Well, I’ve spent two days on the road so far and the bike is running great. What a difference to be riding a 650 instead of a 350. I put about 15,000 dirt miles on the DR350 this summer and, well, that gets you pretty used to a bike and it’s shortcomings. You just sort-of learn to live with them. The DR650 is a dream–I can cruise along at 70 comfortably (thanks in part to the MRA windshield). I’m still working out some kinks, and it seems I start every trip with a new bike by running out of gas. Yeup, somewhere in PA yesterday at 188 miles on the odometer I ran out of gas. I just assumed that with a 4.9 gallon IMS tank, at ~60 mpg, that I could get to 200 easily without having to worry. Live & learn. Luckily, on my last trip I did the same thing the first day and realized that if I lean the bike over far enough to the left, the gas that’s marooned on the right flows over. At least enough to get me 10 miles to a gas station. No harm except a bruise to my ego.

So the first day I rode 280 miles via CT to NYC, where we had a party with my NY ADVrider friends. very cool. Good food, and I was glad to be able to see and say good-bye to my friends before leaving for half a year. I also said good-bye to my boyfriend Edward in NY City, and, well, that pretty much stank. The saving grace was the fact that I’m not too good with my GPS and was having trouble figuring out how to leave the City, so I didn’t have a lot of boo-hoo helmet time.

The ride out of NY City was easy enough, except for the near asphyxiation in the Holland Tunnel with all the stinky cars. I was surprised, though, that within an hour of NY City I was in NJ farmland and the scenery was a lot better. I spared taking pics of the NY city skyline–too much traffic.

I made it to MD yesterday, and stayed overnight with a fellow ADVrider. Bill & Kelly were terrific hosts and I slept like a log after a homemade Mexican dinner.