Labor Day 2014

Holy crap am I tardy on getting stuff posted up here!  What can I say, life is flying by!

Here's what I can remember of this year's Labor Day Maine Event...

Young Michael met me at my house and we rode up on Friday morning.  The weather was quite nice for us; clear(ish) skies and no rain, so we made great time and traffic didn't beat us up too badly.  The rest of the folks coming up later the same day wound up getting pounded with traffic, especially in the dreaded town of Wiscasset.  (As Rob said so many, many years go; "We hate Wiscasset.")

Arriving to the clearing, there was nobody around so we mulled about for a bit and I got my tent set up.  Before too long, Dave, Karmen, Olvia and Rob arrived and we set about to gathering some dead trees for the fire as well as some last minute site prep.  Once the other campers began to arrive, we made busy setting up canopies, fetching picnic tables, etc.

I apologize that from there, things get kind of hazy in terms of what happened and when, but I will do my best...

Friday we milled around the campsite, catching up with each other, sharing stories, enjoying the campfire, playing one card, and having many many laughs with each other.  Always a good way to spend an evening.

Saturday a few of us headed out on the bikes and did a bit of sightseeing and then grabbed lunch at a seaside restaurant which we stumbled upon last year, and which we should make a point to visit again next year (Maybe Sunny will still be working there!)  After that, was back to the site for the awesome spaghetti dinner and more laughter and good times.

Sunday was the official feast, with lobsters aplenty and all kinds of offerings for those of us that don't eat the sea spiders.  Full bellies all around!

Bill and Tara had to head out that night so we wound up doing the ceremony in the daylight this year.  I'll be curious what folks think next year; should we do it in the daylight again?  I've always thought that the dusk/darkness added something to the event, but we'll see.

We had a number of knightings this year, and the fold is getting larger and larger.  What were the given names this year?  I can't tell you that, you'll just have to go up next year and find out when everyone introduces themselves.

The forecast had been calling for rain on Sunday and Monday, but we lucked out in that we managed to get the ceremony in before the skies starting peeing on us.  Once that started, though, things got wet, fast.  And this is when we really love having two huge canopies to hunker under!

As the night wore on, folks began taking their leave and heading off to bed.  Zig and I were planning on getting up at the ass-crack of dawn, so we turned in before the night had gotten too long in the teeth.  Of course there were others who far outlasted us, but those folks were staying for one more night so they didn't have to worry about getting up early...

...so when I woke up the next morning and poked my head out of the tent, you can surmise that I was not surprised to see a large pyramid of empties stacked outside my tent door.  I will now surmise that you will not be surprised to hear that I used those very empties to spell out the words "Eat Me".

Lastly; the rain had passed by during the night and while the morning was very wet, we managed to actually break out into sunshine about halfway home (young Michael had met up and rode home with us as well).  It'd been another successful Labor Day!

Ok, some pics;

I managed to snap a pic of that nursery again this year.  Hurry, hurry!  Only 17,381 mums left!

The Lobster Buoy restaurant.  I loved the look of the empties lined up on the half-walls here.

The Food Network was actually filming here when we stopped by.  They kept bringing out sandwiches to folks who were dining outside, and filming them for a show segment.  They looked over at our table a number of times, but dirty bikes don't make for good television, so we didn't make the cut.

Last pic; on our Saturday sightseeing ride, we rode down to the point of Port Clyde, parked the bikes and strolled the beach for a bit.  This tin puffin was bolted to one of the rocks above the tide line, and seemed like a good candidate for a Kodak moment.

And there you have it; the 2015 Labor Day event!

Riding The Swiss Alps

Jammed, jammed, jammed on time, but I said I'd get some pics up so here you go.  I apologize for rushing through these, but you'll get the idea of how amazing this was...

Zurich HD, where it all started from.  These guys didn't speak much English, so thank goodness Erin was there to speak German with them.

I'm off!  Well, after I finally found my way out of the city.  (I'd looked at maps the night before and had written down streets and turns I'd need to make to get to the Autobahn, but - as we later realized; when I left the dealership, I went out the back street, not the front.  So I was immediately lost and it took me 45 minutes of riding around, trying to decipher street signs in German, before I finally found my way out.)

The scenery EVERYWHERE is just beyond amazing!

A nice panoramic snapshot for ya.  And yes, that is a castle in the middle of the town.

I made it to Gotthard Pass!  This was THE road I was looking forward to!

Hmmm...I could take the easy way around the mountain...

Nope!  I came to ride the ancient pass, so let's get down there and to some twisting...

Not much room for error on these roads.  No actual guardrail, and some of those turn are a long way down...

A picture from the bottom of the road, of the tunnel back up at the top...

More amazing sights.  This is why it took me so long to get through these passes.  I had to keep finding places to park so that I could wander around and really take things in.

This was on the second pass of the day; the San Bernadino one.  It, too, had windy turns, but it also had clouds to ride through, and lakes to admire...

And stretches of roadway that seemed to go on forever.

This was along the Splugen Pass.  More twisties, more amazing scenery...

At the top of this pass there was an old battlement of some sort.  It overlooked the valley below and would have been a prime location for a bunch of artillery.

The Italian border!  I'm officially in Italy now...too bad I'm running out of daylight...and the clouds are really moving in...and I have no idea what's in front of me for accommodations, or how far ahead they may lie...

So, I rode about 10 feet into Italy to make it official, then did a U-turn and headed back the way I'd come.  I'd passed a hotel/restaurant back on the highway and figured I'd hit that for the night.

A few more pics of the battlement on my way by.  Inside was very cool...

A nice framed pic of the bike

The clouds were moving in and down, pretty quickly...

I made it down and to the hotel without any issues.  Had a great meal (the menu was all in German, but I lucked out and managed to decipher ravioli, and it was delicious.  As was the dark beer I had with it.)

A nice restful evening, a hearty breakfast, and I was back on the road, headed back to Zurich.

These are the bridges on the highways over there.  Look how thin the supports are!  I couldn't believe it, and there were full sized tractor/trailer rigs going over these things.

Now there's something you don't see often.  Along the side of a highway, and ancient castle looms up...

Back on the San Bernadino pass, I found an old, unused road.  Well, it's unused by mankind, but the cows use it quite often, given all the dried cow pucks all over the place.

It was along this stretch that I found the road that wasn't on any maps.  The pavement just ended.  Off to one side was a dirt path which cars and motorcycles were banned from, and a little sign for some place called Bandita Di Caccia.

What an amazing overlook...

Back at the first pass (Gotthard).  I was going to ride it again, but the wind had picked up something fierce and was really driving the clouds down into the valley with impressive speed.  That, plus I wanted to give myself extra time to find the dealership (considering how well I'd done finding my way out of the city the day before), so I just gazed at it for a while longer, took one last pic, and then turned my front tire toward Zurich.

Along the way, I pulled over to refresh my memory on the streets I'd be looking for when entering Zurich.  At the rest area, I noticed beneath an overpass, an old set of stairs leading down...so of course I had to find out where they went...

They brought me down closer to the edge of the lake I was next to, as well as a set of train tracks.  Another awesome scenery opportunity!

I'd left myself a few extra hours in case I got lost, but as luck would have it, I found my way directly to the dealership without any problem at all.  Which meant I had a few extra hours to kill before they closed.  I could always take the bike back out for a bit....nope, I wasn't going to chance getting lost again, so I parked it and shut 'er down.

There are many other pics (as you've seen on FB) but I think these are the better ones and do the best job of showing the amazing 2-day trip I was fortunate enough to experience.  If any of you have the opportunity to get over there and ride any of the old Alp passes, you gotta do it!!

Ride Hard!  Take Chances....in foreign countries!

Yes, I'm way behind!

Sorry folks, I have been beyond jammed here at work.  I know I owe you more pics from the Europe trip, and now I also owe you a writeup on the 2015 Labor Day event.  I have another trip coming up this weekend (business trip to Ireland), so things are getting even tighter on time.  So because of that (and since this is a blog about riding), I will just put up the riding pics from the Europe trip, rather than everything.  Besides, I believe just about everyone is on FB and has seen all the pics already.

So bear with me - I am hoping to squeeze in a couple of posts this week; one for the Europe riding pics, and then a quick blurb about Labor Day.

Hang on...time is flying by...

Gruyeres, and the HR Giger Museum

 Such amazing scenery around here!!  Here, Gruyeres can be see atop the hit it sits upon...


Here's the town itself. This was my first taste of an old European town, and it's just exactly as I pictured!

At the entrance to the Giger museum.  They don't allow cameras inside, but there were a few statues outside...

The pic above is a snapshot of the floor.  It was made up of these tiles, throughout the entrance patio, as well as the entire floor and staircases of the museum.

Again; no pics inside the museum, but I found one spot where the wall cameras couldn't see me, so I snapped a pic of this statue.  Didn't do a great job of taking the pic, though...

This was taken inside the 'store', which was allowed.  It wasn't much of a store, I'm afraid.  Not many things to choose from, and the items they did have were priced in the hundreds.  That's hundreds of euros.

A bench on a little patio out back.

The Giger Bar!  Amazing stuff - it was like being on set of one of the Alien movies!

Back outside in the township.  Amazing scenery!

And there you have it!  Next up; Munich!