chix
Bike Chick
My boyfriend and I just completed our first long ride just over 400 miles round trip. I've ridden father on big bikes before, but never a 125cc bike and there is something addicting about it. Before our next long ride we want to get the milk crate mount and a taller, plusher seat. My ass and back hurt pretty much right off the bat.
Just wanted to share our experience with other bikers. Looking forward to traveling more for sure. Video of the trip is in the editing suite!
This weekend (Jan 24th and 25th) we decided to go to Austin for a nice weekend getaway…by riding the Groms. That’s right, no truck this time. Just us, the road and 125ccs of fury from Houston to Lake Travis.
The three other people we invited bailed out a few days before we planned to leave, but that didn’t put a hitch in our plans. We prepped the bikes Saturday night after work and planned to leave Sunday morning around 9am. Filled the tires, tightened chains, installed and routed the cables for our phone USB chargers and generally went over the bikes to make sure they were up to the 400+ mile journey.
It was chilly as we rolled out around 9:15am. Topped off the one gallon tank and headed toward the first town of Magnolia. Traffic was pretty light since it was a Sunday morning and most churches were still in service.
My ass started to hurt merely 15 miles into the trip. The Grom’s seat is severely lacking in the cushion department. If we do long distance on these mini motorcycles again we will buy better seats for sure. The GPS turn-by-turn was working great until Hempstead. As soon as we took the first wrong turn in Hempstead BAM, it re-routed us to the fastest, non Grom friendly route via highway 290. A quick stop to teach the GPS a lesson and we Grommed into to warming day.
Rolled into LaGrange over an hour later. The town was a lot smaller than I expected, but it had a Whataburger and a gas station so just enough for us. People stopped and asked us questions about the bikes at almost every gas station. The three questions that kept popping up were 1. Is it street legal?! 2. How big is the engine? 3. How fast does it go?
The rest of the ride was more of the same. Stop for gas about every 40-60 miles, answered questions about the bikes, took off more layers, swapped GoPro batteries, checked the map and moved on to the next town. Except for the time when our route spit us onto a 75mph speed limit highway! That was a full tuck, redline blast for about 10 minutes into Bastrop. Holy shit. Sorry little Groms.
Ran into traffic as we approached Austin from the southeast side. We were planning on heading up the feeder of 183, but a traffic jam pushed us into the city on FM 969/MLK. That route actually turned out to be better (slower speed limits) and ran us between downtown and the UT campus.
Worked our way north out of downtown Austin to one of my favorite Austin curvy roads — FM 2222. It snakes it way from just outside the city to near Lake Travis with a lot of elevation changes. The downhill section was great and we passed other traffic left and right. The tables turned when we encountered the ‘big hill’ where the little Groms dropped to a maximum speed of 45mph in either 3rd or 4th gear and cars flew past. Then just a relatively short blast south put us in the hotel parking lot around 3:30pm.
We checked in and unloaded our awful 35lb backpacks in the hotel room. Whoever was in there last had some fun with the ganja…still not too impressed with the hotel on our second visit. Oh well, it was cheap and the best location near the lake. Fired up the laptop to unload all the GoPro footage I had recorded throughout the day, almost 12GB worth!
We decided to get dinner at The Oasis overlooking Lake Travis. Perfect! We suited up, headed to the restaurant and arrived before sunset with no wait time. The view was spectacular! Definitely worth getting our sore bums back on the motorcycles for dinner.
Just wanted to share our experience with other bikers. Looking forward to traveling more for sure. Video of the trip is in the editing suite!
This weekend (Jan 24th and 25th) we decided to go to Austin for a nice weekend getaway…by riding the Groms. That’s right, no truck this time. Just us, the road and 125ccs of fury from Houston to Lake Travis.
The three other people we invited bailed out a few days before we planned to leave, but that didn’t put a hitch in our plans. We prepped the bikes Saturday night after work and planned to leave Sunday morning around 9am. Filled the tires, tightened chains, installed and routed the cables for our phone USB chargers and generally went over the bikes to make sure they were up to the 400+ mile journey.
It was chilly as we rolled out around 9:15am. Topped off the one gallon tank and headed toward the first town of Magnolia. Traffic was pretty light since it was a Sunday morning and most churches were still in service.
My ass started to hurt merely 15 miles into the trip. The Grom’s seat is severely lacking in the cushion department. If we do long distance on these mini motorcycles again we will buy better seats for sure. The GPS turn-by-turn was working great until Hempstead. As soon as we took the first wrong turn in Hempstead BAM, it re-routed us to the fastest, non Grom friendly route via highway 290. A quick stop to teach the GPS a lesson and we Grommed into to warming day.
Rolled into LaGrange over an hour later. The town was a lot smaller than I expected, but it had a Whataburger and a gas station so just enough for us. People stopped and asked us questions about the bikes at almost every gas station. The three questions that kept popping up were 1. Is it street legal?! 2. How big is the engine? 3. How fast does it go?
The rest of the ride was more of the same. Stop for gas about every 40-60 miles, answered questions about the bikes, took off more layers, swapped GoPro batteries, checked the map and moved on to the next town. Except for the time when our route spit us onto a 75mph speed limit highway! That was a full tuck, redline blast for about 10 minutes into Bastrop. Holy shit. Sorry little Groms.
Ran into traffic as we approached Austin from the southeast side. We were planning on heading up the feeder of 183, but a traffic jam pushed us into the city on FM 969/MLK. That route actually turned out to be better (slower speed limits) and ran us between downtown and the UT campus.
Worked our way north out of downtown Austin to one of my favorite Austin curvy roads — FM 2222. It snakes it way from just outside the city to near Lake Travis with a lot of elevation changes. The downhill section was great and we passed other traffic left and right. The tables turned when we encountered the ‘big hill’ where the little Groms dropped to a maximum speed of 45mph in either 3rd or 4th gear and cars flew past. Then just a relatively short blast south put us in the hotel parking lot around 3:30pm.
We checked in and unloaded our awful 35lb backpacks in the hotel room. Whoever was in there last had some fun with the ganja…still not too impressed with the hotel on our second visit. Oh well, it was cheap and the best location near the lake. Fired up the laptop to unload all the GoPro footage I had recorded throughout the day, almost 12GB worth!
We decided to get dinner at The Oasis overlooking Lake Travis. Perfect! We suited up, headed to the restaurant and arrived before sunset with no wait time. The view was spectacular! Definitely worth getting our sore bums back on the motorcycles for dinner.
