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Since the Las Vegas Vetter Challenge was cancelled due to Craig Vetter’s issues with recovering from his recent hip surgery , Alan and I decided to ride out on our streamliners and visit him at home in Carmel. We also decided to have an unofficial Challenge of our own by comparing our fuel economy for the 240 mile+ round trip. We met at the Cycle Gear parking lot in Pleasanton and headed for Carmel in the brutal commute traffic between Pleasanton and San Jose. We moved through the traffic with some frequent lane sharing and then rode for a while on the 680 HOV lane. The weather was a bit cool at the start but warmed up to the 70s by the time we reached Carmel. Once we broke through the traffic congestion it was a nice ride to the beautiful Monterey coastline.
It was great to see Craig doing so well after his major surgery. He had been in constant pain previously and now the surgery had relieved it for the first time in many years. He has to avoid putting too much load on his newly repaired hip for the first 6 weeks after his surgery so he has to spend most of his time in bed or sitting. However we did get a hall pass to take him to lunch. Terry Hershner of cross-country electric motorcycle record-breaking fame and Craig’s son Zak joined us. We talked about lots of things: the rapid progress with electric motorcycles, some new aerodynamic refinements proposed by our new friend Tom Finch and Terry’s upcoming attempt to recapture his electric motorcycle coast to coast record. We enjoyed a great lunch and then reported back to Craig’s shop to do some work on Terry’s new long tail.
Initially the plan was to just apply some vinyl wrap to the treated paper skin of the tail extension but we ended up removing the skin, adding some frame members and re-skinning the tail. Alan and I had to head back home before the job was completed.
Traffic was bad in spots but we made steady progress back home. I stopped at the gas station to refuel and found that I had used 2.32 gallons to go the 246.9 miles for 106.42 mpg. I still have to see what Alan got. It was a great day all in all.
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