Parades
I've been in two Christmas Parades this month. First was a 14 mile parade of old cars, my Spyder (only bike braving the cold wx) then our fire engine, with Santa throwing candy, in our area called Lake Arrowhead. Spyder did great, but when it came to the short, but really steep, hill in the church parking lot, The Big Red Bug didn't like it at all. Stalled at the super slow pace of cars parking and people walking in front of me. The low torque monster reared his ugly head and several stalls later, Big Red got parked. I should have gone to the other parking lot, which is relatively flat. I've ridden all kinds of bikes with little or no torque in the low rpm range, but the Spyder takes the cake on start-ups in general and on really steep driveways for sure. Living and riding in North GA, I'm pretty proficient at feathering the clutch and getting the throttle on without stalling, but that driveway kicked my butt.
Second short parade was only about a mile in downtown Canton, GA. Just one easy hill and everything was ok, except they chose to do it at 5:30 in the evening and as it got dark, the street lights were doing their job; but with little kids and old goats leaping into the street to get the candy and beads, etc, they were hard to see sometimes. Road with my old Goldwing group and it was good to see some of the folks.
No problems at all except my inept starts on that steep approach to the parking lot. It was cold, so it wasn't going to overheat, the hot air coming out of the right side felt good.
Tuck
