Cruise Control And Throttle Locks
A stop up on Lolo Pass on this year’s OFMC trip.
We had a lot of long stretches on this recent OFMC trip and these are the times when cruise control or a throttle lock come in really handy. Some people just carry it a bit too far, though.
Bill is one of these people. Bill almost always has his cruise control engaged. Sometimes that is not a good thing.
I led most of the trip and I can’t count the times I looked back and Bill was way, way behind. And it’s not like I was going super fast. He just sets his cruise control and lets it go. He really hates to have to touch it. If Dennis was behind him I could tell immediately where they were because of Dennis’s super bright lights. If Dennis was in front of Bill I sometimes had to just assume Dennis was keeping tabs on him because I sure couldn’t see him back there.
What was worse, though, was when we were on multi-lane highways, when the speed Bill had set brought him up behind someone going moderately slower and he would then just creep past them. Never mind that other traffic was piling up behind him also wanting to go around this slower person, Bill wouldn’t touch his cruise control, they would just have to wait for him to finally get past and move over. This happened a lot.
Meanwhile, none of my bikes have cruise control. I have throttle locks on all of them but this is a less than perfect solution. Of course you slow down going up hills and speed up going down hills so I just nudge the throttle to compensate. Not a big deal as long as the thing holds you at speed.
Which they generally don’t. Usually they slip and you gradually go slower so you have to frequently tweak it to get back up to speed. But for some reason, on this trip, the throttle lock didn’t slip very much. There were times when I could go half an hour without touching my throttle lock, just cruising along. How nice. Wish it was like that all the time. That’s how it’s supposed to be, isn’t it?
So it was with all this in mind that, following having the Kawi overheat coming up to the tunnel on the last day of the OFMC trip, that I started thinking that maybe I could consider trading the Kawi for something newer, lighter, and with more modern equipment–such as cruise control. That is an ongoing issue. I really don’t know what I’ll end up doing. But one thing I know for sure is that you’ll hear about here whenever any decisions get made.
Biker Quote for Today
Dreams and handlebars are two things worth holding onto.
