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metalcarver (I think) on advrider has been riding an AT with side car for a while. He's got a bunch pics in one of his threads.

 

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Nice ride out East of Florence AZ again, temps made it up to the low 70's, with a couple of BMWGSA friends... couple of pics to commemorate...

Lake Florence in the background? Or maybe a cattle tank...
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Somewhere east of the 77, south of Winkleman, AZ...

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Those are nice cruising dirt roads in that area.

 

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Well Friends, had the day to myself and a good riding buddy wanted to take a casual "paved road ride", since we got a little rain the day before.

I sat up until 2 am in the shop the night before, fiddling with a bracket design to stabilize the flex in the subframe that has been annoying me since picking the rig up about a year ago, and then later figuring out that it shouldn't be there; details HERE:

Weather was splendid; start of the day was 64F (17.8 C), warming up to 72F (22.2 C) towards the end of the afternoon. Just cool enough that the sun felt nice on a riding jacket, but still quite comfortable. Couldn't be better, actually, what with the recent rain settling the dust clouds.

Ride was relatively short but extremely pleasant. It was about 144 miles end to end.

There were a lot of straight lines on this path, with some wandering around on the canal system dirt roads, once we decided that it was drying up a little. Buddy was on his R1200GSA, so wasn't wild about deep mud for some reason or another.

The canal roads were very nice; it was wild seeing them in the daylight! I had been riding them at night, during the hottest part of the summer, but had not been out on them in daylight. Air was clear and views were quite nice:

Greg decided to dig a little of the mud out of the tread of his Tractionators... it was just gummy enough in spots to get him to dance a little.

Spotted but not photographed, 3 road runners going about their business.

We then headed south, out to Picacho Peak, loitered around a bit, and headed back.

Aside from a very pleasant ride, I got to test the new bracing proof-of-concept out on some washboards and two-lane tarmac.

It seems that I still don't really know how a rig should handle, due to general lack of experience. Ned let me pilot his lovely wing that has since flown home to roost with FM, and Frank let me take a spin on his well sorted Valkyrie rig shortly thereafter, about a year ago. My only other sidecar experience was a dealer test drive for about 45 minutes on a poorly set up Ural, which made me think BBTSG was great, or at least average.

Both Honda rigs handled quite well as reference points, but I don't think I really absorbed their frame of reference as I struggled with bad behavior from Black Betty (that sweet girl.) I may have downplayed their excellence due to thinking that a heavier wing with wide tires would, of course, handle better.

Every time I have fixed a big problem (like the front-end replacement), it got so much better that I thought it must be fixed. Well, once again, BBTSG had gotten considerably "better" in responsiveness to steering input and road feel.

One noticeable improvement seems to be flying the chair has gotten easier to control. On a right hander, I can pull the wheel up gradually, now, vs. having to tug and hope that I did not over do it. I think that was a symptom of the the sub-frame flexing quite a lot.

So all in all, it was a very fine ride with a good friend in near perfect riding conditions, piloting a rig that I like a little more every time I ride it. What could be better?

What/where is the longest section of uninterrupted canal road? Always figured those would be gated.