OK, OK, call me a big softie, wuss, quitter, or whatever, but the lure of my nice warm bed, snuggled up to the missis (who I hadn't seen for a month) was just too much....so the long ride home, segued into the long ride home - lite.
Left at 4.15pm. I ended up doing 622 miles, and with stops (about 45 minutes total), was snuggled in the aforementioned nice warm bed by 3.30am.
I started in bright sunshine, but into a brisk headwind, so my gas mileage fell from 49mpg (imperial) to 44mpg. Once I crossed the mountains things improved and for the last three fill-ups the bike did 53/51/57mpg, all at steady cruising (5500rpm/110kph-ish).
Believe it or not this was the very first time that I had ridden the bike after dark. So after about 9pm it was new territory, riding wise. I was very impressed with the headlight (not the 'melt ice at 400 yards' brightness of the twin headlights on my VFR but still very good), which allowed me to maintain the same cruising speeds that I had been doing when it was daylight. The glare from my non-faced speedo wasn't too intrusive; I had forgotten how restful the green background of the tach could be.
Apart from it getting pretty cold at the end, and there being tons of bugs at the start (my helmet looked like it had sprouted fur when I got to Prince George), it was a pretty uneventful ride. Well, except for the numbnuts who had pulled his old truck off to the side of the road, leaving most of it actually still in the road; said truck was filthy so the rear reflectors were not reflecting, and he/she had not left the hazards on. So it blended in quite well and I didn't see it until I was almost on it. Passed it pretty close, for a sphincter pucker factor of about 9.75.
The bike ran flawlessly, didn't use any oil, and the chain still does not need adjusting (haven't touched it since I put the Scottoiler on a few thousand kms ago).
