Barber Motorsports Park

We did a track day with STT Southern at Barber Motorsports Park a few weeks ago. I've started this post three times since then, and I'm still having trouble getting my raving lunacies under control. So I'll use a few images this time in place of words.



Unbelievable. Where other tracks simply provide an area to park your rig and some decent asphalt to carve, Barber invites you into a gated community of golf course-quality grounds, an unmatched collection of motorcycle history (see their museum), and a crash-friendly, jaw-dropping race course.

I have a lot to learn about road racing (only my 4th track day), but the STT staff at a venue like Barber rewards you just for trying. I definitely got my money's worth on this track day -



- and of course the great company didn't hurt.

Thanks to the beautiful photographer, who plans to be on the bike next track day!

Route planning

Ask me what I'm doing this weekend, and I'll tell you visiting family. Ask me what I did last weekend, and I'll tell you the same. Ask me what I'm doing next weekend...you get the point. I love visiting family, but this way of life wreaks havoc on my motorcycling time. I know, why not use the bikes to go on these trips? No reason.

And so this weekend we're giving it a go - visiting my father-in-law on the SV650S and Ninja 250. The idea seemed simple and appealing at first, but then when I thought about the Interstates we usually use to get there, I decided we needed to find a back-roads way of getting there. This trip usually takes us about 3.5 hours using 66, 495, 95, 476, 76, and Pennsylvania's SR-422. How can I possibly come up with a route anywhere near that simple if I stay off the highways? Oh, I forgot to mention one little thing...

...friends of ours recently shared their Mad Map with us - theirs was a map outlining large weekend loops to drive in the Smoky Mountain area. Mad Maps seems to focus on twisty and/or scenic roads for their weekend loops. When our Economic Stimulus $$$ rolled in, we bought 3 Mad Maps, and one of them covers New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We tested this map out a few weekends ago when we aimed the Civic for Northern New Jersey - instead of our usual early morning sprint up 95, we swung West and came in on 78. Before the PA/NJ border, we branched off to drive a 30+ mile portion of one of Mad Maps's Pennsylvania loops (which ended up putting us on 80, and we entered the Garden State that way).

We were not disappointed.

This was 30 miles of windy roads with constant elevation changes and banked turns. Speed limits would drop to 25 as you pass through a 4-block ghost town, and before you knew it, you were back up to speed carving asphalt you may never have found otherwise.

So, what I haven't mentioned, is that we aim to fit a portion of a Mad Maps loop into each trip. Now keeping the whole trip off the freeway and getting a taste of Mad Maps in the same trip to Perkiomenville, PA has proven quite challenging. I admit, route-planning is a very new activity for me. But with Google Maps and a AAA membership, I should have the tools I need to come up with a decent line.

While the jury is out on the decency of my line, the fact remains that it's a 210-mile route with over 70 turns - all of which GMaps estimates will take us 6.5 hours. It's quite a price to pay if this is the cost of using motorcycles to visit family. We'll see how we feel about it when we reflect upon the trip on Steve's wooden rockers...

Update:

Well, it basically took us about 8 hours. We did everything from ferrying across the Potomac to sliding through gravel roads with our sport bikes. The scenery was great, some of the roads were totally cool, but this is no way to get from point A to point B. Needless to say, we took a much simpler route home.



No regrets, though!

Yeah, I'd wear a Triumph t-shirt

I usually hate sporting brand names. It makes me feel like a tool for someone else's profit. At least, that's how I usually feel. But after our Saturday motorcycling adventure, I think I've made an exception.

Megan tracked down a Triumph demo event happening at Clinton Cycles, a dealership just over the Woodrow Wilson bridge in Maryland. The idea of getting to test drive a Street Triple had us more than interested in heading out there, so I hit Google Maps in an attempt to plan a back roads route. We even managed to gather Will onto our bandwagon - the more the merrier!

And so we set out Saturday morning, the 3 of us riding staggered. While we kept off the highway as much as possible, we had to hit 495 to get across the Potomac. We hopped onto some local roads asap, and got lost as fast as we got off the interstate. Our impeccable sense of direction and Megan's map got us, finally, to the Triumph dealership much later than we had planned.

Ah, but this is where the fun began! Parked in the lot was a gigantic 18-wheeler sporting the Triumph logo, and a fleet of machines straight out of their 2008 catalog. After cooling off in the dealership's accessories department, we headed for the Triumph demo truck to see what they had to offer.

It was great - after a waiver, they had a sign-up sheet with a matrix - each row represented a bike they had, and each column was a 1/2 hour time slot. Every 1/2 hour you could sign up for whatever bike you wanted to take out! If the bike you wanted was taken, you could just sign up to ride whatever other model was available. Between the 3 of us we got to try 4 different models - it was a blast.

The Triumph team led us out in a staggered group on the local roads. They had one lead rider, one rider in the middle, and one rider taking up the rear of the pack. Mixed in-between were people like us getting a kick out the whole event.

The Triumph reps were really friendly and they basically let us have a little field day with their bikes. It was a low-stress, low-intensity motorcycling event, but for some reason it was still way fun. I'll leave the bike reviews for future posts, but bottomline? I like Triumph.