I just got back last night from the first road trip I've taken on my 2013 Kawasaki Versys 650. I bought it two years ago, and have been mainly using it to commute to work when the weather is good, and for short local trips.
I rode Monday from my home outside of Windsor Ontario, to Charleston WV to visit family. That leg took 8.5 hours. Then Tuesday I went on a group ride to Huntington to have lunch at
Hillbilly Hot Dogs, then back to Charleston via Point Pleasant. Yesterday's leg was from Charleston, back to Huntington, then to Portsmouth Ohio and back up US23 to Toledo, then up I75 to Detroit then home across the Ambassador Bridge. That was eleven hours with stops.
Several motorcycle-related things that stuck out:
1) I have an understandable distrust of left-turners as I approach them. Furthering this distrust was my observation that it seemed that, of female left-turners, fully two-thirds of them had a phone glued to her ear while waiting to turn. This figure should scare the piss out of anyone who rides.
2) Even with a hi-viz riding jacket, helmet and dry-bag strapped to my seat, I might as well have been invisible to a couple of knuckleheads in cars. I75 south at I275 near Monroe Michigan, the left lane ends for construction. Traffic was stop and go. Dumbass in a Honda goes to merge left into my lane, while we are moving at a slow walking speed. I literally could have kicked or punched his side window, next to his face, and he didn't notice the big fluorescent yellow guy on the bike two feet to his left.
3) Foam earplugs help cut down on wind and engine noise, and I'm sure they greatly prevented fatigue. My ride from the bridge home was without plugs, and that 30 miles was the most tiring point of the whole trip.
4) When an insect, such as a big juicy butterfly, chooses you to kill themselves against, the remains of their body invariably splatter your faceshield directly over one of your eyes.
5) Riding safely sometimes seems to mean that you must violate the speed limit. My driver's instructor from 35+ years ago drilled into us the absolute necessity to stay out of packs of cars on the highway. People truly are like sheep and love to congregate in big clumps of vehicles. This is even more important on a motorcycle. To get away from packs of cars, and away from riding behind semis where a prudent following distance to avoid debris always seems to get filled in, sometimes requires you run 5 to 15 above the speed limit for a while to get into a clear area by yourself. That seemed to be my biggest wish on this trip, that people just stay as far the hell away from me as possible.
All in all it was a lot of fun, unfortunately the 650 is not big enough to install racks and bags and then bring my wife along.