We had a pleasant surprise in store; Barb was forgoing sleep so that she could join us on our ride today – sweet! We mounted up and headed for the fantastic mountainous roadways which wind, twist and turn up, down and through some amazing scenery. We stopped at the Kinzua Dam, took in some fantastic mountain sights, and watched all the ginormous carp swimming lazily in the sunshine.
From here, we paused in a small-town eatery to stoke our furnaces for the long day of riding ahead. Since Patty, Zig and I were still full from breakfast, we settled for something simple; Peanut Butter Pie!
Ok, so Fatty was able to get another meal down… 
After that, we headed back through some great forests, marveling as a deer bounded across the road in front of us at one point, and at another point; a hawk swooped down directly over Jerry and Barb’s heads, aiming for something in the underbrush beside the road. As soon as we passed, I turned to look behind us and saw it take flight again, so I’m assuming it was successful in its hunting excursion.
Our destination was the Kinzua Bridge. So much history here, but it’s easier to just direct you to the Wikipedia site for this bridge; www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinzua_Bridge.
In a nutshell; the bridge was over a century old, and was destroyed when a tornado swept through the valley in 2003.
We found an overlook which had one of those giant binocular sets that you put a quarter into – except this one was free! I managed to zoom my camera lens through the binocular lens and get a few decent close-ups of the devastation that used to be rigid steel.
We were content to view things from afar…all until we saw this sign. *Sigh* Why do they put these signs up? Now we have to get closer.
This was a nice perspective-angle shot that couldn’t be passed up.
I’m surprised they didn’t put up any signs that said “Don’t even think about climbing onto the dangerous towers – they’re unsafe”. Just imagine if they had? We would have had to do something like this…(Great view from up here!)
We collected ourselves and mosied back towards town, again passing through great scenery along the way. I saw a couple of odd purple things hanging from trees every now and then, but I forgot to ask Jerry what they were. A quick Google search explained it; they’re traps for the Emerald Ash Borers (an invasive species that’s destroying the Ash population).
After we returned to town, we met up with the crew at…yep; the V! We knocked back a couple of cold ones to whet our livers…er…whistles for a bit, then headed off to the graves of brothers-lost to pay our annual respects.
From there it was a quick blast over to Tommy’s place (Mickey’s!) for amazing grub and some good natured ribbing (we’re Sox fans, Tommy’s a die-hard Yanks fan). After our bellies were happy, it was time to make our livers unhappy. Yep; back to the V ! But there was mischief in the air…
It started out innocently enough; Mary had her iPod hooked up to the sound system for tunes, and we were joking about her musical preferences. She graciously offered to let us plug ours in, so I obliged. See? Innocent, right?
As soon as I turned back around, I found that Mary had taken up residence on the outside of the bar! And guess who that left behind to make the drinks and serve the customers? You got it; me! Sweet! I’d never been (allowed) behind a bar before, so it was pretty cool. The first patron to take care of was none other than Mary; having just been freed from the confines of the bar, proper, she now needed a refreshing drink. Ok, first order coming up…what’ll it be, something nice and easy like a cold beer? Nope; a mixed drink. No problem, I’ve mixed plenty of drinks in my time (and one or two of them actually came out ok, too!). Here’s the master of disaster, doing his best to get it right.
Ta da! Delivered right to the happy customer, without even so much as a drop spilled. Whew!
Wow, this bartending stuff is easy! Ok, who’s next?
What’ll it be, buddy? You’re all set? How ‘bout you? No? You? Dammit, you people need to drink faster! Ok, what can I do to pass the time…oh, I saw this in a movie once; watch me flip a bottle! (Yes, I was cheating; the cap was on the bottle.)
This seemed easy enough so I grabbed the 151, took the cap off, and made with the flipping…that didn’t go so well. Some lady that was smoking got doused and the resulting fireball blew half the pictures off the walls. The lady was ok, but she was blown across the room into one of the booths. I had to give her the rest of the bottle just to calm her nerves back down.
After that debacle, I was banished to the TV corner for a 5 minute time-out, but I managed to grab a beer from the cooler on my way by.
They told me I couldn’t drink beer behind the bar. What? No beer behind the bar? Fine. I waited until they weren’t looking and then traded up. (Hey, it's not a beer!)
Here's why you should keep an eye on your drink when I'm bartending. (The same thing applies to me, though; I should have moved my beer out of Zig's reach.)
Much fun was had as usual, and we kept poor Mary there well past closing time again, but she was good natured about it as always. Pulling on our jackets, we ambled out to the parking lot, fired the bikes up and headed back to the safety of King & Pat’s house. This concluded day 2.
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