Sport Touring Corner By Norm Kern, MSTA Editor / ReasonsToRide.com Contributor
“Should I buy heated grips or heated
Pandemic Riding, Sena Scores Big With New 50 Series Communicators, Latest news on FlyBy Week and Other MSTA Events Pandemic Riding
A couple of cautions: Gas stations and convenience stores are open, but about half do not have public restroom access. That includes restaurants such as Wendy's, which had no indoor or outdoor seating either. On a positive note, our Saturday lunch stop was at Bienke's restaurant in Cynthiana, KY, which had plenty of indoor (spread out) seating and restrooms available. Pro tip: carry toilet paper and towels in a saddlebag in case you need to take any Tour de France style "necessary breaks" at the side of a country road. If you're ready to hit the road for a few days, you can't go wrong in Kentucky! Sena's New 50 Series Bluetooth Communicators
In a normal riding year, I would have attended seven rallies and about 8000 miles by now. (mid June) Thanks to COVID and other issues, most of the rallies were cancelled and I have not been able to do a trip or even an overnight motorcycle ride since FlyBy Week at the end of August last year. Since then I've done a lot of day rides (~6000 miles worth) and pretty well worn out the roads in Southwest and South Central Ohio. Last weekend I met a friend in Lexington, Kentucky, to ride a couple of routes from a previous MSTA STAR rally held there a few years ago. We arrived at the local Days Inn on Thursday where check-in was in at a window. We swiped our credit cards in a reader on a table, signed our paperwork and gave it to the clerk through a slot at the bottom of the window. We checked in to our separate rooms. Dinners were at a bar next door with outside seating and fans that blew plenty of fresh air on us from the parking lot. Continental breakfast at the hotel was simple. Go to the breakfast room, where there are arrows and lines on the floor leading you around the wall to a station where you pick up one or more paper bags. Each bag had a sausage biscuit and oatmeal honey bar in it. There were some fresh oranges, orange juice and coffee. That's it. There were two tables in the room with two chairs each. We were the only ones there at the time, but we took our food and ate in our separate rooms. Our routes were about 225 miles per day on the wonderful fun roads North of Lexington. Kentucky has really gotten their act together- about 95% smooth blacktop. There were a couple of detours due to construction, but even the "goat path" narrow roads with no center line were paved and in good condition. As a bonus, roads were almost universally free of gravel. 28 28
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Sena announced their new 50 series communicators around the end of April. I was skeptical- Would they actually start shipping soon? Would the new model come with mature firmware that actually worked? The big claim was that their new Mesh 2.0 technology overcomes the mesh intercom shortcomings of the previous 30K model. To enable the 50 Series mesh 2.0 system to operate with my 30K, Sena released a firmware update for it. I updated mine and tried it out on a ride in mid May. I was shocked at the difference. The 30K now works great in mesh intercom mode like never before. I have long felt that Bluetooth communicators needed one more generation of development to be a solid product. Seeing how well the 30K works with Mesh 2.0 firmware, I had the confidence to order a new 50S, which I've had for over a month and about 1500 miles. I love it. Everything works out of the box, just like you would want. The speakers are louder, slimmer and have foam on the edges as well as the front. The voice commands are very complete and easy to use, there's support for Siri and Google voice, etc. If you ride with other Sena users, you'll be delighted. Mesh 2.0 is the way to go! (Am keeping the 30K as a spare to loan to friends with the older 20S model to use when we ride together.) FlyBy Week and the Pandemic As COVID continues to hang over our heads, I've been working on how we can still have FlyBy Week in Marietta, Ohio, the last week of August. Fortunately Marietta is one of the least affected Ohio cities. Some activities will have to be modified or eliminated, but overall it looks like we are good to go.
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