Coastal Ride, Sandwiched Between Two Slices Of Breakfast

It's just about budget season and you know what that means; short on time.  I've got the Labor Day trip coming up but I think that's going to be about it for bike trips for a while.  Oh wait, there is the guys' trip up to Bentley's in October...

Anyway, I've been up to some mischief as usual.  Nothing bad, just good natured and fun shenanigans.  It'll be easier to just load the pics and toss in some comments, so here ya go...

Breakfast Club.  This had been a Sunday ritual for some of the crew, and I even managed to show up once in a while.  Kate bartends at Alberto's on Sunday mornings and the guys would show up, have a couple of cold ones and then get some lunch.  The hours for this Breakfast Club were pretty strict; 10am - noon, only.  After that, we'd just head off I our own directions to get done what needed getting done.

Well, Kate had had enough of working there and talked about giving her notice.  We joked that if she did, we'd have to move Breakfast Club to her and Zig's house.  I don't think she believed us.  Well, she went ahead and gave her notice and we began putting a plan into place to move things to their house.  The one catch was that she and Zig weren't going to be home that weekend.  (I said this was a "catch", I didn't say it was a "problem".)  So of course we went there and set about creating the new chapter of Breakfast Club.

A couple of cold frosties, a grille, and folks that were willing to jump in and do the cooking.

In all fairness, Kevin was just moving some things around.  McCarthy was the usual grillmaster.  Which was important because we really stuffed the grille surface...

We knew we needed to tread lightly if we were to be allowed to continue the BC at their place, so McCarthy brought a bin, and we stored all our excess stuff in it.  Plates, cups, paper towels, utensils, cooking spray, etc. - they all went into the bin, which got tucked out of the way.  We wanted to leave no indication that we'd been there.  Nothing that might jeopardize our chances of coming back.

Well ok...maybe one indication...

That was a week and a half ago.  Jumping ahead to this past weekend, our Road Captain put together a coastal ride for us on Saturday.  We'd expected a good sized turnout but surprisingly; only had 4 bikes.  But it worked out great because a smaller group is easier to get around with.  And we got around!

We got a little bit of a late start as our Road Captain was stuck on a call (he's a fireman), so rather than the scenic route to breakfast, we hammered the highway...then waited in line, but finally got our feed on at the breakfast place.

From there, we did find the scenic way to a winery down in RI...

Bikes parked at the ready, front tires aimed toward the exit.  You never know when things are going to get ugly at a wine tasting.

Welcome to...damn...I forgot the name of the winery.  But it starts with a "G".

Blurry pic, but this was a huge converted barn, all done up nicely.  The loft above was full of antique horse carriages.  We were going to head up and check them out, but were quickly informed that tours weren't until later in the day.  Oh well.

A shot of the vineyard outside...

And a shot of the dirty bikers all gathered around the poor girl pouring the samples.  I retreated to the outskirts to take this pic, and all I could hear from the gathered throng was "Bigger pours!  Open more bottles!!"

Artie tries to prove he's got sophistication and class via proper pinky usage.

The dirty bikers scared the poor pour girl away, so Greg jumped in to take up the slack.

Ahh, Greenvale!  That was the name of the place.

Another shot of the vineyards...before we burned 'em to the ground!

As we were preparing to leave, there were a couple of bachelorette groups which showed up.  One of the gals had dropped a penis straw on the path, so Artie picked it up and tucked it into the back seat of Ed's bike.  Ed didn't notice until he was about to get on the bike...

...so he took it even further and tried to fasten it to the front of his bike...

No luck, though, so he left it in the front grille of the car parked behind us.

Off to the coast!

Heading up the Newport Bridge.

Action pic of Edie and Artie...

Closer to the bridge...yes, it really does ascend that quickly...

An action shot on the way up...

And an action shot on the way down...

We'd been on the road for quite a while at this point (maybe an hour?) and needed a cold refreshing beerverage to cool off with.  Maria had lined up just the place for us; Fish restaurant and bar.

My new favorite dark beer!  As soon as I saw "Engine Oil" on the menu, I knew I had to order it.  It didn't disappoint!

Dirty bikers!  It makes it easier on the arresting officers if we do a group mug shot.

From there, it was off to Beavertail park for more great scenery.

This shot makes me think of The Warriors scene on Coney Island, when they've reached the ocean.

From there, we headed off to (I forget the name of the place) but it was on the water, the scenery was amazing, and the drinks were cold...which was important because there'd been a strong chance of heavy rain all day, but man...that sun was beating the bag out of us!

 After we'd had our late lunch and cooled off adequately, it was time to head back home to the Post, for the event the Auxiliary was putting on.  I don't have any pics from that, but it was a great way to end what had been a great day.

And that's it, right?  Nope - that was all on Saturday.  The following morning brought the second edition of the new Breakfast Club!

Now all these years that the BC had been going on, there'd never been any eggs or other breakfast foods.  Alberto's doesn't serve breakfast!  So it was time to change that.  We brought all kinds of breakfast stuff and dove right in.  Oh, and Kate was there this time to join us!

Mmmmm....bacon!

And ham!  And sausages!!

And eggs, and cheese and toast!  And cold BL's!!

 Now that's a breakfast!

Oh yeah, can't forget the DD muffins!  And champagne and OJ, for mimosas!

 Man, I'm getting starving just thinking about how good that spread was.  I'd like to keep the breakfast theme going for a while, but the crew wants to do pizzas next week.  Yes; on the grille.

So there ya go.  I may not keep the updates coming on a regular basis, but there's always stuff going on.  Hopefully everyone out there is finding ways to be crazy and fun, too.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Overdue Cinco Pic

I was looking through my phone and realized I hadn't posted a picture from the morning of the Cinco de Roasto, when we were at the farm to get the pig.  So here ya go

It's a Saturday and I'm at work, but I think I've had enough for today and am gonna go out and enjoy some sunshine.  Besides, I gotta be back in here tomorrow.  Good thing I'm getting paid for my time...oh wait, I'm till salaried.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Ocean Mist Breakfast Run

Our Road Captain (Ed) had put the word out to the crew; there would be a breakfast run this past Sunday morning, complete with lots of miles and a bloody mary at the end.  Who would be brave enough to accept the challenge?

We hear a lot from the other Riders about how we need to get together more often and go riding.  Well, talk is cheap apparently, because it wound up being just myself and Ed.  Matt and Greg were going to try to make it but wound up not being able to, and Artie and Billy are out in Sturgis.  But that’s only 4 guys, and we have a lot more members than that - but nobody else bothered to show up, or even reply.  It gets frustrating.

Oh well, fuck it.  Now we can ride our own pace and not worry about leaving anyone behind.

We shot straight to the highway and opened up the throttles.  Man, it felt good to be on the open road, early in the morning, with only mild/light traffic to deal with.  We made great time and only had to pull over once to check directions, and were soon pulled up in front of the Ocean Mist restaurant and bar in Wakefield, RI.

This place was right on the water and the sides of the road on either side of it were lined with parked cars, their owners no-doubt spread out somewhere on the beach sand, below.

We found a place to tuck our bikes into and nestled them as far back as we could, given the sea wall at our backs.  Setting the ‘stands carefully into the layer of sand atop the dirt, we ambled to the entrance and made our way inside.

Holy crap – this place opens up at 9am, and here it was only 9:15, and the place was already jammed!  We had to wind our way through standing room only and headed toward the water.  There was a small deck on the back which sat right over the sand, and we were lucky enough to find a small table to commandeer.  It only had one stool, and despite asking around at all the other tables, no other free stools could be found.  Ok, no problem I’m not afraid to stand while I eat.  Hell, we’d just been seated for over an hour on the bikes, it won’t hurt to stretch the legs for a bit.

I guess men who are ugly, balding, and standing are less easy to overlook than seated ugly balding men, because the hostess came up in short order and dragged out a stool for me to sit on.  Hey, at least the view is pretty sweet!

 

It took a fair amount of time, but when a waitress finally came up to us, we ordered our bloody’s and perused the menu.  The offerings weren’t very extensive so I just opted for a cheese omelette, and Ed went with a egg/bagel concoction with some sausage patties.  Now we just needed to put our order in….so where’s the waitress?  She finally came back, delivered the drinks, and took our orders.  While we waited for the food to arrive, we nursed our cocktails (that sounds pretty dirty) and talked about the Post and ways to improve things.

It took some time, but when the food finally arrived, we dove in…and found it was merely road-adequate, and nothing more.  That was unfortunate, but it went hand-in-hand with the cocktails, which were also kind of bland.  Oh well, when in Rome…so we ordered another one, each.

We polished off the food, and the cocktails, and talked more about the Riders, upcoming runs, and ways to try and get folks more involved in things.

The weather was supposed to have been not-bad, with maybe a quick sprinkle, but as we watched the sky proceed to be blanketed with thick grey clouds, we figured we might as well mosey on back.  Ed had to meet up with his wife and I had to meet up with the boys over at Alberto’s for Kate’s last Breakfast Club shift.

We shot back to the highways and there was much more traffic to deal with at 11am than there had been @ 8am, so we opted to take 295 and bypass Providence, which allowed us to hammer the throttles must harder than we otherwise would have.

When the exit for 495 arrived, I signaled to Ed and peeled off toward the off-ramp.  A quick glance back at him to watch him rocket ahead, and then it was eyes-forward as I entered the turn, and dragged metal around the apex.

Not too shabby at all.  I hadn’t expected to get to Alberto’s until almost 1, but there I was; setting my kickstand to the pavement at a quarter of noon.  Apparently you really can accomplish a lot of things when you get up early on a weekend.

I headed inside to the laughter and good times that were waiting within.

It’d been a good Sunday, and the day was only half over.

 

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Smooth Flowing Traffic

The commute in this morning was nice and smooth, bare-minimum of traffic.  I wish all days were like this!

Wait...no I don't.  I don't wish that at all.  Because today is Saturday and I shouldn't be at work today, I should be out enjoying the sunshiney day out there.

Oh well.  I had nothing planned for today anyway.  Had thought about heading up north and checking out some roadways in NH and VT but since tomorrow is going to be a fun day (breakfast run with some of the Riders, followed by a visit to Kate for her last shift at Alberto's), it seemed prudent of me to come in here this morning, with a clear head, and get some things taken care of to lighten Monday's workload.

Hopefully everyone else is out there getting miles on today!

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Parker's Poses a Problem

The weather for the coming weekend looked decent (at least for Sunday), so I’d put the word out to a few of the guys to see if any of them were interested in revisiting Parker’s Maple Barn for breakfast.  This is the place in NH we went to a number of years ago that allows you to bring in your own booze.  This was also the same place that we thought bringing flasks in made us pretty cool, only to be thoroughly outdone by the folks who brought in a battery-operated blender and all the ingredients (including a 5^th of vodka) for making bloody mary’s.

At any rate, Zig had to work and Rex had house responsibilities to take care of, so it was me and Matty.  Nice!  We were sure to find ourselves a bit of trouble on the day.

Thursday night, I got my flask ready and filled it with “99” brand Butterball.  The thing about this is, the “99” isn’t just the brand name, it’s also the alcohol content.  And after sampling it a bit, I realized that I probably didn’t want to be knocking back an entire flask of this stuff if I’m doing a day of riding.  So, in a rare bit of intelligence, I swapped that stuff out and went with my homemade Kahlua, instead.  (I know what you’re thinking; yes, some batches of that stuff have been pretty potent, but the batch I used for the flask was from a much-lighter-booze-on-the-booze batch, so no worries.)

And then...it was Sunday morning!  I woke up, got dressed and walked out the front door.  Man, it was beautiful weather already!  Warm, dry air greeted me as readied my bike – I wouldn’t even need a jacket this morning!

A quick shower and then I was off, headed to Matty’s house – it was gonna be a good day!

Although…those skies above me were looking pretty ornery…

Arriving safely, I found Matt had already pulled his bike out and was ready to go.  But, before we could leave, we needed to make sure the flasks were properly filled.  He was bringing not just his usual two-halved one, but also (what I affectionately call); Frankenflask.  This thing is enormous!  It holds a full litre of liquid.  Egads…

He opted to fill that one with Peach schnapps, I believe it was (I forget what he put in the normal-sized one), and we were off…well, almost…just need to take care of the customary sendoff beerverage to appease the road gods.

(Yes, that one on the right is the can he superglued to his counter.)

I’d mapped out the route ahead of time and while it seemed different than the way we’d gone the last time we headed to this place, it wound up being a very enjoyable and scenic ride.  Lots of back wooded roads with shade, minimal traffic, and only one deer which bounded out in front of the car ahead of us.  Fortunately, no one wound up worse for wear as both Bambi and the car managed to avoid each other, and the two bikers pulling up the rear didn’t wind up with any animal shrapnel to dodge.

We found the place easily enough and pulled in.  Hey, how about that, they even have bike-specific parking now.  Sweet!

We put our name in to the queue and then kicked back to pass the ~40 minute wait time.  Now was as good a time as any to snap a couple of pics;

A row of bikes parked in front of your establishment is usually a good indication of the food quality to be found inside.

 

That sky above us was still pretty threatening…

 

They still had the tree with all the greetings in different languages…

 

I liked the look of this bike and didn’t even realize until I got closer that the guy had rigged up a tank shift on it, complete with clutch lever and everything (zoom in on the pic).  Very, very cool, and it made me miss my suicide shift Fatboy!

 

I liked his sticker on his windshield, too;

 

Before too long, our name was called and we headed in.  Taking our seats, we gave our drink orders to the waitress (hot chocolate, coffee, and two OJ’s, please) who promptly headed off to get those for us.  Ahhh, we’re here!

We began pulling out our wares and got them set up on the table for the obligatory picture (yes, that monstrosity behind the normal flasks, is Frankenflask…)

…complete with the obligatory action pic…

…and that was when the wheels fell off of our plan.  The waitress at the next table saw Matt doing his thing and said in a pretty loud voice that she’d better not see that again.  Uhm…say what??
Well, it turns out that this place doesn’t allow you to bring alcohol in any longer!  That if they saw us drinking again, well… (I don’t really know what would have happened.  She didn’t say what, but we got the impression we’d probably be asked to leave.)

Damn.  All this way for an expensive, albeit tasty, breakfast, but no booze!  Yes, so we can still enjoy a breakfast without a snoot full, but this was all about the fun!  Where else can you go to breakfast and bring in your own booze?  (I don’t know, but I’m now on the hunt to find that place!)

We hastily put the flasks away and set to eating our food – which did come out mighty quickly.  Not sure if they were trying to rush us out of the place or not.  The good news is that the folks around us didn’t give us the stinkeye at all.  In fact, some of them seemed to have gotten a kick out of the whole thing.

When we’d finished and paid our tab, we headed back to the bikes and decided it was much too fine a day to head back to helmet-land (aka; Mass) just yet, so we agreed to just ride random roadways and see where we wound up.

We found some good roads and some not so good ones, even a dirt one at one point that fortunately didn’t last too long.  After about an hour or two, we found ourselves on 101A and stuck in stop-n-go traffic on the outskirts of Nashua.  Bleah.  The heat was pretty strong at this point and we weren’t moving much but sometimes that’s when Providence provides.

We spotted a little yard-style sign which pointed down a side street.  Why is this important?  Because apparently down this side street was a distillery…which was open…and which had tours going on.

Ta da!

Hopefully they had tastings as well, but there was only one way to know for sure so we u-turned it and found the place in question; Djinn Spirits http://www.djinnspirits.com/.

It was a small operation; a husband and wife, and they’d only been in business for a year and a half.  They were very friendly and gave us all the back story on their company…all while Cindy (the wife) was giving us samples.  Yaaaay samples!

They had a clear (white) whiskey which had hints of sweetness (in a good way), a Reserve, which was slightly yellow and hinted of oak and corn.  They had a gin which I politely declined, but which Matt tried and then advised I should, as well.  I did, and was pleasantly surprised as this was not (as was explained to me) made the same way as the dry gins I’d tried before.

Lastly, they had a honey-based liquor to try and this was amazing.  Krupnik!  The website has the write-up on this (and their other spirits), so I won’t go into all the detail, but suffice to say this one was Matt and my favorite by far.

Andy (the husband) gave us a lengthy, in depth tour of their operation.  It was very small, but it sure seemed like they are on to something and have things down to quite a science.  They’ve got another whiskey that’s barreling right now and will be ready in the December timeframe (I believe it was a more of a Reserve-style, but I’m not certain).

After the tour we each picked up a bottle of the Krupnik, thanked and wished them well, and hit the road again.

Oh yeah; we also got a glass with our tour fee!

It was about mid-afternoon at this point and it seemed prudent to hit the roads toward home so as to get a jump on traffic before the Sunday rush kicked in.  We fared pretty well, only hitting some slowdown at one point by Rte 290 on-ramp, but sailed smoothly for the rest of the way.

As Matt’s exit neared, he signaled the universal hand gesture for “hey, let’s have a beer”, to which I earnestly agreed.  We hit the off-ramp and cut to his house.

Setting the ‘stands, we hung out on his steps and talked about the day.  It had truly been a fun one so far, and what better way than to continue things by hitting Natty Green’s to see what they had on-hand for specialty craft brews.

As luck would have it, they had two offerings which I was very interested in; the first was a very-early Seasonal/Christmas beer, complete with all the spiced aromas and tongue tantalizing flavors one would expect from something like this.

The second one…ohhh, the second one.  That came from what has to be my favorite brewery; Southern Tier.  They’re the ones who put out the Crème Brulee beer earlier this summer that I was quite fond of.  This one didn’t disappoint; it was their ‘Chokolat Oranj” and was marvelous!

PIC 13

But only one of those, thanks, they’re pretty strong.  Safety first!  :-D

After we’d knocked a few…whoops…one of those back, we decided to round the day out by hitting the Red Rooster on Rte 1.  There were a few bikes out front, which was to be expected since it was still such a nice day out that I’m sure lots of folks were still out rolling miles up.

And that was it for the day.  I don’t know the mileage we did – most of the day was spent rolling, but most of the roadways were windy and pleasant.  Roads which you want to enjoy, rather than shredding, and that’s never a bad thing.

A great day, to be sure.

Ride Hard, Take Chances