After publishing 9 Favorite Adventures From 2015, Mr.GG pointed out, “That’s not nine adventures… it’ s three adventures plus one really old one!” So, just in case you’re a stickler like him, I’m rounding out my three favorite adventures (which just happened to gain the top 9 liked photos via my Instagram) with these six additional ones for a true 9 Favorite Adventures From 2015: ~Click here in case you missed the first three~ 4. Babes Ride Out Way back when I purchased Studie, I considered getting into motorcycles instead. This year, I finally bit the bullet and commited to getting 2-wheel bound. While I don’t have a bike of my own yet, I did take a dirt bike riding course, get my motorcycle license and go on the most awesome motorcycle girls weekend in Joshua Tree, Babes Ride Out. A camp out with 1,200 moto gals, Babes Ride Out was a perfect welcome into motorcycling and a super awesome time! 5. Locked Out With Stude Many of life’s adventures are born out of challenges, like getting locked out of the house with only your barely-running classic car’s keys and 14 hours to kill before someone else will be around with house keys. In the process of taking Stude for an early morning engine tuning appointment I locked myself out of my house. Since my husband happened to be flying back into town that night, I decided that Stude and I would just have to spend the day together. I ended up getting some big answers during my engine tune, fixing a transmission issue, taking Stude on the highway for the first time since the engine rebuild, meeting up with some good old friends, and making a test seat cover for Stude’s interior. It was quite a day (which I’m long overdue for doing a proper post for)! The unwelcome opportunity ended up reminding me of so many of the reasons why I love doing life with a classic car. 6. Driving Line Booth at SEMA It was only a handful of years ago that I first went to SEMA, the huge automotive aftermarket trade show; and I remember thinking then, “Wow, I’m here!” This year, Driving Line, the automotive publication that I work on for my day job had their own booth at SEMA. It was a lot of tight deadlines and working hard to make it happen, but our booth ended up being quite the success! Oh… and did I mention my cameo in the photo shoot with Tanner Foust?! 7. Attica, Chicago & Missing My First Ever Airplane One of my trips covering Ultra4 took me to Attica, Indiana. A tiny and odd little town a few hours south of Chicago, this was the first race in Ultra4’s East Coast series that I’d attended – and off-road racing in the East is quite a bit different than in the West! After an eventful race, I met up with my BFF in Chicago and we explored the city for a day before flying back home. Not being familiar with Chicago’s traffic, which is even worse than LA’s, I missed my first ever flight. My friend ended up changing her flight and we got some extra time together at a luxurious airport hotel… but, hey, when you’re best friends it doesn’t really matter where you are! 8. Buying My First Car From a Dealership I’ve had a few cars in my time, but never a “new” one and never one from a dealership. A move of my office from a bike-ride away to 35 miles down the congested 405 freeway forced me to reconsider my transportation. While I love life with Stude, it’s just not economical to drive a gas-guzzling gal to work – so I finally fessed up and purchased a 2012 Scion iQ. Having worked with Scion for a number of years, I’d gotten to drive all of their models and the iQ is a car I never would have considered if I hadn’t spent time with it on a road trip. Surprisingly spacious while still being considered a micro-car, along with economic micro-car fuel consumption (while still being non-electric a.k.a. workable on in my own garage), the little iQ is also surprisingly fun to drive! It only took me a couple of weeks to modify my iQ – custom-painted rear-view mirrors. 9. Getting Shit Done I made this little doodle on 1/4/15, and while Stude still isn’t where I’d like her to be I have upgraded her front brakes to disc, gotten her and the Falcon back road-going (at least partially), installed a new distributor and tested out some new interior options. The groundwork is already laid for 2016 to be an epic year of progress in the garage and I can’t wait to see what gets accomplished! Be sure to join me for the ride, subscribe to the GreaseGirl newsletter! Now that my 2015 adventures are finished… let’s get back into the garage and on to the next project! 3 Responses JP Kalishek January 22, 2016 Welcome to the Two Wheels club! That orange in my Gravatar is my old First Gear brand jacket. I prefer to ride, and if at all possible will ride to work, keeping an older small bike on hand for when the roads get bad. My main 2 bikes (okay, I confess, I got 4 bikes total … for now) are rather heavy Honda ST1100s, and at 730 lbs are not fun to ride on ice. Been there, done that, picked the bike up off the ground twice. I tend to get on either the dirt bike (1980 XL250S, no longer road registered), or the scramblerized (totally a word) CB400T (1978 Tii model with a Ti engine in it) when it snows and play around way too much. Good gear will protect you from the sun as much as the ground if you bounce. Conversely one can get gear that keeps out the cold very well (it can be below freezing and I feel too hot). I have some of the Cycle Gear Explorer H2O stuff that works really well at keeping cold at bay. Any decision on what kind of bike you are going to get? I could see you on an old Honda GB500, Kawi W650 or a Retro Triumph Bonnie Reply Kristin Cline January 24, 2016 Thanks JP! I haven’t decided on what sort of bike to get yet – part of the reason I’m so thankful my friend has lent me the Buell for awhile, so I don’t have to purchase a “starter” bike that I won’t be happy with for long. As much as I adore vintage bikes (you hit it with on the head with all your suggestions) I’ve committed to not buying something I’m going to have to do a lot of maintenance on. My cars are the ones I baby in the garage… I’d like the bike to be something I just hop on and “go!” We’ll see how much that holds up in reality as time passes 😉 Reply JP Kalishek January 25, 2016 Kinda where I was going. The Honda GB is a bit rare but is an (old now, sorta) single that is stone ax rliablle, The Kawi was made for here until 2007 iirc, The rest of the world got a bigger model after that. I had hoped Harley would come out with a slightlly smaller and lower cost version of the Buell 1125r, but they ended up killing the models all together. They never really got the market for sport bikes. I’ve had H-D dealers try to tell me that a Sportster was equivalent to a Honda Interceptor or Saber back when the Saber was a muscle V4/Sport Touring bike. I ride the ST1100 in part because even at 100,000 miles they are still great bikes that tend to not need much work (think Honda Civic reliability). I get nearly 300 miles from a tank of gas (it has a very big tank but with good gas at none Texas speeds gets 40-50 mpg) and it handles very good for a bike its size. If I was buying new, or newer than I have I’d likely go one of the smaller Adventure bikes like Vstrom or Kawi Versys, maybe Honda’s newer models much as I love Honda the newer non-sportbike Non-cruiser models seem a bit behind everyone else except for the Flagship Goldwing, and I’m not a fan of cruisers myself. 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JP Kalishek January 22, 2016 Welcome to the Two Wheels club! That orange in my Gravatar is my old First Gear brand jacket. I prefer to ride, and if at all possible will ride to work, keeping an older small bike on hand for when the roads get bad. My main 2 bikes (okay, I confess, I got 4 bikes total … for now) are rather heavy Honda ST1100s, and at 730 lbs are not fun to ride on ice. Been there, done that, picked the bike up off the ground twice. I tend to get on either the dirt bike (1980 XL250S, no longer road registered), or the scramblerized (totally a word) CB400T (1978 Tii model with a Ti engine in it) when it snows and play around way too much. Good gear will protect you from the sun as much as the ground if you bounce. Conversely one can get gear that keeps out the cold very well (it can be below freezing and I feel too hot). I have some of the Cycle Gear Explorer H2O stuff that works really well at keeping cold at bay. Any decision on what kind of bike you are going to get? I could see you on an old Honda GB500, Kawi W650 or a Retro Triumph Bonnie Reply
Kristin Cline January 24, 2016 Thanks JP! I haven’t decided on what sort of bike to get yet – part of the reason I’m so thankful my friend has lent me the Buell for awhile, so I don’t have to purchase a “starter” bike that I won’t be happy with for long. As much as I adore vintage bikes (you hit it with on the head with all your suggestions) I’ve committed to not buying something I’m going to have to do a lot of maintenance on. My cars are the ones I baby in the garage… I’d like the bike to be something I just hop on and “go!” We’ll see how much that holds up in reality as time passes 😉 Reply
JP Kalishek January 25, 2016 Kinda where I was going. The Honda GB is a bit rare but is an (old now, sorta) single that is stone ax rliablle, The Kawi was made for here until 2007 iirc, The rest of the world got a bigger model after that. I had hoped Harley would come out with a slightlly smaller and lower cost version of the Buell 1125r, but they ended up killing the models all together. They never really got the market for sport bikes. I’ve had H-D dealers try to tell me that a Sportster was equivalent to a Honda Interceptor or Saber back when the Saber was a muscle V4/Sport Touring bike. I ride the ST1100 in part because even at 100,000 miles they are still great bikes that tend to not need much work (think Honda Civic reliability). I get nearly 300 miles from a tank of gas (it has a very big tank but with good gas at none Texas speeds gets 40-50 mpg) and it handles very good for a bike its size. If I was buying new, or newer than I have I’d likely go one of the smaller Adventure bikes like Vstrom or Kawi Versys, maybe Honda’s newer models much as I love Honda the newer non-sportbike Non-cruiser models seem a bit behind everyone else except for the Flagship Goldwing, and I’m not a fan of cruisers myself.
