I mentioned that I’ve been invited to join in on the Mother Of All Trips (M.O.A.T.). I am really looking forward to it but in truth, the group that I’ll be joining has never ridden with the “new guy” as a joiner. A beautiful Sunday afternoon turned out to be the maiden voyage or the beginning of my probationary period. I would call it a successful introduction – at least from my perspective.

The morning started out a lot colder than I expected – a whopping 36 degrees. I chose to ride my smaller bike and not the big touring rig. I sure missed the heated grips and the extra wind protection that Big Red would have provided.

We met at a nice breakfast diner on the south side of Indianapolis. It was about 65 miles from home and I was ready for some hot coffee by the time I got there. I’ve got to be careful about consuming mass quantities of coffee otherwise, we’d be stopping every 15 miles or so.

I really didn’t keep track of the exact route. On this run, I was a follower all day long. I will say that we were on a lot of curvy roads including Indiana 58. There were several spots where loose gravel on the pavement made me a little hesitant to lean way over in the curves. Along the way, we stopped at the Golden Arches for hydration then started angling back toward north. The temperature got into the low 60’s before it started dropping again (53 degrees when I got back into the garage).

This isn’t a detailed ride report but I wanted to include a couple of learnings. My GPS screen blacked out once. I’m not sure what the issue was but it never did it a second time. The GPS said I rode 270 miles which agrees with the trip meter on the bike. My new Cardo Packtalk Bold has a bad microphone (confirmed when I got home – new one on order). The camera system on the bike gave me some decent video which I will be putting on YouTube even if the front camera was aimed a little too high. (I’ve included a couple of images below.) For the most part, I kept up with the rest of the group and enjoyed the day. The jury is still out whether I will get approved to be a “full patched” member or not. I guess I’ll know when I get invited to ride with them again. I may get voted out long before the M.O.A.T.