparently, though I managed to avoid the tornadoes, thank Jebus) and about 4 hours of rain riding back on Sunday. I did almost get blown off a bridge by a gust of wind on a stretch of Interstate, which had me shaking and checking my
shorts for a while after that, lots of white-knuckle steering and a 10-degree lean against the wind most of the time.

The G-Max did admirably, considering that its break-in period consisted of the ride from Scooterworks to my apartment at Damen/Addison, down Western to the Dixie Highway at about Crete or so (maybe ~40 miles? Ron?), then the fields started and it was wide-open throttle into a major headwind for the next 2-3 hours with stops only for gas. The top speed with the wind was only an indicated 55-60mph, but once I changed directions I could go 15mph faster and on the return trip was able to cruise between an indicated 70 and 77 most of the time. Great speed, lights, brakes and suspension, though the fixed seat and leg position (think "wedgie"), small gas tank (1.4 gallons when it's past "E") and gear carrying capacity left a lot to be desired. Also about 800km late for the first oil change... Total trip MPG averaged at exactly 70 (50mpg during the strong winds!).

352 miles there, 347 miles or so back, two totally different routes, both pure Indiana Hell. Both took about the same amount of time (11 hours if not stopping for a meal), one was on more "highway" type roads (1 to 17? to 41 to 52, clusterf*ck trying to avoid Indianapolis via 32 to 238 to 13 and back to 52) and the other on mostly smaller roads (27 to 38 to 421 to 30 to 41). Maybe I'll write up a more detailed travelogue on what I learned from the route; maybe we can start a database of Chicago-oriented scooter route notes, good, bad or otherwise? I am starting to get pretty familiar with a lot of the routes within a few hours of here.

Awesome rally as expected, those guys put everyone to shame in terms of planning, rides and free-ness. I really like Cincinnati as a city, would almost consider moving there for a year or two. Jumped over the river into Kentucky just because I was so close and it would've been a shame not to. Indiana can go to Hell, worst state ever. Took 360 or so photos, will post the better ones to Scoot.net (more scooter rally-related shots) and/or my Flickr account (more signs and weird
roadside crap) in the next few days.

Greetings From Indiana!

Posted by pj at March 30, 2006 08:57 PM