But to recap the Laconia event; the ride up on Friday night was good in that the rain (quite surprisingly) held off. Rode through many a section where the pavement was slick from having been washed recently, but thankfully the rain gods bestowed a rare bit of compassion. (This was to be paid for the next day…)
Arriving at Bill’s palace at a very late hour, I settled in with some welcome frosty BL’s and finished watching a disturbing movie (8mm) with Bill, his son Joey, and his friends. The kids opted for bed shortly after I arrived, claiming the movie was just too weird to really get into. I have to agree with them. Not only was it weird, the acting was terrible. How many times can Nick Cage drop his gun?? If you’d just hung on to the stupid thing any one of those times, you would have saved yourself a ton of trouble (and saved the viewers countless minutes that we’ll never get back again).
The movie was finally over and I figured it was time to get some shut-eye. Nope, Bill had other plans, as he ejected the 8mm movie and replaced it with Wild Hogs. What the…? It’s 2:40 in the morning and you want to watch another…well, yeah…it is a good movie. And we do have plenty of BL’s in the cooler. Ok, I’m on board with your plan. (We did hit the sack after that movie, though.)
The next morning dawned a bit cool and cloudy, but that soon made way for sunshine peeking out and warming temps. We all pitched in and got Bill’s dock into the water, and then Bill brought his boat around (nice boat, Bill!). From there, we cleaned up and headed off to Hawg’s Pen, for lunch and beers, while waiting for George, Em, Gina, Sully and Mike to arrive. They did and we caught up with each other for a bit, then Bill and the kids headed back to the house to take the boat out. I headed off to Weirs to check out the sights, pick up the obligatory t-shirts for the niece and nephew, and to get my…crap, I forgot to get a pin this year. Oh well, I’ll have to get one next year, I guess. Once that was out of the way, I caught up with Kerry and Mary at the Crazy Gringo for some cocktails and laughs. Good times!
From there, it was back to Bill’s house (including getting pounded on by rain) where we whiled the evening away with card games and more laughs. It was during this time that Bill’s house was attacked. Ok, perhaps ‘attacked’ is a strong word, but for those that have seen the Stephen King movie The Mist, this thing reminded me of some of the creatures from that movie. Look at the size of this thing!!
I have no idea what the hell this thing is, but thank god it didn’t know how to operate a screen door! (A very-well oiled, and amazingly easy screen door, to boot!).
The next day, it was up, pack the bike, wrap up some things around the house and then head back to Massachusetts. Not far from Bill’s house, I had to pull over and snap a pic of this rock wall.
This is farkin’ cool stuff!! The imagination and planning that had to go into making this? Sharp, sharp, sharp!
The rest of the story is simple; hit the highways and hit them hard. I fell in behind a couple of Angels for a good piece of the ride as they were setting a very respectable pace. They were from CT so I’d expected to be breathing their exhaust all the way to Walpole, but they turned off onto 495, towards Lowell (no big surprises there).
The rest of the return trip was uneventful and I was soon u-turning it in my driveway and backing up to the garage door. It was time to make some grub, do some laundry, and start the packing process all over again.
Rendezvous trip starts in two days…Gawd this life sucks. :-D
Ride Hard, Take Chances
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