Hello! I've had my monster for about a year now. Rode it from Baltimore to Deal's Gap, NC. Pic you see is from the Tail of the Dragon.. She did great!
anyway, i'm up in the Baltimore area. If anyone is from around here, give me a shout. :)
andria
Welcome - this is crossing the streams since I'm on (facebook) BAD - just posted about my Fork work tools and .net as well. And I did the DC, Deals n back ride a few years back with Billy... man I was beat after - we came all the way back in one day
Besides the balto folks there's CAM:
http://www.ducatimonsterforum.org/index.php?board=20.0 (http://www.ducatimonsterforum.org/index.php?board=20.0)
for the whole metro plex
So welcome, Ian/Yuu/ S* Panda
Welcome Andria! I'm a bit north of you in PA just over the border - up 795 to MD 30.
I haven't done the Deals Gap ride yet - tentative plans to do so next month when I go down there for work provided everything cooperates. From what Panda said, maybe I shouldn't attempt to do the down trip in a day... hmm...
My brother-in-law picked up his Monster in January... I picked up mine in February after being away from riding for 6 years (previous moto was a 94 900SS).
Lots of great roads north of Baltimore along the MD/PA line.
FWIW I made the mistake of carrying most of my stuff in a back pack.. a really good pack, but it was still on me. Lesson learned = let the bike carry it, not you.
From south PA to deals... thats a long day in the saddle. Doable - but long.
That's what I did, too... big backpack. Kinda sucked. But it's hard to find luggage for the Monster. I've been doing my longer trips on the BMW F800 ST now. Comes with side luggage and I bought a tailpack.
And the trip down took us about 12 hours because we hit some backroads (Skyline Drive, Blue Ridge Parkway). Trip home took about 7-8 hours maybe? Going up to PA would tack on another hour or two...