On the road again...

It was back in the saddle today, a little earlier in the week than originally planned but life happens. For one thing, I need to get the Vision back to Michigan and get it registered with "the man" (which also means paying the piper my share of sales tax.)

One thing I can say about this trip is that it's been extreme. It's either been cold, wet, cold and wet, or hot. I've been on the road for 2 weeks and had 1 day where the weather was "typical" for the region I was in for this time of year. Today was hot, hot, hot. My in-dash thermometer told me that the over the road air temperature hit 100 at 2:09PM this afternoon, and it never dropped below that for the rest of my riding day. By the time I got to Greensboro, it was showing the ambient air temperature around the bike at 105. I took a picture, just to have proof :)



Tomorrow is another day of traveling just to get from point A to point B. I need to get about 500 miles behind me in order to be able to get home on Friday around lunch time.

Oh, yeah, one last thing...today's excitement...I almost hit a black bear. YEAH, A FREAKING BEAR! I was about 12 miles east of Plymouth, North Carolina, traveling along US-64. The speed limit is 70 MPH in that area, and, with the thermometer reading nearly 100, I was not going to go any slower. As I was tooling along the highway, I noticed what looked like a very large man standing next to the highway, dressed all in black, about a half mile in front of me. As I got closer, it began to become more clear that this was not a "who" but a "what." With just a few hundred yards between us, the black bear dropped down and started to move into the roadway. I hit my brakes as hard as I could, hoping for the best. The best is what I got. The Victory Vision Tour comes standard with anti-lock brakes. They kicked in almost immediately and I slowed down far faster than I have with any bike I've ever owned. Mr. Bear was able to cross safely about 15 or 20 yards in front of me, and thanks to the ABS my brakes never locked up. Talk about exciting! That's the closest I've ever been to a bear in the wild. Had I been riding my former motorcycle, it's very likely I'd have been sliding down the highway on my butt getting ready to be bear snacks (and I'm sure I would have been nice and juicy having been baked out in the sun all day long.) A huge thank you to Victory Motorcycles for getting it right when they built this bike!

Tomorrow is another day, and another road.

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Location:Greensboro,United States