Me, and my Shadow.....

Nope, this is not about my first motorcycle, a 2006 Honda Shadow Aero. Nice motorcycle.

Temps from high 20s to mid 30s during morning ride, mid 40s during the afternoon ride.

Today's riding was broken up into two rides by planned maintenance on my loving wife's minivan. She and I bled the brakes, I replaced the stock bleeder valves with speedbleeders (gotta love 'em) and after lunch my wife went to the movies. Once she returned, the afternoon ride was on.

The theme for the morning and afternoon rides was to try and capture my shadow as I rode along on the motorcycle. I had to find pretty straight roads with no traffic where I could lock the throttle using my Kaoko cruise control so I could raise my camera and shoot my shadow!

It's not as dangerous as it sounds but its nothing to make a habit of doing either! Be careful if you go out and try this.

Here's the best one of the lot from the morning ride:

Heading West on Quincy Road

That's the Front Range Mountains, on Quincy Road

During the afternoon ride, I rode longer than my morning ride which really had been a short ride to shoot my morning shadows and then get brake fluid from the auto parts store for the minivan.

Here's the route I took, the stuff in the upper third was the morning riding:


Pretty much involved going South via backroads to Parker, then Franktown. Then I headed West on CO86 towards Castle Rock, and continued through that town, onto Wolfenberger Road which is still CO86 until it intersects with CO105. Wolfenberger Road has a few nice curves to it and I made the most of them.

I took CO105 North until it junctions with CO67 which I then took towards the town of Sedalia which lies at the junction of CO67 and US85. I then took US85 South back towards Castle Rock and it was on this road that I took this shot of my shadow.

I like the way the GS mirror shows the view to the rear

The rest of the ride was uneventful, I took Founders Parkway to Crowfoot Parkway back to Parker, went through Parker to Lincoln which I took East towards Inspiration Drive and soon back to Smoky Hill Road and home.

A nice pair of rides, almost 107 miles and the weather was beautiful. I did not even need my electric vest, and kept the grips on at the low setting for whole day.

Just an observation: I saw 35 other riders out there enjoying the nice riding weather, 12 had helmets of some type on. Yep, sadly less than 33% were riding with a helmet. You'd think in colder weather they'd be more motivated but apparently just covering your head with balaclavas, knit caps and sun glasses is enough. Quite amusing actually to watch them go by wearing all that instead of a simple helmet. Oh well.