I finally took a real road trip with my SS

Girls took me up to pikes peak

But alas, I had to head back this morning . This is the part I always hate . Headed out at 5:30 am to try and beat as much of the heat as possible. Was a great ride home except for the last 100 miles or so. What an adventure. Must do this again.

Man, this kid can sleep through anything.

Not much out this early in the AM but the beautiful scenery. Man I love this!

So, I wanted to give a couple of "real world" observations about what I experienced during our little road adventure. We traveled a total of 1286 miles and a close to 18 hours during the 2 days on the sling. Not a bad little trip for trying out the sling/trailer combo. A pretty decent road trip. Anyway, here's the start of my Rant:

1. First off, the heat.....Damn that Heat. Anytime the temp got even close to the 90's, the heat from not only the road, but the drivetrain is radiated exponentially into the cabin. It's miserable.. Keep in mind that I have a top as well as a +5 windshield so that may have aggravated the situation some. at any rate, as you creep into the 100s, it was almost unbearable for any length of time unless I poured water on us (literally...I was pouring water down our shirts). This would cool us down for about 10 minutes at a time and worked rather well I might add. So note for all traveling in hot weather.....bring lots of water. Oh, that and the cupholders are useless for holding anything other than coffee you might want to keep at coffee pot temp or you happen to need to warm up your soup....for that it's great. Hell, you might even be able to setup some sort of cooktop on it and grill your dinner on them. So.... keep the water out of the cup holders unless you're making coffee or soup.

2. The PRP harness pads are a great source of cooling you off if you soak them with water as well. That lasted longer than wetting my shirt.

3. I've mentioned this before, but I'll add it here for summarization, pulling the trailer saved our asses because of being able to carry all the necessary gear for any type of weather we encountered as well as we had a cooler full of ice cold water to keep us hydrated, however, the caveat to that was the loss of range between fill-ups. It wasn't too bad. I was reluctant to travel more than 150 miles between fill-ups. Only on one of the legs did I push it to 169 miles and at that point the last bar on my gas gauge had been on there for a while. The low fuel light had not turned on and I know that if I did the math, I should be able to extend that to 200 miles, but NAH.....those were good legs to allow us to get out and stretch and that's as far as I cared to push it. I avg'd about 22-23 mpg with the trailer fully loaded and cruise set to 83ish for most of the trip. Power was never even close to becoming an issue with the turbo. Even during passing situations on 2 lane roads going from 70's to over 100 was a snap so passing was quick....even with the trailer , so thanks again @Turbosling for the awesome setup. Love you guys... (in a manly kind of way of course)

4. Again, already mentioned, but thank god we had the Bullet Top with us. We would have died from heat stroke if not for that top.

5. Lets talk about rain for a bit. Up until this trip she'd never seen water (my SS). With all I've read about hydroplaning I was a bit skittish, to say the least, about going through a storm. On the bike I wouldn't think twice about it. I'm used to them and a part of touring on a bike in this part of the country so I when I saw those storm clouds looming in the distance I have to admit, I was $h!tin my pants. I did slow down initially and tested the traction and everything seemed to be normal so I pushed on. I tried not tracking right on center like in a car, but instead (when traffic permitted) I was favoring the left side of the lane so as to keep the rear wheel off the slick part of the lane. First few showers were a non issue. No standing water and quick 3-5 minute bursts. No big deal....then the real fun started. The heavy downpours for 15-20 minutes or more. Again, at first I was skittish about pushing it and maintaining speed with traffic (by the time the heavy rain hit us I was 50 miles from my destination and in heavy traffic so there was no stopping). I kept testing the traction and then I started hitting the deep standing water and my butthole puckered up. Again...nothing. It was normal. Normal traction just like I would have experienced on any car or even my bike. Hmmmm... I thought, then it hit me, I've got a bunch of extra weight on my rear tire because of the trailer tongue. Perhaps this made a difference? Not sure, but I do know that I did not experience ANY hydroplaning or abnormal behavior given the conditions at hand. Another reason could have been the trailer itself pulling on the back end of the Sling thus keeping us straight..don't know but interesting nonetheless. What really sucked was the amount of rain coming in from the back. My back was soaked (yes @Tripod....wetback...I know I know), but I digress...even with the back fender damn if it didn't seem like it was raining backwards. The tall windshield was another problem since I could not look over it so that made riding in heavy rain even more difficult. Gonna see about making me some sort of backwards squeegee or something to help with that. Anyway, just like on the bike, I kept pushing on and just like clockwork the storms would stop, we'd dry off within about 5 minutes and all was well until the next one.

So, All in all I think maybe the smaller windshield would have worked better for a couple reasons, the heat inside the cabin, and 2 the inability to see over the tall shield in heavy rain. I'm swapping the windshield out for my next road trip and see how that works out. Let you all know.
Hope this little bit of information is useful for someone. If not.... too bad .
Cheers everyone!