Over the hills and through the woods to the grandkids house

[rich_e]

I went for a nice ride last Saturday to visit the grandkids. Normally it's only 25 miles, but I managed to squeeze in about twice that much by riding on unpaved country roads. Always fun! Thanks to the grid-like layout of the country road system, there are hundreds of miles of dirt and gravel roads to explore in my neck of the woods (Jackson county in NE Kansas USA).

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Here's the bike the morning of the ride. It's a 2007 Shinray 200, mostly stock except for the bars, footpegs and rear sprocket. The bag on the front fender is a tube pouch, I elected to carry a bottle of water in there rather than a tube and tire irons, this turned out to be a mistake!

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I'm glad they had this sign because, indeed, the water was nearly up to the road level.

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I stopped for lunch at Mike's diner in Holton, KS. Nice place, good food, stop in if you are ever in the area. However, on this day their AC was on the blink and it was hot! Eat it and beat it. It was cooler on the road.

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After lunch I headed up to my daughter's house to visit with the kids. They always have to sit on the bike when I visit:
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While I was taking pictures with the kids I noticed my rear tire was flat. I had checked everything over at lunch so it must have went down on the way out of town. My son-in-law has an air compressor, so we aired up the tire but it started going down again slowly. By this time I had been gone from home about 5 hours. I didn't tell my wife that I'd be gone so long so I gave her a call and told her I'd been gone a little longer. Well she was madder than a wet hen that I'd been gone so long without calling in. So I just filled the tire with some Green Slime (r), aired it up and hoped for the best before hightailing it back home. The tire's still holding air but I'm going to pull off the stock tires and put on my Kenda K760 Trakmasters I bought last year and never got around to mounting. I'll also revert to the stock rear sprocket as I can barely use 5th gear with the stock tires (the Kendas are a tad taller).
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[katoranger]

Get report. That road looks like a great ride in the country. I have my trakmaster ready come about September I will put it on for the dirt.

Allen

[SpudRider]

Thanks for posting the nice ride report and great photos. :) I think your green bike looks very nice; I prefer green to red, blue, or black. :)

Spud :)

[AZ200cc]

SOunds like a great ride, Slime saves behinds on small leaks..Both my tubes are filled with it and ready for the worst. Good report thanks for the pics. :D

[Cal25]

Glad you had a good ride. Also gladyou made it back to the house with a leak.

[frostbite]

Nice report. The Trakmaster gets some serious bite in the nasty stuff.