Ride to Incline

The mastering of the motorbike is going according to plan. As soon as I got off work, I started up the bike, killed it, started it up again--and I was off! I'm on a mission to get 500 miles (and hopefully 1k) in before June 7th, when I'm heading to Vegas. The reason again, is that after 1k miles, I'm free to rev the engine to whatever speed necessary, before 1k miles I'm supposed to take it easy (6k rpm before 1k miles; 4k rpm before 500 miles).

It is nearly impossible to keep the tachometer below 4k rpm, so I'm pretty sure that number is just a rough guideline--but for freeway driving, I'll need to be in the 7-8k range for a while, which the bike isn't attuned to yet. The 45mph highway around Tahoe is almost perfect for the 500-1000 range, and some parts are good training for me right now in the sub-500 range.

After work, I decided to take the bike and my camera up to Incline Village for some practice, then back home. I was hoping to hit Cave Rock on the way home right around sunset, but I made it back a little earlier than anticipated. I was averaging 5-6k rpm on the road, so I wanted to give the bike a break, just in case the 4k rule actually applied.

The road up to Incline is a ton of fun to ride. 45mph speed limit, lots of curvy 30-35mph corners and a few 25mph sharpies. Lots of hills along the way too, so I got to practice turns going both up and down hill. Speeding up, slowing down. I got pretty good at slowing down before the turn, then speeding up through it--kind of like driving in the snow, except for the speeding up part, much more fun this way! I'm assuming rain might cause this fun to be a bit more risky to pull off.

I stopped by the side of the road close to Incline Village on the way home to snap a few photos, then made my way to Cave Rock. The rock is only 5 miles or so from Zephyr Cove, and it is a huge rock that Hwy 50 just blast through, instead of trying to demolish the entire rock, or go around. The rock is probably 200ft tall, but the tunnel through the rock is 100ft long at most. There are lots of these little unique rock formations around the lake, but this is by far the biggest (and the only one the highway goes through. Cave Rock is a pretty cool structure--I'd say the third neatest part of the drive around the lake. Hopefully I'll get pictures of my top two in the next week while it stays 70 degrees and sunny out :)

Tomorrow I go test out the DMV after work and see if I can get a permit, wish me luck! After the DMV I'm hoping to have time to go down to Minden and figure out this fingerprinting thing for observation. If I get lucky at the DMV I'll also need to figure out insurance stuff tomorrow.

Here are some pics from today: (in #4, if you look at a thumbnail version of the picture, the reflection of the sun on the water looks like a woman's restroom sign--it does, I'm not crazy!)