Bummer

, Annie! May you have many more!

Sounds like you have a plan going. The area is full of great roads and all the suggestions have been great. One tip: Keep an eye on the time. Do NOT do the Dragon after dark! Irene and I did this once, simply because it was the only route between where we were and where we needed to be that wouldn't have taken a bunch of hours more. Exciting, but not fun.

Check out ColorRite for the paint.

They are both in Irene and my thoughts and prayers.

Nice car. Nice color. Enjoy! I looked at the Solstice and a few other two seat rag tops before settling on a 370Z Roadster. Red, of course. Maturity - fighting it until the bitter end.

I (we) know what this event has meant to you, and that cancelling can not be a casual choice. Irene and I just hope that whatever it is works out well.

2006 was the 50th anniversary of Yamaha. (Not to be mistaken for the 50th anniversary of Yamaha's entry into racing, which was 2012.) The 2006 R1 commemorated the anniversary with the yellow and black racing paint job on 500 bikes. The R6 came in the Yamaha racing colors that year. They also made a big deal about the anniversary at the dealerships at the end of the racing season. While Mr. Yamaha didn't tell me so, I consider the tank badge to be a nod to the anniversary.

Lee's Ford Marina Restaurant is pretty good. Don't miss out on the fried green beans appetizer. 192 from Somerset east. Stop at Bee Rock. Take some pictures at the bridge. Continuing on 192, then turn right at 312 and head toward Corbin. 25W then 90 will take you to Cumberland Falls. 90 west to 27 and back to Somerset. It's about 100 miles.

Happy New Year, one and all!!

Indiana's current law states that handlebars may not rise above the shoulders of the rider. Of course, do it if it pleases you, but be aware that you may be courting official attention.

Well done, Annie. I can't think of anyone more deserving.

My advice is try 'em without the load equalizers first. I run mine without. Anybody who's telling you that you have a burnt out bulb because the one (s)he sees is flashing fast is somebody who isn't going to run you over and claim they didn't see you.

I would exercise great care with this. (IANAL, this is not legal advice, etc.) Under federal law it has pretty much always been legal to transport a weapon from a place you're legal to a place you're legal, unloaded, in a locked box, in a compartment other than the one inhabited by the driver/passenger. Even through Chicago. It sounds like the new Illinois law will (may?) be interpreted to allow licensed carriers from another State to have their gun in their passenger compartment, loaded. I have not read the law so I don't know if they mean that when the individual leaves the vehicle (Other than going into a hotel/motel - and just how may one carry it on the way in/out?) the weapon must be locked in a box in the trunk, or if the glove compartment will do. Based upon it being Illinois, I'm going to assume they mean the most restrictive version they can think of. Is there really a "within" on a motorcycle? If they mean in the vehicle not on your person, you're done right there. If they mean on your person but within the vehicle, done again. If one goes down (heaven forbid, of course) and one is no longer in any way attached to the bike, one is now carrying outside the vehicle. At a time like that nobody needs another problem. Does the man who issued this statement speak for all law enforcement? It certainly seems unlikely. As such, can one expect any of that to be adhered to? Again, it seems unlikely. Illinois was forced into this. What are the chances they'll take this legal loss particularly well? I certainly don't want to be the guy they take their frustrations out on.

Squid, we're really glad to hear you and Lonna are alright! Hope everyone else is too.

I had cracking on Venoms. When I talk about cracking I mean that I took it off and flexed the sidewall and could see threads. It was a crack. No "maybe". No "is that a crack?" No "maybe if I rub this with something..." There was no doubt it was a crack. As in "Holy beep, look at that crack!" The first set had the serious crack (rear) the replacement set started cracking (also rear) so I went to Elites. It has been a couple of years now. In time I won't mind trying Avons again. The tyres (they are Avons after all) handled great - hands down my favorite so far.

Larry and Joyce, thanks for hosting this event. Irene and I had a great time! We're always more than a little tickled to be able to catch up with our old friends. Making new friends is a welcome bonus.

Irene and I are planning to be there!

, Lonna! May you have many more! Sorry I'm late, work keeps interrupting the important stuff. Irene and I hope things are going well for you and Brad. Hugs for both of you.

My #1 rpm tip to the new folks: Take it out and run it into the rev limiter. It won't hurt a thing, plus it'll give you an idea how high the Venture will rev. Do it in second. Third will max out just short of 100mph (on the speedo, which is reading around 7% high). Remember, just before it starts sputtering from the spark getting shut down it's quite happy. Learn the sound. Learn the vibration. Take it close to the top regularly as you crank through the gears. I put a Dyna3000 in mine (spark box) set for 7250 and bounce off of it occasionally. The stock one tops out at around 6500. I don't like to run 50/55 in fifth, though I do. Fourth and fifth are overdrives. I rarely try to do any serious accelerating in fifth. If I'm in fifth and want to crank it up I drop into third and yank loud. My #2 tip to the new folks: Get a tach. I have a reservoir mounted tach I got from Baron's. To start the bike pull the choke out all the way. Once it's running push it back in until it's idling ok to warm up. After warm-up (a minute?) push it the rest of the way in. It won't hurt a thing. I've run 20 miles with the choke on 1/3. The only thing you'll notice it being hard on is your mileage. I tap the choke know in every now and then just to be sure that I shut it off when I should have - maturity isn't all it's cracked up to be and sometimes my memory isn't Oh look, safety chrome.

Commercial video of any flavor is a problem for Linux. Since Linux is free (as in both speech and beer), there's nobody to pay the licensing fee for the proprietary encryption used to keep people from viewing the videos they thought they bought (but really didn't). Ultimately it comes down to greed. I'd pay a small price to, for example, the MPAA - give them something not totally shameful to do -, to watch the movies, but they don't want to do it that way. Couple that with the corporate desire to milk me over and over for the same movies by changing formats for no particularly good reason and we have a situation that I no longer care to support. I do not have a Blue Ray player and have no plans to buy one then spend all that money to get movies I should have been able to archive and watch pretty much forever. No, that doesn't answer the question, but it does work toward an explanation of the problem. By the way, decss is worked on continually to resolve the encryption issue, but it's often not included in the standard repositories. For example I use Fedora. I have to use a "non-free" repository to get "encumbered" stuff to work. Not a problem from my end, but that doesn't make it easy for folks who don't like to "nerd out". lxBDPlayer is said to work and be reasonably easy to use, but I can't really say much about it since as mentioned, I won't Blue Ray anything.

Kaw also had a smaller (350?) three cylinder two stroke in the early '70s. I had a Suzuki T350J two cylinder two stroke and a buddy had the small Kaw 3. Another buddy had the 750. He did a wheelie showing off for his girl, lost it, and wound up with a bunch of road rash. The Navy was not amused. The rest of us were very very careful.

Wow, I hadn't seen the OLIX... Seriously, I think about any camera is better than none. I started with a Samsung sports cam and got a lot of great videos with that before it died and I got the GoPro. (Which isn't perfect either.) T.J., and anybody else who hasn't figured this part out yet, you're going to want to ride at the back of any groups now, so that you can get other bikes into the video. It just looks better than the open road, which isn't actually bad in it's own right. As an additional thought, I'd like to come up with a way to mount the camera directly to the bike. I find I don't care for the motion it gets when mounted on the handlebars, and from what I've seen I wouldn't like the helmet mounting much either.

Thanks guys. 226A looks good on Google maps. Right now I'm planning on starting in the Cherokee area and heading up to do 226A and whatever else I can find that looks good and twisty in the area. Time to fire up Google maps and look at 226 itself. There are a few not so great roads - big ones used to actually get from one place to another in a bit of a hurry, but overall the entire area seems chock full of great roads. The fact someone slapped a name on one of 'em isn't really all that important. I'll probably do it anyway, but it looks like 226/A will be better (though from Google maps it can be a bit hard to tell).

Congratulations, Dan (and Rose, who may be able to relax a bit). It's great that you're still around in spite of Bambi's dad's best worst intentions.

And in that area, does anybody know how 226A is. (1rooster, I'm kind of glancing your way.) I'm looking at a loop including 80, some of the Blue Ridge Parkway, and 226A. Probably including Mt. Mitchell. My biggest problem is that Irene has fallen in love with Otter Creek and Tellico Roads (Closer to The Dragon/Cherohala - gravel - not really suitable for a Venture) so I'm going to have a time talking her into something else for a three-day weekend.