Group rides can either be awesome or terrible. Mid May I was talking with the guys and said "hey, we haven't done a 34/Siletz loop in forever, we should do that". The guys told me to put together a FB event and it started snowballing. At first it was just the locals, then a few riders from The Dalles and Eugene pledged to show up. All in all we started with fourteen riders.
I'm no stranger to group rides and I've witnessed most of the stereotypes of group rides that exist. There's been rides where some people go so slow the group has time for three cigarettes while waiting at an intersection; there's been rides where the ride leader encourages me to leave the ride because I'm a faster rider than he is. I've seen people crash on rides, bikes run out of gas, and county sheriffs disbanding a group before it even goes kickstands up.
This ride went off, dare I say, flawlessly. One ride member volunteered to lead... on a Kawi 650 dirt bike. I cracked up "are you going to lead that" I point to the 2015 R1 "with that?" I point to the dirt bike. Suffice to say we passed him pretty quickly and he ended up leading the group of non-supersport bikes.
Our token jackrabbits ran ahead to clear the way and we all enjoyed a fairly low-traffic run out 34. Us at the Sea-Wall in Waldport.
We continued on 101/Beavercreek/101 to the South Beach Fish Market for chow. Bay View to Beavercreek is in crappy shape, but Beavercreek has had some recent work done.
Then we took a nap while riding up 101 to Siletz HWY.
Siletz HWY would be one of the best sportbiking HWY in Oregon except for that its falling apart. Many parts of it are sinking leaving fissures and cracks that my suspension does NOT like. What is more, I lost my rear wheelweight somehow on Siletz. I thought I was just freaking out and thats why I didn't feel connected to the road but nope, my rear wheel was bouncing.
After Siletz is Logsdon road. Logsdon is really cool except its falling apart in places and theres a 2 mile stretch of gravel up and over a hill. The riders with new and pretty bikes elected to ride out to HWY 20 and meet us later instead of going dirtbiking. Our last stop was in Blodgett for ice cream and more camaraderie.
Where my wheel weight used to be
Now the hard part, trying to make sense of the two hours of helmet cam footage.
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