I had been planning to do a longer moto road trip this year. Unfortunately, work and other commitments prevented me from ever solidifying a time to do it. I had some family stuff to do in California so figured I’d ride down rather than fly and make a long weekend of it. I had been hoping a sport tourer or ADV bike of sorts would fall into my lap before the trip, but that never happened so I took the Street Triple.
The first day, I headed west to the coast then rode down the coast. It was pretty much the reverse of the last day of my 2018 road trip, but a lot more fun because I was on a bike that was half the weight of the VTX and also had a better fuel range.
The roads were pretty empty on a Thursday, and I was able to ride at a good pace. Ended up about 100 miles south of the CA border near the redwoods.
Total for the day was about 406 miles (450 if you consider having to backtrack early on because I’d forgotten my phone charger). I was surprised overall at how comfortable the Triumph was. I was a little worried when my back started to get sore about an hour in, but as soon as I was able to get away from the city and ramp up the pace it was perfectly fine.
Started out day 2 by riding through the Avenue of the Giants, a fairly secluded windy road through the coastal redwoods. This was very much the Street Triple’s natural hunting ground, and at 7am it was totally deserted.
Tourist trap-ey, I know, but I couldn’t resist grabbing a photo of the triumph in one of the drive through trees.
After riding 101 for a while, I turned inland along more twisty back roads toward Sacramento. Despite some local traffic and caravans, I was able to keep up a good pace most of the way, passing on the triumph was WAY easier than it was on the VTX. Only real issue I had was with poor road quality on 16. The constant washboard pavement and stiff suspension compressing my spine made my back pretty sore by the time I hit Sacramento. Thankfully, I was taking the freeway from this point and the road surface was nice and smooth.
For the way back, I decided to find out what my limit was for mileage in a day by motorcycle. Headed north towards home planning to stop when I got too tired to continue.
Well, apparently my limit is somewhere above 700 miles. The roads were pretty open outside of Sacramento and Portland, so I could keep a steady pace for most of the ride. Besides a quick lunch about 400 miles in, I only stopped for gas (and chugged a bottle of water at each gas stop). Again, the ergonomics of the triumph really surprised me, nothing about the riding position became tiring on the ride. I didn’t find myself needing to constantly adjust or stretch out. In fact the only real discomfort I had was from the knee pads in my riding jeans digging in to the sides of my knees.
After doing 700 miles on a (sort of) sportbike, I think I might make a run at doing an IBA Saddlesore 1000 (1000 miles in 24 hours with specific rules, this gets you a patch and bragging rights) in the next couple years, if/when I find myself with a real continent crushing tourer in the garage.