NC with Jim
Pre trip plan
Another trip to the wonderland of roads that is North Carolina. Flood damage from the fall of 2024 still fresh. This was supposed a slower paced trip too find out Jim's traveling ranges.
Trip photos
Blog entries
Post trip summary
On the first day of this trip my riding jackets main zipper slide broke off. It's a "locking zipper pull", so at the second rest stop I was trapped in my jacket for 20 minutes, until we figured out the "lock". That was far to long to wait for the restroom, and I was very hot in my fully zipped up jacket. Once back home I've ordered replacement zippers for the jacket. It's hard to believe how much effort I'm putting into a jacket that I never really ilked all that much. But they are expensive to replace, and I've gotten used to all the things about this one that annoy me.
The second day of the trip my Cardo (helmet comm gear) battery showed it's age. It would only last about two hours from fully charged until it turned itself off. When new it lasted for 13 hours. Turns out that I may have help destroy it with my new faster charging magnetit USB cables. I upgraded to better connectors so that I could fast charge my phone and battery pack. Internet searches claim that the Cardo EDGE battery failures may be related to charging them fast than 1 amp. Once home I've ordered larger capacity batteries from China and one the same size to span the month the larger ones take to reach the US.
Jim made a lot of advancements in his cornering, and long distance touring range on this trip. He also found comfort in hammoch camping, and ruled out another tent solution. It's unfortunate that two bike drops during this trip left Jim with some repairs. Luckily he already had one of the damaged items in stock at home. There was some luggage case damage that hopefully can be straightened out, and he already had a set of soft bags at home. He decided at that last minute to use the hard cases, because the soft luggage was new and unknown. So really that just leaves a brake lever. Swapping the entire lever out for an aftermarket solution may end up being an improvement for nearly the same price as the BMW brake lever.
All in all a very productive trip to give Jim some longer distance touring miles. The shortened timeframe made it less of a retired guys trip than originally expected. But it was nice to get out on the road and camp again.