Charity Run and Margaritaville

This was the weekend of the Olean pig roast, and while none of us Massholes were able to make it out there this year (sadly!), some of us were able to salvage Saturday via a charity/memorial run, as well as a party that night at our Legion Post.

First; the daytime run.  It was for a fellow motorcyclist that was killed a few months ago when a cage pulled out directly in front of him.  I didn't know Bear personally, but apparently many of my friends did.

A few of us met up at Ed & Sue's beforehand to head over together.  When I pulled up to their house, I got a nice surprise;

Mike was in town!  He'd come up from Jersey to join us on the run, and to also attend the Post party that night.  Sweet!

From there, we rolled on over to the rally spot; Buddy's Villa, in Easton.  The weather was great, and the turnout; even better.

It was tough to find a spot to park, so we tucked ourselves way in the back, by the dumpsters.  (Ed commented that it was a fitting spot for us anyway, hanging out with the dumpsters.)

Today's event was a poker run so we registered and collected our playing sheets.  My lucky streak remained intact as my first card pulled was a lowly 6.  Damn.

And with that, we were off to our first stop.  Here we found there were tons of other riders that had already left the starting point before we had even arrived, and who were now all kicking back and enjoying the first stop on the day.  Nice, let's get to it!

My second card was a 10, but still; the shadow of my initial 6 hung over me, most likely eliminating me from any serious contention.  Might as well console myself with some joking and laughing with good friends, like Ed, Sue and Mike!

I'd never been to this place before (Monponsset Inn, in Halifax), and it was very cool, being situated right on a beautiful lake.

On the far end of the deck, I spotted a sign which just spoke directly to me.  So, I had to answer in my own way...

From there, it was another stop, for another (crappy) card, and then a third stop, for yet another (crappy) card.  Neither of these spots had any great scenery to offer for taking pictures of, so I just settled for an action shot inside the third stop, to show how packed in we all were.

Lastly, it was back to the starting point for the cookout, raffles, and last card.  I shared a good laugh with the girl running the card table when she saw my hand (I'd wound up with nothing at all), so I made do with jumping in line and getting some grub.  The fare was the usual; burger and dog, beans, and a bag of chips.  Certainly good enough for me!

The information on this run had claimed there would be visits by both the Jaegermeister Girls, as well as the Captain Morgan girls.  Well, apparently the Jaeger girls bailed, but the company had sent a bunch of t-shirts for the organizers to sell off.  They were asking for any donation we wanted, so I tossed in my payment and grabbed a shirt.    It'd make a good riding shirt, if nothing else.

The time wore on, and we were beginning to think the Captain Morgan girls were also going to bail, but then, about an hour later than advertised, out they came.  Two of them, each with a tray of Captain shots.  Well, 'kinda', anyway.  Seems the shots were mixed with ginger ale, rather then being straight shots.  Oh well, they still tasted pretty good anyway (probably because they were mostly ginger ale).  When I went back for a second one, I found out that the girls had come out with one tray each, and when their trays were empty, they'd split.  Wha?  So they were there for about 10 minutes, made a pass through about half of the crowd, then left.  Whatever.

I strolled around the parking lot to see if there were any decent bikes to snap pics of.  There were some cool paint jobs, but for the most part, it was all standard offerings.  No customs or garage-builds, but that was ok, it was still a decent day...

...and that's when my travels brought me around to the back.  Ya see, we'd parked way out back again to make sure we were out of the way and wouldn't get boxed in by the other bikes.  So imagine my surprise when I found that two trikes had indeed boxed me in - parking directly in front of me.

WTF?  A guy happened to see the consernation on my face and came up to offer his condolences.  He said he'd talked to the guy on the front trike when he'd parked, and suggested that he may not want to block me in.  The guy on the trike claimed he was only going to be there for a short time and that it wouldn't be a problem.  Somehow, this led to a bit of a conversation about riding and the trike owner was bragging that he had 13,000 miles on his ride.  Well, that's all well and good, but what year was the bike?  It was a 1998.  A 15-year old ride had only 13,000 miles on it.  Egads.  It would seem the bike wasn't good for riding (but apparently was perfectly good for parking in front of bikes that do ride).

Whatever.  I wasn't ready to leave just yet so it wasn't a problem at the moment.  (And when the time did come to leave, the trikes were in fact, gone.)

After listening to the band for a while, and then the raffles being drawn off (Ed won a mint Budweiser aluminum cooler!), it was time to head off to the Post for the Auxiliary's Margaritaville party.  Pulling in, I found the parking lot moderately filled...

...but as the night wore on, the folks kept trickling in and by the time darkness fell, it was a full-blown par-tay!  The crowd was great, the DJ even better, and there were even a number of songs that I got out there and danced to.  It was a great ending to a great day.

So in summation, I had an enjoyable day.  It would have been awesome to have been out in Olean, celebrating with many friends out there, but that just wasn't in the cards this year.  Next year should be different, though, and I look forward to returning to that tradition.

Here's one last pic I snapped as I was hanging out at the Post.  The sun was beginning to set and the air was clean and cool.  I'm not sure what it was about the image, but when I saw it, I was filled with longing for the road.

Seeing my bike sitting at the ready...it's hard to explain, but I felt a complete contenment pass through me.  A contenment in being blessed with the ability and freedom to ride.  Part of me wanted to just go fire her up and take off...to where?  It didn't matter.  Just to feel the road beneath me and the miles ticking by...

...but I opted instead to return to the laugher and revelry behind me.

The road is a tempting mistress, but so too is the company of great friends.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Split Vision, Part II

So about 2 weeks or so ago, I posted about replacing my split windshield with a new one.  That new one had been a 5" smoked one, and wound up being too short.  I was going to just kick back and wait to see if an 8" one would fall into my lap.  But, since that kind of stuff never happens, I finally broke down and did some m ore searching.  Seems I'd been negligent in my earlier searches (when I'd said I couldn't find an 8" one, and had had to settle for the 5" one).  My mistake was thinking that the only company that would sell decently priced windshields was Memphis Shades, the company I'd found (and been quite happy with), a number of years ago.

At any rate, I found that there are other companies out there that not only offer the 8" smoked windshields, but also offer them at significantly lower prices than Memphis Shades do.  (I guess success has caused Memphis Shades to jack their prices up.)

So I ordered one from BK Rider (found on eBay) and it showed up yesterday.  I swapped it out with the previous one and things are back to being good.  (That extra 3" really makes a difference, right girls?)

(I didn't bother taking any pics because really, how many times can I post pics of a windshield install?  It's a simple process that takes about 60 seconds.)

Oh yeah - something else that I really liked about this second windshield, is that it came pre-formed to the contour of the fairing.  Pre-curved, if you like. The other one, from Memphis Shades, was flat, and had to really be worked into place, and, since that one is made of thicker, less-pliable material, the fairing really wasn't too happy about receiving it.  But this one that I put in last night, dropped in nice and smoothly.

So there you go.  Not terribly exciting, but better than nothing at all (I hope).

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Good Case Of The Runs

Saturday's memorial run had a phenomenal turnout, despite the blasting heat.  Temps were near 100 (with full humidity), so when we were making our way down to the Cape, this was certainly not what we were hoping to encounter...

Yep; all lanes stopped - our feet flat on the pavement, and the sun blazing above us.  Luckily, we were able to make our way over to the breakdown lane, and before long, we were bopping along at a respectably-safe pace, along with a few other bikes who also seemed headed to the same spot we were (judging from their vests, and mounted flags).

We crossed the Bourne bridge and descended down onto the Cape, proper.  A couple of rotarys, a couple of turns, a final u-turn, and we were in line and paying our registration fees.  Hey cool, we also get a free t-shirt today - sweet!  (These would come in very handy as it turned out, but more on that, later.)

We had a bit of time to kill before things got under way so we mosied about a bit, checked out some bikes, then took refuge in the shade beneath a tent.  There were a ton of bikes here today!!

When it was time to get things under way, there was a pre-run prayer, as well as some introductions for the guys who were also in the Humvee, but survived the IED hit which claimed the life of the soldier in whose memory today's run was for.  Powerful stuff.

From there, we made our way back to our bikes, and eventually made our way out for the run, proper.

The run was greatly supported by local LEO departments and there was ample blocking at all rotarys and intersections.  Man, did we ever F up a lot of roads!  This procession was so long, it took quite a while for the last bike to make it through.  Traffic on the Cape is bad enough as it is, I can't even begin to imagine how much worse we made things.  For the most part, folks in their vehicles 'got it', and were smiling, waving and beeping their horns.  There was the occasional ticked off person sitting behind their wheel, waving their arms and hollering at the inside of their windshields, but oh well.

The very impressive thing on this run was the overwhelming turnout of civilians, lining the streets and waving flags, waving to us, waving signs, etc.  Their were little kids, young adults, grownups, and senior citizens.  This year was the first time I'd heard of this run, but apparenlty it's extremely well known in the towns along the route, and the turnout was quite impressive.

When we finally arrived at the end-point, there was a Yarmouth fire department ladder truck with it's boom extended, flying an absolute monster of a US Flag.  I would have liked to snap a pic as we were approaching it, as the route was lined with trees, and at the end of this "tunnel', the flag was blocking out a good portion of the sky.  Quite amazing!  But, I had to settle for a couple of pics from the parking lot, as there wasn't any spot to pull over, due to the sheer volume of bikes that were flowing in.

We grabbed our grub (traditional fare; dogs & burgers) and found an open bit of shade under some trees.  A decent feed, a visit to the lavatory, then some walking around to check out the goings-on.  There was a bike being raffled off, and another that had a killer paint job that was for sale;

, a few vendors selling jewelry and t-shirts, as well as a band that was kicking out some tunes.  And; there was a memorial wall on display;

This had all been done by hand; hand made frames, and hand-written names of all the Massachusetts' fallen Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers.  A very touching tribute for those that gave the ultimate sacrifice.

Having checked everything out, we agreed to hit the road before the late-afternoon traffic started picking up.  Returning to the bikes in the parking lot we found evidence of just how hot out it was.  We'd only been here for about an hour.  And the parking lot wasn't comprised of new pavement - this was older, very well seasoned stuff.  But the day's heat and sunshine had proved too much;

I'm sure the town wasn't too thrilled with all the holes punched through the parking lot...

Anyway, we got some directions to get us back to familiar territory, and were soon ripping along the highways, headed back to the Post for "one" cold frosty.

As we were making our way back, we could see the skies ahead were beginning to turn a bit darker.  The forecasts had called for some potential thunderstorms as a cold front moved in, finally bringing some relief from the week-long heat wave we'd been dealing with.  And sure enough, just as we exited 495 onto 95, we felt the first plinks of rain drops.  Ok, ok, no need to worry - our upcoming exit is only a few miles up, we should be able to...

Nope.  Denied.  Whoosh!

The rain hit us like a sheet of water.  The wind was howling, visibility dropped to mere feet, almost instantaneously, and cars were jamming their brakes on, hard.  And cold?  Holy crap, it was a humid 92 degrees a second ago, suddenly my nips were like glass!  The wind was blasting, soaking us completely, in no time.  What the hell??  The only thing missing was...lightning!  Flash!  There it is!  Now as long as the 'boom' isn't too close, we're ok..BOOM!!! Well, that wasn't too bad.  A couple of seconds apart - it's not directly over our heads at the momen..FLASH/BOOM!!  Immediately together!  Holy shit - ok, time to get inside!!

We pulled into the Post parking lot and ran inside as fast as we could  Once inside, we just stood there, water pouring off of us as the patrons inside began laughing.  Again; the temp had dropped so suddenly, and so much, that we were shivering.  We braved running back out to the bikes again to grab the run t-shirts that we'd been given earlier, then dried ourselves off with paper towels as best we could, and changed our shirts.  We looked like a goofy group, all with the same shirts on, but at least we were a bit drier.

After a "few" nice cold ones, the weather had passed and we mosied all in our own directions.  It had been a great run and a great day - complete with a nice heart-pumper at the end.

Fast forward to Sunday - this day's run was to raise funds and awareness of Multiple Sclerosis.  One of our Riders, his wife has been diagnosed with MS, so this run was near and dear to us.  We had a great turnout of fellow riders - it was going to be a good day!  And a poker run, to boot!

We arrived at the destination point, paid our fee and got our first card.  Mine was a lousy 6 of clubs.  Bleah.  Oh well - we ot our list of destinations, saddled up, and were off.

The first stop was at the Little Red Smokehouse, in Carver.  A quaint little place, that was soon overwhelmed with the sheer volume of thirsty bikers, converging on the bar.  But, they made do as best they could, and we were all soon milling about, contentedly.

One thing that was rather interesting here; they'd mounted old fishing poles to the ceiling, along with little fish decoys...

I got to thinking that maybe I should do something like this in my basement, but then remembered that I have low ceilings, and I certainly don't need to be mounting anything onto them.

I pulled my second card for the day...a 2 of spades?!?!  Well, I'm certainly not in the running for anything today.

Next stop; the Ponderosa, in Acushnet.  A greate looking roadhouse bar - complete with dirt driveway and lots of bikes parked in front.  My kind of joint!

My card from this place was excellent; a 10 of hearts...alas, it was too late to do me any good at this point.

From there, we were off to Christopher's.

It was a quick stop because we'd dawdled, back at the Ponderosa, and were now running short on time (had to be at the final stop by 3), so we had time enough to grab our fourth card (a 9) and hit the road.

We pulled into the VFW that was hosting the after-party, grabbed our last cards (I don't even recall what I pulled - it wasn't like I was going to win anything) and ambled inside for the feast.  More great fare; burgers and dogs, and a mini pig which had been roasted up and displayed for us to help ourselves to.

We hung out there for a while, watched the raffle prize winners gather their winnings (I had bought nothing but losing tickets again), and then kicked back for a bit.

Some of the group headed off toward their homesteads, but a couple of us headed over to a joint in Taunton that is pretty kick-ass.  There was a band playing, the sunshine was out, and bikers go here to hang out.  The beer was cold, the band was good, and there were lots of smiling folks milling about.  It was a great way to cap the weekend.

So there you go; a good weekend, for good causes.  Hopefully everyone out there had as enjoyable a weekend as I did.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Warm Fuzzies

It's been a quiet week around here, motorcycle-wise.  Been banging the keyboard during the daytime (while the outside people are melting in the ongoing heat wave we're enduring).

Anyway, I don't like to leave long stretches of emptiness on the blog, even when I don't have anything specific to write about.  So, when I have a chance, I like to peruse old pics which I haven't posted beforem, and toss one up from time to time.

Today's offering actually has a bit of a story behind it.  Ya see, on one of the excursions we (myself and the Olean crew) were making, on our way to Maine for the annual Labor Day festival, we stopped (as we usually do) at the top of Hogback Mountain to enjoy the scenery (and grab a Cherry Garcia ice cream pop).

(Those familiar with this particular stop will know of the Skyline Restaraunt which sits on the opposite side of the road from the gift shop.  It's been out of business for some time, and while the building itself seems to be in decent-enough shape, the staircase leading up from the roadway had fallen into a greater and greater state of disrepair as the years went by.)

At any rate, on this particular year, I noticed that someone had posted a sign by the decrepit staircase.  I tried to think back as to whether the sign had been there in years past, and I don't think it had been - meaning someone had the wit (or sarcasm) to put this sign up long after the establishment had closed (and long after the staircase was safe).

I couldn't pass up the opportunity to snap a pic of the sign in question.  And while I didn't wind up posting it in that year's Labor Day writeup, I did save it for a future post.  And since today seemed like a good day to throw something like that up on here, I went about finding the pic...

I looked everywhere...and then looked again...all my photo albums on my PC, on my laptop, even on my old laptop which I haven't used in over a year...

...but no luck.  Somehow along the way, I either deleted it, or didn't move it over to where I should have.  But the bottom line was that it was lost.

Damn, it was a great picture!

As a last resort, I figured I'd try my luck with the Google community.  Hell, that was a pretty decent snapshot, someone else must have taken it, too.  But would they have posted it, or just hung on to it and eventually lost it, like I did?

Well, as luck would have it, I did stumble upon a very similar photo that someone had taken and posted onto flickr.  It wasn't the exact photo I'd taken, but it was certainly close enough.  So without further ado, here is said picture;

I know; nothing mind-blowing, but still; I thought it was humorous.

Bikers.  We're especially welcome in places that are no longer open, and which have decrepit accessibility options.

Looking forward; I've got a memorial run down on Cape Cod tomorrow, in remembrance of fallen soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan.  Sunday, I've got a Multiple Sclerosis fundraiser which should be a decent day.  Here's hoping everyone has a safe and productive weekend.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Split Vision

I've been riding around with a bit of electrical tape on my windshield for the past couple of weeks...

Why? Well, I've been trying to hide a little secret (but it's not really fooling anyone). Peeling away the tape, we find...*GASP!*

Yep; a busted windshield. How did the windshield get broken? Never you mind how it happened, let's just focus on the fact that it's unacceptable, and we need to remedy the situation.

So, with that in mind, I went on-line, looking for an 8" windshield to replace the one I'm used to running with. Unfortunately, the only 8" ones I could find were "gradient" (solid-black at the bottom, fading to pure clear at the top). I don't like that look at all, so I had to settle for the highest, solid-black one I could find; 5". (You women out there can attest to the disappointment one experiences when one is used to 8" but then has to settle for 5.)

At any rate, I got it installed, and it doesn't look too bad...

...And Snoopy is glad to not have a draft at his back any longer...

...but after having had the bike out several times since, I'm not really ecstatic. With the shorter shield, there's naturally much more air/rain/wind that is hitting me in the face. And, like most women out there; I'm not a fan of taking it in the face. So I'll keep my eyes wide open (well, not when I'm riding) in the event I come across a nice 8" one I can use.

Squint Hard, Take It In The Face

Stonewalled

Matty and I headed up to Rex's place this past weekend to kick back on the lake with him and Kim. It was a nice, relaxing time, and we beat the heat a bit with many dives off of Rex's boat. That was definitely worth heading up for. The other thing that was worth heading up there for, was so that I could get some photos of a stone wall just down the street from Rex's house. I've passed it before but never stopped to get pics before, but I made sure to do so this time around. Approaching the wall, there doesn't seem to be anything abnormal about it...

However, upon slightly closer inspection, one can see there there is something very different about this wall. Something very different, indeed!

Blogger (the website I use to host this blog) is acting up on me something fierce, so instead of the nice, smooth-flowing writeup I had planned, I'm going to see if I can just put some words down and then post the pics at the end. Long story short; the wall was built by the guy who lives here, and he pulled all the stone out of his own land. Well, perhaps not the center piece of granite. Maybe he saw that somewhere and that's where he got the inspiration to build this wall, I don't know. But it's so cool - I've never seen anything like this. And, there's even a little surprise at the end of the wall; a little critter, hanging out in it's own little cave. Enjoy the pics!

ALR Post 106 Support Run

This past Saturday we held our first annual Support Post 106 fundraising run.  The response we'd been getting (both on FB, as well as from other groups) had us quite excited.  Turnout would be huge!  We had food covered, the bar was stocked, the pre-run had yielded positive results, and LEO's from the various towns we were riding through were all on board and would offer blocking assistance.  We were good to go!

And then Saturday arrived...along with a very dark sky, which spit briefly upon us as we were doing our setup in the morning.  We'd look at each other, cast a wary eye toward the skies, then cast more knowing looks at each other before lowering our heads back to the tasks at hand.  Cones and caution tape were set out in the parking lot, canopies were set up and tables were laid out.  Waiver forms and wrist bands were readied, raffle prizes were displayed...and still the clouds refused to relent.

Registration was from 10 - 12:30, and most of that time was spent milling about, keeping an eye on the sky, and wondering how much of the many "yes" responses we'd received would wind up being nothing more than chaff, to be separated from the wheat by the ominous looking sky.

Now and then, we had a rider or two come rolling in and set their stands.  I'd love to say we were running short on space, but such was not the case.  There was ample bike parking - pretty much anywhere.  We kept checking the time, assuring each other that as 12:30 neared, certainly we'd have a bunch of bikes come pouring in.

Alas, such was not the case, and when the start time mercifully arrived, we rolled out with a measley 21 bikes.  Ugh.  Not a good showing at all.  The one good thing about such a small column is that it moved quite quickly.  (Too quickly, according to some folks who didn't care for the pace that Ed and I set, but oh well.  Keep up, or catch up.)

After cruising some great side roads and making short work of the route, we arrived back at the Post a little over an hour later.  We all found parking quite easily again, and were soon gathered 'round the food tables, exchanging comments about the run, and washing down the little bit of road dust we'd accumulated.

The sun had come out at this point and it was turning into quite a nice day, weather-wise.  I ambled out to the parking lot to snap a pic of the disappointing turnout...

(There were a few bikes off to the left, out of the picture.  But you get the idea.  Low turnout!)

We made the best of things and as it turned out, we'd managed to accumulate quite a number of quality raffle prizes.  The tickets were selling like hot cakes (I'm sure it had nothing to do with our large-chested raffle girl), and by the time the raffles were called, there had been hundreds of tickets sold.

The day wore long into the afternoon and the till behind the bar was ringing a merry tune.  There was lots of laughter and, since we'd prepared for a much larger turnout, the food never ran out.  It was a great day, and folks were reluctant to make their exits.

Before all was said and done, we tallied the day's take and were humbly surprised by what we found.  Despite only having had 21 bikes, we'd still managed to raise $1,200 for the Post!  That works out to about $60 per person - and that doesnt count what the bar took in!  That's pretty impressive, especially considering that we hold other charity runs here which raise over $10,000, but the per-person amount on those works out to less then $40, each.  So while our attendance had been down, we'd actually seen a 50% increase in per-person contributions.  Sometimes good things do come in small packages.  Or something like that.

Suffice to say the decent day's take helped ease our disappoinment that so many folks had been scared away by a dark sky in the morning (pussies).

Anyway, we congratulated ourselves on salvaging things as well as we'd managed to, and counted the day a success.  It was time for (another) beer.

Ride Hard, Take Chances