let's see how this turns out...
I normally avoid being on the road with the bike on weekdays, preferring the slightly less busy weekend traffic. But today I decided to have a long-ish ride, not having been out at all for almost three weeks, thanks to the months-long oppressive heat and humidity that I find makes recreational motorcycling such a chore.
But today a brisk south-easterly wind blowing on-shore had cleared away the humidity, so off I went at the later-than-usual time of just after 9am.
Temperature leaving home was a very refreshing 22°C (72°F), and I was initially a bit cool in my full mesh summer jacket – more mesh than jacket – though it came into its own later.
A brisk outer-suburban dash to get away from the suburbs, then a lengthy stretch on the Ipswich Mwy was followed by about 20km of the Brisbane Valley Hwy, a not-very-good stretch of country road.
After some 90km from home I stopped at one of my favourite country bakeries at the little village of Fernvale for a nice coffee and bun. While sitting outside watching the passing parade a couple of large transportable homes went by on the backs of a pair of semi-trailers. I couldn’t help recalling that some years ago a motorcycle traffic policeman was decapitated by something similar when on outrider duty escorting such behemoths up the Bruce Hwy – not a pretty thought.
Feeling sombre, but refreshed, I tracked back a little and re-joined the Warrego Hwy through the Lockyer Valley, riding westwards towards Toowoomba. The road surface was good, traffic light, though the ride rather boring until I came to the outskirts of Toowoomba and the very steep ride up the Range towards the city.
‘The Range’ is the Great Dividing Range (GDR) which comprises some 3500km (2175mi) of tall peaks running the length of Australia’s eastern seaboard and into western Victoria, separating the coastal strip from the interior. It’s much like America’s Appalachians, I imagine.
This day the range was a nightmare – traffic in both ascending lanes was backed right up, and proceeding at a snail’s pace, said snail clearly being crippled.
I joined the queue, in what became an advanced lesson in first-gear steeply-uphill slow-riding with a side-dish of clutch-slipping 201. Speed – if it could be called that – was below 10kph at times, engine temp rose to over 100°C, and I had to completely stop a number of times to allow the cars in front to move on so as to give me a bit of space to ensure I could move off without stalling… once I did in fact hear that dreaded ‘death rattle’ of an about-to-stall engine, but just managed to save things.
It has been many years since I was so tense and uptight on a motorcycle, and I was mighty relieved when we finally crawled to the top of the Range, where I saw the cause of the problem – a h-u-g-e piece of Caterpillar-like earthmoving equipment on an aircraft-carrier length trailer, that must have crawled up the Range in first gear! Unpleasant.
From busy lunch-time Toowoomba I turned south onto the New England Hwy and headed for Warwick. Both Toowoomba (130km from Brisbane) and Warwick (160km) are very old inland towns, Toowoomba being Queensland’s largest such.
They are interesting places, full of old buildings and with that unique Queensland country ‘feel’. Toowoomba is also a University city, and has many fine long-established schools and colleges. Many take boarders from the rest of Queensland, where conventional educational facilities and opportunities for families living on the vast and remote outback properties are almost non-existent. Indeed, many children of school age have to take their lessons via radio from the ‘School of the Air. She’s a big country!
From Warwick I headed north-east back towards Brisbane along the Cunningham Hwy, a nice smooth road with good corners and sweepers. Nearing the Cunningham Gap, heading down the Range this time, the temperate rainforest brought the temperature down very quickly indeed, to low 20s from low 30s, but over the Range and with the Scenic Rim around Brisbane spread out in front it soon warmed-up again, eventually briefly reaching 33°C (92°F).
It was a good ride of 426km for the day, taking the bike overall to 1026km from new and ready for its first 1000km service shortly.
I checked average speed and fuel consumption during this first 1035km, being pleased with the fuel average of 3.8L/ 100km at an average 74kph speed. I was out for a little over six hours today, with two brief fuel stops and a leisurely coffee break, so it was quite a good outing. Recent add-ons – front LEDs; Stebel Magnum horn; blind-spot mirrors; all seemed to work as intended.
As usual when I ride, what remains of the old brain was at work.
I reflected that I do not yet seem to have bonded fully with the LC, for unknown reasons. It’s not as if it’s markedly different to the pre-LC Roadsters I’ve had before, having covered many, many kilometres on those bikes. After all, dynamically the only major differences between the LC and the others is the LC’s slightly more peppy engine – which I’ve yet to try out in anger – and the markedly better gearbox.
I suspect that my few short outings on the LC in the almost six weeks I’ve owned it – and those outings being pretty brief because of the weather – means that I haven’t yet got to the ‘intuitive’ stage of handling and feeling the bike.
I also crystallised my earlier thoughts that maybe the suspension on the LC is a touch firmer than I can recall on my later cam-heads. I may be kidding myself in this belief, but the LC doesn’t quite seem to float over minor road imperfections in the way I recalled. Now that moving parts are bedded-in from new I plan to tweak the suspension by degrees – recording any changes made – to see if I can get it to be a bit more compliant, or as Panzermann might say – “fluid”. If not, I can certainly live with it.
I’m taking a few days off at the end of March to do an ~1000km circuit (with a full R&R day off the road) and I hope that these two longer days on the bike will cement the relationship.
Things I do increasingly like are the large, clear digital speed and gear read-outs, the cruise-control – scarcely needed on today’s short outing – and the excellent gear-shift. I played with this a bit more and seem to have found the trick (easier than before) with 5th to 6th gear upshifts with the Pro Assist clutchless feature. As I’ve noted before, downshifts are a breeze.
One minor thing I dislike is the almost microscopic lateral movement of the indicator switch – through even the thinnest summer gloves it’s hard to feel if it has moved, or not.
The seat still seems comfy enough to handle upcoming 500km and 600km days on the bike, if not quite as plush as the ‘komfortsitzen’ I’ve had – and raved about – on earlier Roadsters.
But the thing I noticed about the seat today and on earlier outings was that I didn’t notice it at all – a Good Thing!