August 2nd Moonlightless Ride Report

[RainMaker]

18 riders (9 Valks, 4 Goldwings, 1 Shadow, 2 VTXs, 1 Kawasaki and 2 HDs) rode the Moonlightless ride to Sherman Saturday night.  While it did not start out a cool ride, once we got out of the concrete jungle that is DFW, we found cooler air.  No critters on the road and very light traffic, so an easy ride to Sherman. We rode under the speed limit.  After we got to 69 and 11, we developed a large following - of cages.  They were stuck behind us and nothing they could do about it, so they got to run 30-40 miles with us untll we turned off at 1417.  It was our good deed of the night - helping the cagers drive safe!  LemonDrop took the lead at this point and wheeled us directly to the IHOP.  Turns out she called ahead so we had great seating and no waiting. Arrived at 11:42PM.  Good food and fast service made the IHOP a recommended stop for the future.  After about an hour of telling lies, we left the air conditioning, mounted up and split into two groups.  The larger group (11 bikes) decided to head home on 75.  The small group of 7 continued and took FM56 to Whitesboro.  No one went to Texoma to watch the sun come up. 

12 miles out of Sherman, we stopped on the side of FM 56 and turned off all the lights.  The ability to see all the stars and the dust of the Milky Way is just incredible.  Out there, dark really is dark!  Everyone (including me) made that nasty turn onto FM121 in Tioga. Continued on without incident until we got to Prosper.  Then the gendarmes got into the act.  We were running 10mph below the speed limit for the whole trip, so knew we were not speeding.  But then it happened.  Our tail gunner's Gold Wing has a beautiful set of decorative lights on it and the Prosper Police wanted to make sure he knew his decorations were illegal.  In Prosper, anyway.  Said it was the first time he's been stopped for his decorative lights. The rest of us pulled into a closed Exxon station, formed up and waited.  Then here comes the Wing and the patrol SUV which parks behind our formation.  Are we alllllll  going downtown? Then the second patrol SUV showed up - guess we looked like a pretty rugged bike gang.  Only a warning, though, so thankful that's all it was.  Those officers are lucky we were tired or who knows what kind of rumble would have started! 

The rest of the ride, the next 16 miles, was very uneventful on 380 and we split up at 75 and 380 to head to our respective homes around 3AM.

Here's some pics












We ran through areas with the temperature in the upper 70s.  Mostly in the farm areas without a lot of concrete.

Worthwhile and something we should schedule a few times in the summer.  Maybe a shorter ride next time, since 12th man and I got home around 4am.

RainMaker

[Mer]

Hey there Rainmaker (no rain!)!  I'm the gal on the VTX.  I know it's not a Valkyrie BUT I do LOVE them...does that count?  Seriously...thanks for leading the ride.  It was AWESOME!!  I wished I could have done the 2nd half of the ride but I was getting pretty tired and thought I should head on home.  I had a GREAT time riding and meeting everyone!  Thanks again for all your hard working planning this thing!  It is definitely appreciated!

[Wanderer]

Great turn out! Some new faces too! Thanks for making me wish I had gone! ~Jeff

[Houdini]

This was a great ride.  The route was nice and the temps were quite comfortable, especially going thru the cool spots.  Two suggestions I can think of is maybe start the ride a little earlier next time, 9 instead of 10 maybe, everyone at my table was tired and heading home after the stop at IHOP (check out all of the grey hair in the pics)  ;-) .  The second was the speed we maintained, it was way too slow.  Why ride under the speed limit, at least maintain the speed limit.  Being at the back of the pack and seeing all of the cages piling up was uncomfortable for me and seemed unnecessary.
 
That being said, are we doing a moonlight ride now?

Chuck

[Thalas'shaya]

good times!  i sure did enjoy it! 

i'm a night owl, so this was a wonderful and refreshing change for me from the "KSU at 0600" rides that i half-dread. 

the smell of cut hay as we rode through some of the more rural areas was so sweet!  it tickled my nose and took me back to childhood afternoons spent building forts out of hay bales (the square ones) and trying to clamber up to the top of round bales.  i swear i could almost feel the hay poking my skin as i rode along...

thanks for leading a fun one, rainmaker!

[RainMaker]

I set the ride up with a purpose, so that those who did not want to ride the whole trip could head home on 75 at the halfway point and get home a couple of hours earlier. They could also have cut off at 121 and headed back to McKinney before the IHOP - lots of exits were planned for those not wanting to ride that late. Not sure that starting at 9PM would have helped a lot. I think we could certainly start the ride earlier next time, but 9PM is probably as early as we could do it.  Earlier and it just isn't that much cooler.  The hard part is that if you've been up all day, it's really hard to stay alert that late.  I admit I was really tired when I got home.

Ride speed - we were taking it very easy on this trip.  Next ride, we'll run just above the speed limit.  I was overcautious leading the ride and if I had known about the pileup of cages would have pulled off to let them by or sped up - just didn't get any reports from the tailgunner so didn't know.  I personally like to go faster on rides and held myself back.  Oh, well - learning experience.

Thanks for the comments.  I'm open to other suggestions for our next night ride.  Of course, depends on if my wife is out of town since she thinks it is crazy to be riding that late.  And she was out of town.

RainMaker

[volvobob]

  I thought the ride was just great.  Thanks Rainmaker for setting this one up, posting it on the board and letting everyone make a choice.  Thats what riding is all about choices.  Volvobob

[Tubadoor]

I'm with VolvoBob, it was a good ride and my hat is off to Rainmaker who always does a great job! Too bad about the cages, but like Rainmaker said if the Tailgunners will let him know that we are stacking traffic we will pull off and let them by. Guess we should have covered that in the pre-ride: can't think of everything.

The pace was okay, it being so dark and I had some problems with glare from behind. We were told we were going to ride slow, so no biggy!

Just glad to get to ride again! Have'nt had the bike out in awhile and it was good to meet new folks. Sorry I missed the excitement with the Poolice,NOT! My over 50 was hurtin and I had to get up in the morning and go to church with the preacher.

Thanks again Mark!!!!!