I'm suprised that no one has mentioned doing an Iron Butt. I did one this spring.... on my BMW. I figure if a couple of guys did 1000 mi in a day on Buells then I should be able to do it on a Hawk. They said their biggest problem was no knowing how far to the next gas station. If they had gone 90mi and saw a gas station, they had to stop because they didn't know if there would be another one in the next 40 mi.

Heated clothes are 10x better then heated grips. If it is cold out, you are going to be wearing heavy gloves that insulate you from the heated grips. I find the only time I use them is when my gloves get wet. The heat helps to dry the gloves out faster, but if your hands are cold, you need to get heated gloves.

I do commute to work every dry day here in NJ, but I only have a 3mi drive to work, so I gotta get my riding in other times. I'm sure everyone has had one of those days were the weather is perfect and it takes 5 hrs to get back from lunch. By that time it isn't worth going back to work, so I might as well take the long way home...

 

I'm in the midst of planning either a SS1000 or a BBG1500 for my first Iron Butt. Right now money is the issue though since i've been doing track days galore....if I don't get one done this year, then I'll do it next spring Distance on the 'Hawk isn't a big deal except for the fuel issue but there are data bases with gas station locations that it wouldn't be that hard to put together a "station to station" type ride (which on a Hawk would be necassary!!)
Are you following the Iron Butt Rally in progress right now? They left Denver Monday morning....

 

I'm on the bike about 45 minutes each way. I like heated grips with middle weight gloves. Toasty digits and you can still feel the bars.

 

Last year My VTR and I did 130 miles a day for 2 years over hwy17 here in Santa Cruz, of course sunny days only, I put 14k on the clock just commuting. Never had one problem! My 93 VFR did a similar commute for 4 years to college SJSU, she only had 63K miles...then I crashed. Everyday was a fill-up w/the vtr, the viffer went 3 days w/out a refill. the viffer almost sent me to my death bed when the rear wheel decided to loose the main nut and back it self out of the swingarm at 80mph. Ya'll can imagine.

 

I've ridden just over 10,000 miles since buying my 98 SH in february, my commute is 45 miles roundtrip 5 days per week and then riding on the weekend, usually a couple hundred on Sat and Sun. I've not had a single glitch with this bike, I replaced the CCT's a thousand miles ago, for no reason, other than outta fear. I love this bike.

 

You guys/gal still have quite aways to go to catch ol' caffeineracer He dwells up in the six digit land.

 

wow... who is this 'caffeineracer'?

 

He's online now, maybe he'll read this thread and respond.

 

six digits? damn! thats good to know that the hawk will go that far

 

I thought this was for high mileage commuters.
My shawk is pleasure use only, I drive a company service van for Xerox.
I just got back from visiting my brother in San Rafael.
I try to take backroads as much as possible and it works out to about 1100 miles in two days. I guess I do a lot of overnighters to San Rafael and full day rides that have been consistantly adding miles for the 7 years I've had the shawk.
I was surprised to see the odometer reads in six ditgits.
I have 132.K on the shawk now, American Honda said I was the first they'd heard of to hit 100.K on a shawk.

~Jeffers

 

Iron But, you say? Sure. I do that almost once a month. A couple of our clients are in Monterey, I live in Seattle. When I head down there on business trips I normally go down in one day and then take 2 days coming back via all the fun roads. Door to door down the I-5 et al, it's 914 miles and takes me 13.5 hours normally. Anything under 600 miles in a day is a short ride to me. My previous to last trip was to LA. I rode both down there and back as two one day trips. That's just shy of 1200 miles and takes about 17 hours. One of these days I'll actually do the formal paperwork and submit it for the SS1K, but haven't yet.