Take the highway…
I made my first real journey on the interstate highway system. I’d made a few experimental rides, just to get used to the handling at speed.
I was going home from a friends house on Sunday night (Monday morning, really), and I didn’t feel like navigating back roads in the dark. So I took I-95, I-91, and 9 to get home from West Haven.
Not bad, really. The bike handles well at speeds up to 80 mph (which I got to entirely unintentionally, by the way). The grooved pavement on the concrete sections of route 9 make the bike dance around at anything much over 55 or so, so I went considerably slower than I would in the car.
A standard leather jacket, in a word, sucks. The cuffs of the jacket kept popping out of the gauntlets on the gloves, causing a cold wind to blow up my sleeves. The zipper is entirely useless at keeping cold air out, as it has no flap covering it.
I had to pull off the highway several times to adjust equipment. At least I learned how to deal with rumble strips (answer: glide over them without actually turning - no problem).
A standard backpack is problematic at speed, the air gets underneath it and messes with your aerodynamics, and makes you feel like you are about to get yanked off the bike. I’ll be looking for a pack that has a waist strap to go along with the standard shoulder straps.
And I now know why serious long-distance riders wear leather chaps. Having the cold (65 or so degrees) air hitting your legs at 60-80 mph makes your legs seriously cold. The fronts of my legs were so cold that I had to wear my sweatpants to bed to warm the legs back up. It seems that tucking my legs up against the motor only helped to take the edge off.
I can say that I am no longer afraid of travelling on a highway, but it is still not my preferred method of travel on the bike.