Back In The Saddle

Picked up the bike on Saturday and took Kate out for lunch to say thanks for lugging my ass in to get it. That turned into drinks with Matt and Zig, which meant the rest of the day was a wash, but that was ok, it was a good day.
Sunday morning was the coldest we've had yet this season but there were miles to roll up. I was headed to the annual Fall Keene swap meet.
I like strolling around and looking at the offerings, both in the parking lot and on the tables inside.
Unfortunately, the offerings in the parking lot were nothing fancy. No stripped bobbers, no hardtails, nothing terribly custom at all.
This thing wasn't too bad, though...

I ambled inside and began the strolling. The usual sights greeted me; bins and totes overflowing with mostly unrecognizable (to me) components,  tarps and tabletops covered with handlebars, tanks, fenders, frames, etc. There were basket cases and rolling frames. There were even a smattering of complete bikes for sale. Old repair manuals, and assorted biker paraphernalia. In a nutshell; it was the same-ol', same-ol'. But that was ok, it was what I'd expected.
There was one fantastic surprise. As I was walking past an EZ-up, there was a guy talking to the proprietor. ..and I instantly recognized his voice. It was Malcolm!!
I haven't seen him since 3 'Vous' ago. We caught each other up on our lives and how we've been doing - he's clean and sober, has been for over 2 years, and says he won't be at the 'Vous again, which I understand,  given his new lifestyle.  I met his new woman (Martha), she was very nice. We exchanged numbers and he wants the crew to come up and visit him and go riding. Hopefully we'll be able to make that happen.
A guy there was hawking his carving abilities and he had a section of tree carved into a spine and skull...

I knew the person that had to see this thing so I snapped the pic and sent it off to Robbo. He replied, quite impressed with it.

That was pretty much it for this year. On my way out,  I snapped a few pics of bikes that had paint colors I liked...

Love the deep metallic blue of this one...

And the bright green on this one...

I could've spent more time there but I wanted to get back for the Pats game, so I made for the roadways home.

One last pic of the parking lot to wrap things up...

 Ride Hard, Take Chances

Missing Motorcycle

I dropped my bike off at the dealership last weekend for it's 20k service.  While it was there, I asked them to put new skins on the front and back, and replace the broken cover on the USB compartment in the fairing.  I'd hoped they'd have it done in a day or two.  Well, they informed me that they were now closed on Mondays, and had a company-wide outing on Tuesday.  Meaning they probably wouldn't get to my bike until Wednesday.  Awesome.  Oh well.

I called them yesterday to see how things were going and they said they'd found a rocker box leak when they were doing the service and had taken care of it (under warranty).  Hmmm...ok....I hadn't noticed any leak and had just washed the bike a few days before dropping it off, but hey; thanks for the fix.

They said it'd probably be done by yesterday but I said no worries, I'd be in on Saturday to pick it up, and they said cool.

So it's been a week of 4-wheels and I no likey.  Ok, the mornings have been pretty chilly and it's been kinda nice to just hop into the Jeep and have heat, but those afternoon rides home, with temps in the 70's, have been killing me.

Hopefully things will be back to normal soon.

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Happy Birthday, Russ

We still miss the hell out of you, Brother.  This year's Maine Event was a small one, as you know.  Many of us took a moment to visit your marker and send you thoughts of love and memory.

I still have that pic of you in my chair, and it's still tucked into the spiderweb you made me.  That won't ever change.

Wish you were still with us, Chum.

An Extended (Front-Loaded) Labor Day Maine Event

I'm long on work that needs to get done and short on time to do it, so this is gonna be another "lots of pics with scattered commentary" posts.

The annual Labor Day Maine Event had arrived, but the weather looked awesome for quite a stretch so I decided to add a couple days on to the front end and knock off a couple of things from my like-to-do list.

Wednesday night, stayed a bit late, headed to Wolfeboro, stopped in at the Wolfe's Tavern and slapped an ALR decal onto the bottom of my mug.

Thursday morning it was up early, and winding my way along scenic roadways, to the Mount Washington Auto Road.  $16 not only got me into the park, but also got me one of those "This BIke Climbed Mount Washington" stickers...which of course will not make it's way to my bike.

Very scenic on the way up!

This was not unlike some of the roadways in the Alps, which made me very nostalgic!  I'm hoping to get over there again next year...

Damn...clouds are moving in.  This was the wall that was waiting for me at (I forget what) elevation.

Arrival!  And not a thing to see in the distance!

I didn't even realize they had an old hotel on top of this mountain, way back in the day.  Talk about rustic!

The dining area was pretty big, which didn't really make sense...

Since the sleeping quarters only fit about 8 people.  Maybe they had large day-parties or something.

I loved all the rock stacks all over the place.  They were stacked up along the edges of trail paths.  The way they looked like silent sentinels reminded me of Morder from Lord of the Rings somewhat.

These were at the summit...

You know the wind gets bad when they have to chain the buildings down.

Many of the rocks had a very interesting green lichen on them.

More silent sentinels...

 ...leading off into the mist...

 

I was on a tight schedule, lotsa miles to knock out, so I didn't stay too long, unfortunately.  I definitely will go back, it was amazing, even not being able to see much.

Again, the weather was calling for clear skies and warm sunshine the whole stretch, so I wasn't too thrilled when a monsoon swept through and soaked me entirely.

I asked a guy what the deal was with the rain and he said it was heading north.  Huh.  I'm heading north...maybe I should scrap the next leg of my plan and just head to the clearing.  Maybe I'll check my weather radar...

WTF...it wasn't moving north, it was moving south.  Which meant I could keep going with my plan.

It also meant after about an hour, I was back to skies that looked like this...

 

After a good long stretch of amazing scenic byway, I arrived at my destination; Fort Kent, at the northernmost tip of Maine, right at the Canadian border.

It was getting late in the day and I hadn't eaten anything all day but a couple of protein bars so I was pretty starving.  I found a Subway, shoved a foot-long down my throat (leave that alone, it's way too easy), and started gearing up for the ride down to the Clearing.

A guy in the parking lot noticed my ALR vest and commented that he belonged to the local Legion as well.  He noticed that I was tossing the gear on kind of rapidly and asked where I was headed.  The conversation went like this;

Me: To be honest; about 6 hours south of here.

    (Him, looking at his wristwatch in shock and then back at me);  Do you know what time it is?!?

Yes (it was 6:30)

    It's gonna get cold!

Yep, that's why I'm gearing up.

    No, you don't understand.
    When that sun goes down (motioning to the sky), it's gonna get COLD!!!

Yep, that's why I'm gearing up.

    There's MOOSE on those roads!

Yep, I saw the signs (there were signs all over the place, warning of high impact rates).

    No, there's moose everywhere - You Don't Want To BE On Those Roads!!

I understand, but that's why I'm trying to get going as soon as possible.  I'm not trying to be rude, but I gotta get rolling.

He shook his head, wished me luck, and with that, I was off.

Rte 11 is amazingly scenic and I would have loved to have enjoyed it and stopped to take lots of pics, but I wanted to roll up as much of that black carpet as I could while there was still light in the sky.

I was doing about 20 over the speed limit until the last vestiges of light finally vanished from the sky.  Now, with nothing more than my (seemingly far too yellow and dim) headlight to guide me, I dropped it down to 10 over and kept scanning the sides for any large movement.

Fortunately, no moose came charging out at me, but one stupid-as-fcuk raccoon did.  He shot out from some tall grass like he had a death wish he wanted to carry out with my front tire.  I gave a not-terribly-manly cry of surprise and managed to avoid him at the last second, and we both were able to continue on our way, unimpeded.

I finally arrived at the Clearing, and it was only 11:30 so I'd managed to shave an hour off of the ride time...but it was still quite dark out.  I'd been hoping to find Dave awake so that I could have a drink with him, but the camper was dark and nobody was around, so I headed over to the clearing and set the tent up.

It was the weekend!  Time for the official "thing" that is the Maine Event!
People were going to be arriving soon so that meant we had preparations to make, and that included grabbing some picnic tables.

Charlie and his tractor made the job quite easy...

 

A sad note to this year's event; our friend Garv had passed and wanted some of his ashes to be spread up in Maine.  Some would be spread in the clearing, and some would be spread on top of "Moby Dick".  I had no idea what Moby Dick was but it's a huge rock in an inlet that the Olean crew used to go and sit on late at night and wait for the tide to come in.  Here are some pics of Moby, of the inlet, and of the dirty bikers. 

You can see the container that Garv rode out in, in King's hands.  It's Garv's travel Yahtzee container that he took when he went on trips

King said some words, Andrea read a poem she'd written, and we all toasted to the memory of our good friend Garv.  Another one gone, far too soon.

The inlet was quite beautiful...

So why is this rock called Moby Dick?  I'm told that Dana, many years ago, was riding by, glanced over (it must have been low tide), saw this rock, and proclaimed it to be Moby Dick.  Why?  Because if you click on and open the pic, you'll see an indentation near the top (that was it's lidded eye), as well as a cross-shaped crack in the side of it.  Dana said that was where Captain Ahab's harpoon had struck the mighty whale.  Sounds pretty good to me!

One last lineup...

A few of us hit The Slipway just outside of Thomaston center for the obligatory mid-day meal.  I found a beer on the bottled beer list which sounded enticing so I figured I'd give it a shot.  I wasn't a bottle, but it made up for it by having funny sayings on it...

I then tried a bottle...but shoulda stuck with the can.  This porter wasn't very good....

Sunday brought the lobster fest, which meant it was a very bad day for these guys...

They had steak tips for us non-sea-spider eaters!

And more tips...

And marinated pork!!

Spiders and corn...

 

 

A couple of random pics of the attendees. It was a very small group this year, but we still had a fantastic time.

 

And the weather couldn't have been better...

 We held the Sunday night ceremony, introduced the knights and ladies present, as well as knighted Tim and Ladied Steph and Ally.  We remembered those of our crew who aren't with us any longer, and toasted Life before kicking back into party mode for one last evening.

The next morning would see me on the road quite early so I didn't stay up too late (not too far past midnight), before turning in.

The next morning I was up and on the road even earlier than planned, which lent itself to a quick ride home; only 3 hours.  Not shabby at all considering the amount of LEO speed patrol that was out (5 staties in a row at one point, all had people pulled over).

It's crunch time at work now (budget season) but I wish I were back out on the roads.  I'm getting quite tired of this working for a living thing.  Life goes by too quickly, and there are too many miles out there still to be had.  Maybe I should quit the rat race and just go ride

Too bad beer and food cost money.  Otherwise I'd quit tomorrow.

Ride Hard, Take Chances.

Always Remember The Code

I stuck around at work a while to let traffic die down a bit, and hit the road a little after 6. I'd tried to convince myself to stay until 7 but the itch to hit the roads was just too strong.

I lucked out overall and really didn't hit too many slowdowns at all, and managed to maintain a well-above-the-posted-speed-limit pace for most of the run north into New Hampshire.

I was about 15 miles into NH proper, ripping along the speed lane, when my eye caught sight of a guy sitting on a guardrail, a solid black dead ricer sitting on a kickstand in front of him.

I signaled a lane shift and sliced over into the breakdown lane, dropping the transmission down through the gears until finally coming to a stop about 100 yards past him.

I jogged back to see what was up; bike just died completely, he had no tools and was waiting on a flatbed. Well, let me get my bike backed up and let's dig in to things and see if we can get you moving.

We checked out his connections, as well as his fuses, but they were all fine. I started tracing his main wire and quickly ran into a lot of aftermarket wiring. Ruh-roh...that poses a lot of potential spots for issues...

After trying to do some tracing, we had to admit it wasn't a problem for the side of the road. The coming flatbed was driven by a buddy of his and would probably be there within 20 minutes, anyway.

As I was packing up my tools, I noticed his license plate; "BT MAN". Huh...how about that. Solid black bike...The license plate...This was Batman! (I commented that I hadn't recognized him without his mask and cape, and he laughed.)

I told him I was sorry I hadn't been able to get him going, but he thanked me repeatedly for pulling over and trying. I shook his hand and said it's part of the Biker Code. You don't pass a broken down brother without at least trying to help.

I rolled back out to the highway and the rest of the trip was smooth and uneventful. Now it's time for a bit of a reward...

Ride Hard, Remember The Code.

A Long "Long Labor Day Weekend"

I'm putting in a few extra bits of time here at work so that hopefully the traffic will die down.  I'm not headed home from here, I'm headed up to NH for the night.  That's right; I've got tomorrow and Friday off, meaning it'll be 5 whole days before I have to look at this screen again.

It'll be an up-early-and-hit-the-road morning tomorrow, as I ride to Mount Washington.  I've never made it up there and have always hears such great things about it.  Each year, I think; "It's not far at all, I can squeeze it in anytime" and then the season is over and I'm left thinking "What the hell?  Another season down and I still haven't made it."  So this is the year that I mark it off of my list.

From there, I've got another destination to hit, then I'll point my front tire toward The Clearing, where we'll have our annual Labor Day Maine Event shindig.  It's gonna be a real small one this year; only 6 people from NY and I think it's only going to be 5 from Mass (not including Dave/Karmen and Olivia).

For those that weren't able to join us up there this year, you'll be missed.  Hopefully next year will see a return to the larger crowds that we're used to.

Either way, we'll cram a whole ton of fun into the weekend!

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Bog Iron Brewery and Shayne's Pre-Run

Saturday was the Shayne's run yard sale, where we all donate stuff we're looking to get rid of.  Hey, one man's trash is another man's treasure, right?  And even though we're selling this stuff for short money, it's amazing how quickly short change can add up.  (I believe this year we raised over $1,500, and that all goes toward offsetting the costs of the run.)

This year, though, I had an invite from Chrissy to go visit a new brewery that she and Aaron wanted to check out.  Matty joined us, as did another guy; a friend of Aaron and Chrissy's that they spotted on their way to the brewery.  He was on his way to work, but once he found out where they were headed, he scrapped that plan and tagged along.

I give you; Bog Iron Brewery!

That big guy on the left?  That's Jay.  He's the one who was on his way to work.

But he opted for the better plan of doing some sampling with us, instead.  7 beers on tap, 4 samples per flight...hmmm...one extra slot.  (So we filled it with a second pour of one that sounded good.)

Hey, this place has a mini version of that leg lamp from A Christmas Story!

Ta da!  Far and away, this was my favorite offering.  It's called "Joe" and was their stout.  It - was - delicious!!

Here's a listing of the beers they had available today.  As you can see from the high ABV's, they don't fcuk around!

A customer of theirs made this for them.  Took one of their bottles, ran a cord out the bottom edge and filled it with mini Christmas lights.  I liked the look of this so much, I'm gonna do it in my basement.

We didn't pay much attention to the various glasses stacked on this shelf...until one of the owners came up, retrieved his drinking vessel, had it filled and walked off with it.  Oh, his drinking vessel was a drinking horn!  (Ok, it wasn't an authentic one, it was made of plastic, but it was still cool.)

I asked the guy doing the pours how much they know to charge for filling up a customer's vessel, since they're all different sizes.  He said that when someone brings something in, they'll fill it with 16 ounces of water, mark the vessel, and then they'll know each time how full to pour it.  (Of course, I'm thinking about doing this, but then elevating the mark on the inside of the glass...)

We each selected the ones we liked and knocked a couple back before heading off in our own directions.  Jay was going to stick around as he'd texted his wife (also a beer drinking) and she was coming down to join him.  I was headed off to the Shayne's run yard sale, Matty was headed off to a cookout, and Aaron and Chrissy had a couple of errands to run and were then going to swing by the yard sale as well.

It was a great way to start a fun Saturday!


Now then, on to Sunday...

Each year, we do a pre-run of the Shayne's route to make sure there are no big construction issues or detours to take into account when doing the actual run.  Each year, we get about a handful of bikes and rip things up pretty well, all in the name of preparation.

This year, the stars must have aligned just right, for not only did the weather turn out to be gorgeous, but we have about 20 bikes!  This made it a bit interesting in trying to keep the whole column together (and more than once, there were more than a few bikes that took great liberties with the difference between a yellow light and a red light), but we all stayed safe and all had a great day.  Some pics...

I shoulda snapped a pic at the Post before we all headed off, but didn't, so here ya go; segmented groupings from our lunch stop;

These guys were smart and parked in the shade...

These guys were not smart, and lined up with me, in the sun...

And these guys were the smartest.  Shade, and closest to the door.

When we first pulled in to the parking lot, I had a bit of fear as there was only one car, and I wondered if they were even open.  But they were, and we soon had commandeered the bar.  The entire bar.  I think there were only two seats which we didn't fill, which meant that we were all facing each other across the bar, which meant we needed to utilize some Rendezvous shenanigans.

The bartenders thought we were a riot, which of course; we are.  The cook, though, was a bit overwhelmed and those of us who'd ordered last were left to drool as the rest of the crew munched down their lunches.  But the cook came through for us and before too (too) long, we, too, had happy bellies.  He came out after all our food was prepared (probably to get a break) and we all gave him a hearty thank you for putting up with us.

Cindy felt it necessary to respond to my Other Side Sux sign (you'll have to click on the pic to read it).

 

We still had the second half of the run to check out so we soon ambled back outside to the bikes.  Some folks had to head off and take care of other business so we said our goodbyes to those who were leaving, and the rest of us hammered back to the Post.

The route seems to be in really good shape this year, with only a couple of spots which are a bit rough.  Certainly nothing that we can't handle, so that's good news.  (The only not-great news is that we just heard back from the Sheriff's office and they won't be able to give us an escort this year.  We've got a couple of motorcycle cop buddies who are going to check with their local leadership to see if they can get approval to use a town's bike and then escort us on their own time.)

We tossed back a cold one inside and then a few of us headed off to the Road Captain's house.  He'd had a party the day before and had a cooler full of beer to get rid of.  Fortunately for him, we were up to the task.

That wrapped up what had been a very enjoyable weekend.  Too bad summer is winding down, I could use a lot more weekends like this!

Ride Hard, Take Chances