The Missing Olean Activity...but no Vids!

I was going to post some videos of what we were doing out in Olean, but unfortunately; Blogger (the Google website that hosts this blog) is having errors uploading videos.  I researched it and it seems everyone that is trying to load videos is having this problem.  Google is aware of this problem (allegedly) and is working on it.  In the meantime, I'm afraid you'll just have to do with some pics;

First up; some of the ammo we were using.  "Ammo?  What do you mean; ammo??"

Ta da!  Bryan's cannon!!

It's a custom made cannon (I forgot who it was that made it for him.  It was a friend of Mark's.)  Bryan has this whole process down to a science.

I'm getting a bit ahead of myself, though.  Mark, Mary, Rob, Natalie and myself were kicking back on Thursday night and Mark tells us that Bryan was coming by the next morning to fire it off.  Well, far be it from me to not cause a bit of good natured fun, so I began texting Bryan, telling him that  Mark was doubtful that he'd show up at all, let alone on time.  Bryan, never one to back down from a challenge, assured us that he'd set off a reveille report promptly at 8am the next morning.

8am came and we were sitting about the breakfast table, and no cannon fire.  I was just about to grab my phone to start a new round of good natured insults, when; BOOM!!!  The house rattled, the back yard was instantly filled with smoke, and the echoes were bouncing off of the hills behind us.  We all ran outside, and there was Bryan with a big shit-eating grin on his face.  Good Morning!!

He'd come prepared, too!  With premade black-powder charges and a whole firing kit consiting of a rammer, cloth for wadding, a priming iron and gun oil for a good pressure seal around the shot, he was ready for action.  We started out by firing some golf balls into the hills behind Mark and Mary's house and we marveled at how f'ing cool this was!  Man, this thing is loud!!!

But we needed something more to shoot at.  Ah-ha!  Mark had a couple of old, discarded 4-panel wooden doors that we can try hitting...

Our first attempt...we were going to use the steel ball and we didn't want the shot to go to waste, so we we took our time to sight things carefully...  When we were confident that we were dialed in on the doors, we lit the fuse and jumped back... BOOM!!!!!

The doors didn't even move.  What the...we missed?!?!

Walking down to check the doors, we found that we hadn't missed at all.  In fact, we were just about dead-center on one of the doors!

The ball had been going so fast, the door hadn't even flinched when the ball blasted through it.  We'd expected it to expode the door, but the ball was going just way too fast.

We located the ball's path on the far side of the stream.  It'd carved an easily recognizable trench through the weeds and grasses, but we couldn't find where it'd actually struck the ground.  The best guess we could come up with was that each time it began to graze the ground, it'd 'bounced' back up and continued on, deep into the tangle of brambles and assorted overgrowth.

Ok, the doors weren't offering enough resistance.  We needed something more.  Behold; a barrel, filled with water and its cover sealed tightly!  Surely that would give us quite the explosion!

We each took turns sighting the cannon, but success was elusive.  Here, you can see we were close...quite close, in fact, but no luck.  4 shots, 4 near-misses (the 4th one is midway down, on the right side of the barrel).

Bryan thought maybe if we tried a bolo style of shot, we might have better success.  So we drilled two golf balls and secured them together with a section of weed trimmer line.  It was a grand plan...but it threw the trajectory way, WAY off, and the only success we had was against the innocent water hose that was laying on the ground between the cannon and the doors...

Whoops...  Ok, back to shooting just one ball at a time.

We only had one steel ball left, and we had to make it count.  I started out and did my best to sight it directly on the barrel.  Then Bryan got in there and made a couple finite adjustments until he was satisfied.  It was time to light the fuse and cross our fingers...

SUCCESS!!  We scored a direct hit!!  The barrel didn't launch into the air as much as I'd thought it would, but it sure did explode!  Water went everywhere, and the doors were knocked backward into the stream bed.  (The fact that they had old paint flaking off of them anyway, did much to enhance the effect of debris being exploded everywhere.)

Here, you can see where the ball struck the barrel.  The force of the steel ball striking the outside was countered with the force of the water - now under pressure due to the top being sealed - and the shock waves from the impact bouncing around inside the barrel.  The ring around where the ball passed through the side almost looks a bit melted in spots.  It's probably more of a compression effect than actual heat/melting.  And just look at those cracks in the plastic!

Bryan definitely stepped things up this time around!  I sent a pic to McCarthy and he (of course) wants to build one.  And I (of course) am completely on board with this plan!  I've got measurements and pictures and we'll have to get together soon and see if we can get a plan into place.

I really wish I could've loaded the videos!!  The pictures don't begin to convey the sheer power and NOISE of this thing!  I guess if you want to see this thing in action, you'll just have to come out to Olean with me next time.

And there you go; the Olean pig roast trip of 2014.  It was a fantastic time, with fantastic people.

I wish I was back out there right now!

Ride Hard, Take Chances

Dragging things out...

I'm slammed at work so you'll have to wait another day for the big reveal about what I omitted from my Olean write-up so far.  In the meantime, here's a couple pics I forgot to load and talk about...

King and I stopped by Mickey's to say Hey to Tommy and enjoy his scrumptious steak sandwiches.  Ok, I had the steak sandwich, King ordered fish-fry and fries to bring home to Pat and Alyssa.  Anyway, Tommy has new gifts for out-of-staters!

Yeah Baby - koozies with his restaurant's pepper mascot on them!  Mint!!

As we were shooting the shit, I commented how the only beer coasters he had were Yankee ones, and that he needed some Red Sox ones to spiff things up around his joint.  He wasn't on board with that plan, and the conversation soon moved on to other things.  He was busy getting ready for a large dinner party that was coming in that evening, so he was back and forth between the kitchen, chatting with us, the back dining room, etc.

After a bit of time had passed, King and I got ready to roll on out.  He was needed to bring dinner home and me, I was headed back to Mark and Mary's.  We said our goodbyes to Tommy and a few of the other folks, and ambled out to the parking lot...

...and when I lifted my helmet to put it onto my head, I was greeted with a sneaky surprise.  Tommy had grabbed a handful of the coasters and tucked them under my lid!

I grabbed them and looked at King, and shouted "That Rat Bastard!"   And that was when I heard the evil laughter coming from the deck we'd just walked off of.  Turning back, there was Tommy, all in his glory, and laughing joyfully.  We all chuckled at the prank, and I made a mental note that Zig and I really need to get moving on the great prank (for Tommy) that we've been discussing for several years.

Ok, now I think you're caught up, all except for the last thing that I will post tomorrow...

Olean, Part III; Saturday...somewhat

I screwed up.  I'd said that we rode out to the Kinzua Bridge on Saturday.  Nope, that was Friday.  Oh well - I was on vacation, you can't expect me to keep things striaght in my head.

Anyway; when I'd arrived on Thursday, we'd put the word out to Jerry to see if he was up for a ride with us.  I was quite psyched when he said yes, he wanted in.  King was up for it as well, so we all agreed to meet up at Mark and Mary's (which was easy for me, since I was already there).

The day was bright and shiny, the temps were superbly comfortable, and off we went...

This first pic has a bit of a funny backstory.  I've been to the Kinzua Bridge before, but didn't remember the way there, so of course I was taking up the rear and enjoying the scenery, following our trusted leader.

As we were rolling along, we came to an interesection where Mark wanted to take a left.  But there were signs saying that the bridge up that way, was closed for repairs.  Well, we went left anyway.  And as we got closer, we passed more signs saying the bridge was closed.  I guess Mark didn't beleive them, because we rode with up to the barricades.  Only then did we turn around and discuss a different route.

The first pic doesn't give you the full effect of the ROAD CLOSED signs...

 ...so I zoomed in for ya...

But after that minor bump, we were off in another direction, and sailing along the beautiful roadways.

Jerry was having a really good day - he was steady, solid, and kept right in the middle of the lane.  It was such a great feeling to see him having a good day and being able to be out and enjoying it.

Kinzua Bridge!

I did a write-up on this the last time I was here (something like 6 years ago or so), so I won't go into all the details again, but for anyone that is curious; Google the Kinzua Bridge and you'll find all the info you need.

They'd done some serious upgrades since the last time I was here.  A nice path leading up to the bridge, not to mention an observation deck all the way out at the edge of the tracks.

Amazing to see this behemoth split in two...

Here I am on the observation deck.  Thick (thick!) panels of (glass? plastic?) are secured in the floor so you can look straight down.  Yeah, no vertigo going on here!

Amazing scenery all around the valley around us...

The wreckage reminds me of the electrical towers in that made-for-tv-move The Langoliers, right when the Langoliers were coming over the hill by the airport and the towers were buckling...

More great scenic shots...

And what a beautiful day, too!

The last time I was out here, the public wasn't allowed to walk on the tracks (I'll let you guess if that stopped me).

Here's a shot looking back at the tracks...

Here's King, pointing all the way down to the ground, below.  When we first started walking out along the tracks, King was talking about the platform and how safe it was.  He proved that he had complete faith in the stuctural integrity because as soon as we got to the platform, he walked out to the middle of it and jumped - and I mean Jumped! - up and landed with a solid Wham!.  Everyone that had been on the platform bolted for the edges, fearing it was about to shatter, but King just stood there, laughing.  Oh that King.

After King cleared off, I walked out into the middle as well.  Man, it's a long way down!  I jumped up and down on the platform as well, but my jump was pretty tame - I wasn't as daring as King.  As I walked off the platform, Jerry smiled and said "That looked pretty half-hearted to me." I laughed and replied "Yup, and that's all you're gonna get outta me."

Walking back along the tracks, you can see between the wooden beams...again; all the way down...

A quick bit of history on the place...

And there you have the trip to the Kinzua Bridge.  Now let's move along to Saturday, the original plan for this posting...

I did make it over to King and Pat's house on Saturday, for the annual water fight with Alyssa.  I didn't take any pics of this, but Pat had a great view, watching from the deck above us.  She even got squirted a couple of times - I'm pretty sure it was Alyssa that did it.  :-D

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  When I showed up, I was handed a bucket and a squirt gun.   Ok, seems pretty legit.  But then I noticed that Alyssa's bucket was at least half-again as large as mine.  What the?  I see house rules benefit the family that lives here.  Ok, ok, not an insumountable obstacle, I'll just have to think outside the box...

...which is why I excused myself and went out to my bike and put on my rain gear.  Ha!  All's fair in love and water fights!

Ok, I didn't put on the full suit, just the jacket.  I had plenty of confidence in myself that I'd be fine with just the top covered.

When I came back the house, Alyssa wasn't too keen on my whole rain gear plan, but she accepted it like a champ and we got to work.  The battlefield would be their back yard, and we each had one bucket of water to work with.

As soon as we started trading water shots, I realized that my legs were going to get pretty wet, so I kept running away and circling back, doing my best imitation of kamikaze attacks.  It worked ok for a short while, but my pounding chest soon remined me that running is a young man's game, so I had to come up with a different plan...

...so I hid behind a tree.  It wasn't a huge tree, just wide enough for me to safely hide behind while I blasted Alyssa over and over again.  And when she realized that she needed to hit me in the eyes in order to improve her odds of winning, I simply slid my riding shades down, allowing me to continue firing, unfettered.  Winning!

Alyssa quickly realized that she, too, needed a different plan.  So she picked up her bucket and tried throwing the water on me.  This, was easy to dodge, and her bucket was soon empty.  Nice!  Uh-oh...now she's going for my bucket.  Ok, no problem, I'll just dodge it again.  Piece of cake!

Before she knew it, she'd just about exhusted the water in my bucket as well.  There was just one more slug at the bottom, and she was lining up to try and toss it again.  This was too easy!

And then she pulled a fast one - she tossed the entire bucket.  I blocked it with my hand...but the water launched past my hand, past my arm....and landed square on my legs.  Drat!  Foiled!  And soaked!

Next year, I'll have to keep that little trick in mind...

With the water fight concluded for yet another year, I retrieved my phone and wallet from inside.  Uh-oh - I had messages.  Myszka was at the V and looking for me!  I hadn't thought I'd be seeing him on this trip since he was running a separate charity event of his own that day.

Saying my goodbyes, I shot over to the V and caught up with lots of folks I hadn't yet seen this weekend.  The libations were flowing, the food was cooking (and looked and smelled great!) and it was nice to kick back and catch up with folks.

A bit later, I was off to one side, shooting the breeze with Tim, when we suddenly noticed everyone out front was walking up toward the road.  Joining them, we saw that a deer had just been struck by a pickup.  The folks in the truck were ok, but their truck was going to need some attention.  Sadly, the deer didn't make it.  :-(  But, ever the resourceful folks at the V made the most of things and soon the pork on the grille was joined by some venison backstraps.

The rest of the evening was uneventful by comparison and we all filled our bellies with some excellent fare (no, I didn't have any of the venison).  When dinner was done, we got a decent sized game of 1-card going, and that was a blast as always.  Rob's daughter Natalie was seated across from me, so I was safe for a little while.  She's like a mini-Jerry!  Sit next to her, and you'll soon be broke!

King will attest to this.  He was sitting next to her and wasn't faring terriblly well.  Natalie looked at him at one point and said "We're kickin' butt!".  King looks at me and says "More like suckin' butt..."

I managed to stay in the game for longer than I usually do, but it didn't matter. The end result was the same; I was out, and someone else went home with my quarters in their pocket.

When the sun had set and the darkness was beginning to settle, I said my goodbyes and headed back to the homestead.  I wasn't going to be staying over this year - I needed to be up and on the road early (and with a clear head) the following day and staying over at the pig roast would not be conducive to that plan.

Back at the house, Mark and Mary had more food cooked, and while I wasn't hungry, I of course still ate some.  Not because I'm a fatty-atty-ola, but because I knew it would be delicious as always, and it was!

We hung out for a bit longer and then it was time to hit the hay.  Rob and Natalie also turned in as they, too, were making for home the following morning.  Damn...another Olean trip was drawing to a close.

The next day, we were all up quite early, and saying our goodbyes.  Natalie wanted more pillow time, and as soon as Rob set her down, she went right back upstairs and into bed, LOL.

I said my final goodbyes and hit the road.  The trip home was rather uneventful, save for the horrible traffic and the heavy downpours for the second half of the trip.  Oh well, at least there was a great lightning and thunder storm going on above me to keep me entertained.

Arriving home safely, I washed the bike out back (yes, it was still raining, but I needed to get all the road grime off).  Once that was done, into the garage with her and then I could towel her off completely.

And there you have it - the Olean Pig Roast trip of 2014!!

Wait...what's that?  I'm skipping something?  There was something else that we did while out in Olean this year?

Maybe you're right...maybe there's one more post coming...but that will have to wait until Monday...

Olean, Part II; Passing the Time...

Picking up where we last left off...

Rob had brought one of his Cutco knives with him to have it repaired.  I tagged along when Mark brought him to their headquarters, located in...ta da; Olean.  Mark and I checked out the years of history displayed on the walls while Rob settled up his business with the sales lady.  The most interesting part of the company's history (in my opinion) was the legend of old knives, prototypes, discards, mock-ups, etc. having been dumped and buried behind the original building (not located where they currently are).  Eventually (decades later), the current owners agreed to dig around and see if they could find any of these alleged knives.  Sure enough; there were tons of them - they'd been used as filler underneath some concrete sidewalks that had been poured on the grounds.

On our way out, I spotted an Olean squirrel which I hadn't previously known was there, so I felt obliged to snap a pic (to go with the other Olean squirrel pics I've posted over the years).

From there, Mark took us down a side street to a specialty wood company that he likes to deal with.  Rob, being a wood craftsman as a profession, was in his glory.  The guys that worked here were awesome - as soon as we walked in, one of them asked us if we needed any help.  When Mark explained he was just bringing us by to check out the amazing types of wood they had, he droped what he was doing and gave us the grand tour.

For some reason, my camera didn't take very good pictures of these.  Trust me when I say that the colors in these boards was 100 times brighter and more vibrant than these pics appear.

Some very cool grain in these boards!

I don't even know how this kind of grain gets created...

Even these were brighter than they look in the pic.  I'd never seen such bright colored wood, and it's all natural.  No man made dyes or coloring going on here.

Here's an example of some of the exotic names of the woods that were here.  Apparently they search the entire globe for high quality and interesting trees which they can then have milled into boards.

And speaking of milling - these boards were 4+ feet wide, by 15+ feet long.  Amazing stuff, and the grain on these was just as incredible as on anything else we'd seen so far.

This was the last stop for the day, as it was their closing time.  This stump had been flown in from some far-away swamp (I forget where, exactly).  All it needed was to be leveled out and then have a nice piece of glass installed on the top (technically; the bottom, as this is upside down) and you'd have a stellar table.  The guy at the shop said they'd probably wind up selling the stump as-is for 2 grand.  Rob gave that some serious contemplation, and I think if he had 2 grand to play with, he would have taken it off their hands, worked some magic on it, and sold it for a great profit.

Ok, moving on from the wood...

I forget which meal it was (Mark and Mary do such a great job of feeding us that sometimes it's hard to keep the breakfasts separate from the lunches...and separate from the dinners.

But at any rate, one of their windows has a whole slew of prisms hanging in front of it, and the sunlight was passing through them and casting rainbows all about the room.  Natalie thought it was great fun to point out any rainbows that were bieng projected on us and saying "You have a rainbow on you!!!", and then we'd wriggle and squirm to position ourselves so as to not have any rainbows on us.  She thought it was great fun - even when I took a pic of her to prove that she had some on herself.

After I took the pic and looked at it, it surer as hell looked like she had a shiner on her eye!!

Well, we certainly can't have folks thinking that we're abusing our entertainment, so here's a follow-up pic showing that she indeed has no shiner.

She does, though, seem to now have a mustache...

There you go; just a few of the fun things we did while out in Olean.

Next up; Saturday's daytime run to the Kinzua Railroad Bridge, the annual waterfight with Alyssa, and the pig roast at the VFW on Saturday night...

Olean, Part I; The ride out...

I've got a lot of pics to post, as well as some vids (hopefully they will load as well!), so I'm going to break things up into several posts.  This first one will just be on the ride out and the pics I took along the way...

The weather had called for strong chances of rain in the morning, which was then to clear out as I got closer to NY.  Ok, I'll take that.  I'd much rather get wet at the start and then dry out by the end, than the other way around.

As luck would have it, I wound up keeping dry the whole way.  I danced with some very ugly clouds for the first half of the trip, but by the time I was deep into PA, things had started to break up nicely, as you can see from these pics.

Oh yeah - the route I took was 95 - 295 - 6 - 384 - 84 - 81 - 80 - 15 - 44 - 417.  It added 50 miles to the ride, but it was a nice relaxing route, and while I did have one section on 81 where traffic was stopped dead, there were lots of other sections of interstate where I was the only car as far as I could see, both in front of me and behind me.  I will definitely do this route again and may even make it my regular route for when I go to Olean.

Anyway, on to the pics!

These are from the almost-last leg of the trip; Rte 44.  Such an amazing and scenic route.  And this isn't even in the mountains yet, this is just the farmland leading up to the mountains...

Getting closer to the mountains...

You'll have to click on this pic to expand it.  I saw this way up ahead of me and had to rip the throttle wide open to catch up in time so I could snap a pic before they got too far away.  It was an Amish father and daughter, headed back to their homestead (I assume) from having popped into town.

I had to turn around to take a pic of this.  I don't know what to make of it.  Every 5th row was a much brighter green than the other rows.  Is it a different plant?  Is it fertilized differently?  What's the purpose of separating the rows into groups of 4?

The mountains!  Windy and hilly, this stretch of 44 is both exhilirating, and pulse-raising.  Some of the roads are in need of repair, other sections have had some modicum of repair work done.  Here; the 2nd highest elevation I came across (I didn't take a pic of the highest spot).

All in a day's work.

Fantastic scenery off to the side...

Another scenic shot...

Such sweet roads!

Another great overloo.  This first pic is with the bike...

...and again, without the bike.

Alas, there was no Olean contingent to intercept me this time, but that just allowed for heading straight into Olean, proper.  Oh yeah; the new saddlebag system?  It's fantastic for letting you open and close the saddlebags without having to stop.  This saves time when having to put your helmet on because you've reached the NY border.  No need to pull over, just keep on hammerin', reach down and retrieve your helmet and pop it on without missing a beat.  Nicey nice!

Ta da!  Arrival at Mark and Mary's.  And hey look; a strange blue car in the driveway...Rob and Natalie have arrived safely as well!

What's that?  Oh, the shiny blue can on the back of my bike?  Uhm...yes, Mary was kind enough to hand that to me almost as soon as I arrived.  I tell ya; they really know how to make someone feel welcome!

Stay tuned for part II...

Olean Bound!

It's time for the annual Olean Pigapalooza again!  I'm planning on hitting the road super early tomorrow morning (5am) and, with any luck; should roll into Mark & Mary's driveway between 4 and 5pm tomorrow.

Wait...that's about 12 hours, Dave-O.  Why so long on the road?  Well ya see, I'm not gonna hammer the highways this time around, I"m going to take a nice scenic route...almost the same scenic route that Zig and I took a couple of years ago.  Instead of headin gup to the Pike and picking up Rte 84 off of that, I'm going to swing down through CT and take Rte 6 out to 384, then 84.  On-line maps say it'll only add about 20 minutes to the ride, but truth be told; I'd be going much faster on the interstates (Mass Pike) than the maps take into consideration, so taking teh 2-lanes will probably add a good 45 minutes to the trip.  But it's all good - the weather looks a little wet in the morning, but then I should ride out of it and have clear skies for the rest of the ride.  So why not take advantage of that and enjoy the views and interactions that I'm sure I'll have along the way.

I'm especially looking forward to the sweeping curves and high-speed whoop-de-doo's along Rte 44 in PA.  Those should be a great time again.

Huh...speaking of "again"...I just remembered that the last time Zig and I went out this way, I missed a turn...I think it was the turn onto 44...which wasn't clearly marked.

Looks like I'd better go back on the maps and make sure I've got the route right in my head.

Olean awaits!

Ride Hard, Take Chances