NJDevils1990 ride log

[njdevils1990]

The ride was amazing and I'm glad I was able to do it on this bike. I left my town at 6am Friday and filled up. From then on I was filling up about every 130 miles or ~2 hours. Weather was perfect, a little chilly in the morning but nut bad. I made it to Niagara Falls around 1pm. I was amazed that I didn't need to look at my directions on the way up our down, so that was a confidence boost to my navigational/memory skills. Going into Canada was pretty easy, about 5 minutes in line. I also like that we can switch our bikes to km/h. I took the QEW Queen Elizabeth Way) to Niagara for about 30km and rode around for about 30 minutes before finding a nice metered parking spot. Walked around for about 45 minutes before eating lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. After lunch I went and took some pictures of the falls and got some frozen yogurt! Picked up a few souvenirs for my GF and parents. And made my way back to the bike for my ride home. On the way back I took a random exit and wandered around for a few kms. Made my way back to the QEW and to the border back to the USA. Getting back sucks! Took about 20 minutes in line and another 10 because I got the privilege of being searched. The trip back was a little quicker by about 45 minutes as I knew the roads and took a chance doing between 80-90mph the whole way. I lucked out not seeing any cops. I left Niagara around 4pm and got home around 11:30pm. I am not really writing much on the travel as it was all interstate. As far as the 07, it averaged 53mpg up and back, costing ~$55 to go 783.5 miles. The seat it's comfortable enough for one person to ride about 2 hours at a time before taking a break. Biggest complaint, wind noise! I need a big windscreen to have a little protection from the wind. I also may look for a new, quieter helmet. So, only improvements I would make are a little better seat padding and a tall windscreen. Maybe a charger port for the phone and a connection for heated gear, but those aren't a necessity. I would defiantly do this ride again. The best part will come soon, the pictures! I didn't take many but I have one of my bike and a few of the falls. I will post them shortly.

[Guru]

Awesome ! I was looking forward to you post, thanks!

[njdevils1990]

[Guru]

Very nice pictures! Thanks for sharing.

[TwistedTorque]

Amazing. Looks like an awesome trip. Def on the to do list

[Guest unknown]

Those pictures look great. Thanks for sharing

[thestache]

Amazing pics...was that a cavity search, if so, I am NEVER going to Canada :)

[njdevils1990]

Going to Canada is easy, it's coming back to the US that sucked. I'm going up there again in a week with my girlfriend, not on the bike. Going to Toronto this time though!

[njdevils1990]

I'll be sure to add more trips to this soon, another big one I forgot to add to this was in 2015 some friends and I rode/drove down to Florida from New Jersey. Two days trip each way and went down I95 98% of the way.

[njdevils1990]

Well, haven't done a big trip in a while. I'll be planning on doing a ride down to Florida later this year that will be at least a 2,700 mile (4,350 KM) ride both ways. I did this ride in two days in 2015 with some friends on my '15 FZ-07 with no issues. I'm planning on doing it in one day in both directions this time. That will likely be the only BIG ride this year. Also might do some smaller big rides like to Maine and other sub 1,000 mile (1,609km) rides. I'll be sure to post more up here in the future once I'm back on the bike in a few weeks.

[DewMan]

3 hours ago, njdevils1990 said:

I'll be planning on doing a ride down to Florida later this year that will be at least a 2,700 mile (4,350 KM) ride both ways. I did this ride in two days in 2015 with some friends on my '15 FZ-07 with no issues. I'm planning on doing it in one day in both directions this time.

So basic math tells me that 2,700 miles divided by 1 day (24hrs) = an average speed of 112.5 mph.

 

This is before you factor in gas/food/bio breaks.

 

I'm going to assume you mean you're planning to do each 1,350 mile leg in a single day which will still be quite a feat.

[norcal616]

@DewMan... 1 day could be 36hours not 24hrs  

[njdevils1990]

Haha, yeah 1,350 in one day. It should be about 18 hours plus stops for fuel, food, washroom. I did a similar trip in 2012 with my dad where we did about 3,500 miles in 10 days and did our trip home from Daytona to Flemington in 17 hours at a little over 1,000 miles and us averaging about 70 mph.

[e30kawi]

On 1/26/2019 at 8:24 AM, njdevils1990 said:

Haha, yeah 1,350 in one day. It should be about 18 hours plus stops for fuel, food, washroom. I did a similar trip in 2012 with my dad where we did about 3,500 miles in 10 days and did our trip home from Daytona to Flemington in 17 hours at a little over 1,000 miles and us averaging about 70 mph.

1300+ miles in one day!! Honestly that sounds like torture to me. But hats off to you!

[njdevils1990]

I'm back on the road now! Only took 25 minutes or so in the DMV. I'm down in Delaware now visiting some friends. Good first ride in 211 days.

[kbob2000]

On 9/1/2014 at 4:29 PM, njdevils1990 said:

Biggest complaint, wind noise! I need a big windscreen to have a little protection from the wind. I also may look for a new, quieter helmet. So, only improvements I would make are a little better seat padding and a tall windscreen. Maybe a charger port for the phone and a connection for heated gear, but those aren't a necessity. 

I highly suggest wearing earplugs.  I wear them every single time I get on the bike now.  Even for my 15 minute ride to work.  It really helps on long rides with fatigue though. A usb spot to keep the navigation up all the time is super nice as well.  I tend to avoid highways as I'm usually trying to enjoy as much of the ride as possible, no Iron Butt rider here.  Thanks for the pictures, I've never been up there. Looks cool!

[njdevils1990]

First Iron Butt ride is planned, weather permitting. My dad, a family friend and I are going to be riding down to Daytona, FL for the motocross race at the beginning of Bike Week. Our current plan is to leave Friday morning, watch the race and hang out Saturday then head home Sunday morning. Total planned riding distance of 2,014 miles from the house to Daytona Speedway and back plus miscellaneous riding around. Each way is roughly 15 hours each way plus fuel and food/washroom stops.

[njdevils1990]

Next trip planned for next weekend, the first day of bike week. My dad, and I are leaving for Florida Friday 8 March in the morning sometime. Taking this route down and meeting a friend down in the Carolinas mid day sometime and completing the ride in probably about 18-19 hours with fuel/food/washroom stops. Watching the motocross race in Daytona on Saturday then making the return trip on Sunday. Will be almost 2,200 miles round trip and I'll be the only one of the three of us not on a cruiser.

[njdevils1990]

Ride changed a bit to/from Florida. We will be leaving around 00:30 Friday and our route will be I-95 the whole way down as our friend that we're meeting in the Carolina's will be meeting us closer to I-95 tomorrow morning, probably around 09:00. From there we'll continue down I-95 until we get to Daytona. The trip will be 15 hours of travel time according to Google Maps. We'll probably get down there around 15-16:00 Friday afternoon.

[njdevils1990]

Well, we arrived to Daytona. My dad and I left from Flemington at 00:39 this morning and took I-95 the whole way down. Met our friend in Florence, SC then the three of us continued down to where we're staying about 30 minutes from Daytona Beach at 16:30 and took us about 30 minutes to get to Daytona from there. So took us about 16.5 hours to get down. My previous one day trip was in 2012 on my Buell 1125CR when my dad and I took 10 days to travel down and went all over Florida. We made the trip up in 17.5 hours and that was over about 1,050 miles, verry similar to this trip but this one was an hour faster. We averaged about 70 mph (110 kmh) and the bike was averaging 50 mpg (4.7L/100K) and were comfortably filling up every 150 miles (240 km).

[njdevils1990]

Been hanging out at/around Daytona International Speedway since about 13:00. Got our passes for the supercross race tonight and we'll be sitting on the road course about 200 feet after the start/finish line. We're killing some time at Hooters now. In the photo are my dad and our friend.

[njdevils1990]

Well, we're on our way home. So far we made it down in about 16.5 hours then on Saturday hung out at the Iron Horse Saloon then around Daytona Speedway and watched the supercross race at night. After the race we rode around a bit and stopped at The Broken Spoke to check it out. Then we went back to sleep (at least I did right away at the house we were staying at). On Sunday we woke up, had breakfast then packed up and went to the Harley dealer to check the vendors out, after that we went over to Main St. and got lunch. We filled up after that and started heading up north. We rode about 500 miles and stopped for the night after our friend's bike ran out of fuel about 2 miles from the fuel exit. I think we got bad fuel as our fuel lights went on after about 125 miles (201 km) instead of the usual ~145 miles (233 km). We got to a fuel station then stayed the night in town after getting dinner. We're about to get ready to head back out and should be home around 18:00 today. The FZ is doing great on this trip, I'll have at least 14,000 miles (22,530 km) on the bike by the time we get home and possibly another 1,000 miles (1,610 km) by the time next weekend comes around.

[njdevils1990]

Ride is completed! Total trip distance of 2,182 miles (3,511 km) no issues between the three of us other than a small case of our friend running out of fuel. The FZ was very comfortable actually, thanks to the Yamaha comfort seat I got a few months after I got the bike in '17. I will definitely be doing more long distance rides in the future.