Ride to Tower Park, Peoria Heights.

The plan for today was to ride to the Serena cafe for breakfast and go to Peoria to find Tower Park. The meeting spot was different then where we usually group up at, which wasn't bad but some one crashed on RT47 and a few people had to reroute to get to the shell. That's not easy when you don't know a area. Also sorry for the bad estimate on time frame for the ride, hope you all enjoyed it and thanks for putting up with me guys and girls. :)

Once we arrived at Serena we found the cafe closed. Sad but they had a sign on the door that it was only so they too could take a break and go on vacation. We just rode to Ottawa and stopped at the Bee Hive which was fine, just not so quaint.

This tower Park very cool view and one scary elevator. The elevator is all glass and makes some bad sounds.
It's actually a old water tower for Pabst blue ribbon beer. There gone now due to a fire in the 80's.

The weather was Great all day except for a little sprinkle, it looked way worse.

Thats the top of the elevator all the way down there.
These little guys were all over the top deck. They look like bees but acted like flies. very docile, so much so I was joking with Jim that we could pet them. When I tried it didn't care.
The Burger Barge was the lunch stop and we rolled in and it was a little busy. I begged the guys to sit inside so we could watch some of the Indy 500 they had playing on the big screen. Food was OK, but the wait was very long. It was still fun.
These last two photos crack me up. There both in desperate need of a Caption. Just leave it in the comments!!

They were not fighting but it sure looks like it!!

Twistar/Spring In Spring Green

So every year we (nitroriders.org) go up to Spring Green the weekend before Memorial day. We used to do the weekend with the HSTA group. The thing is you don't get much for the membership price. So we do on our own and it's always nice.

My buddy Jim and I had to leave later in the day due to that mess called work. We met up at the Belvidere oasis and only wait a few minutes for him to ride up. Here I thought I was super late due to side roads and tons of traffic.

Dave cleaning up the morning dew on the Tiger. Hey are you ready to get those great eggs that take two hours to cook?? Yea, the chef's inn down the street was VERY SLOW.
Tom ST3
My ninja looking for a speeding ticket. :)
First gas stop of the day getting some water and talking about the route. The weather could not of been better. Sunny all day and I never broke a sweat.
This was a quiet little bar/restaurant and empty. I don't remember what town it was but the view was great during lunch.
The camera just doesn't capture the view. A panoramic lens would grab the size of the Mississippi river much better.
Thanks for leading T2!!!

Bored waiting on the weather!!

So I'm bored hanging out waiting on the weather to get nicer so I played a little. First thing was the GPS is a pain to use the touch screen picking from a list of options like different gas station, ect..
It's only because the tip of motorcycle gloves have a thick seam, leaving a poor surface area. The very expensive Touratech mount has a stylus in the back of it, but that's also hard to find quick. So a trip the Ace hardware was in order to fix this. In there bulk assortment they have grommets that the stylus fits in perfectly. Also I used some galvanized plate for the tab to hold the grommet. A pair of sheet metal shears, drill and a dremel did a perfect job. I think I might add a tether if I need to move quick from a stop light or something like that..




Just playing camera tricks with my new canon XTI. The garage was pitch black and I hung the shutter for thirty seconds while I did circles with a led flash light. kind of neat. You can see my socks slightly as I walked around the bike.

KLR Happy Trails rack and Givi E21 boxes.

Finally got my Happy Trails rack after being back ordered for three weeks. They look great and have tough looking powder coating. The only thing is the rack is for any kind of box set up you can imagine. For mine I went with the Givi E21 boxes. The price is very good and the size is not so big the bike looks odd.

This is the template they send out as a option if you go with Givi bags. It worked well but because I don't have a drill press I had some drill bit dither. That made the holes good but not perfect.
Simple enough to do, just four holes.

A lot of other racks dwarf the bags. So you end up seeing the back plate on the side of the bag. That to me is a little unsightly.
The instructions want you to extend the turn signal farther back so there out of the way. They don't even come close to the E21's. I just drilled a hole through the original turn signal plate.
Almost looks like it meant to be there.
Not too bad of a look.