Ridin'Ard (The h is silent)

I’m a little behind. Ok, today is Thursday.  I forgot one thing from Tuesday. We’re on a country road and Jaron slams on his brakes. I swerve and also slam on my brakes and fishtail a little with ABS kicking in. A dog is running in the street. Jaron has already had a run-in with a dog in our neighborhood. Anyway, we’re both sitting there waiting for the dog to get out of the street, and I’m thinking, I hope the owners saw this.  Yesterday, on Wednesday, we hit up Skyline Drive. It was foggy and then cleared up and we had a glorious time for about 20 minutes. We kept going and took a lunch break at Big Meadow, the halfway point. It was foggy AF so we decided to take the next off-ramp to Luray. In all, we spent 4 hours on Skyline including breaks and did 3/4 of it — about 75 miles.  We were bummed out about the fog. It was raining, so we were less enthusiastic about camping and decided to head to Daddy’s in WV and see how far we got. I texted this plan to Daddy. We were g...

This week we were going to go on our last big trip of the year. But Tropical Depression Nate is pouring rain down so we are delaying our departure by a couple of days and hoping that we will still be able to go. Nate is a Cat 1 storm, but some news sources are calling him a hurricane. It’s a fast-moving storm so is coming inland quite a ways before dissipating. Daddy is exactly in his path and will get 2” of rain today. We were going to leave today and arrive there tonight, but no mas.  This trip (if it happens) will be a mountain trip. We’ve been south, we’ve been north, so now we’re going west. Julie will be on her red G650GS adventure bike, and Jaron will be on his blue F800R which he turned in to an off-road bike during repairs. We are planning to do Skyline Drive and go camping for part of our trip and visit Daddy.  We spent 2 hours Saturday night cussing and mounting Julie’s side cases. My rear top case holds 52L and the side cases hold 33L each. Yeeaahh, buddy.  ...

Miles today: 200+ Miles so far: 980? (Gah! We won't hit 1,000 now.) So when we were on the Niagara river, our phones touched Canadian airspace and we both got messages about international rates. When we were getting ready to head out, Jaron noticed that navigation was now in metric and he could not figure out how to change it back to custom. The usual options were not presenting themselves. So we were having an interesting time working with that. At the next stop he was able to change it back to custom, but decided to leave it at metric because, after all, his motorcycle is very popular in Europe.  We officially don't GAF about check-out times anymore. When anyone asks, we keep saying we're amost outta there. Noon seems like a far more reasonable check-out time.  We did not have any hotel arranged for Thu night since we hadn't decided what exactly we were doing on the trip back. Julie has been wanting to "freeball it" and just figure out where we're st...

Miles today: 80ish Miles so far: 770ish Today was a chill day. We got massages and lunch and just relaxed. We decided to leave for dinner because the onsite restaurants were kind of disappointing. We'd exhausted the more casual restaurant, and the nicer one is straight out of a senior center.  Dinner was Austrian small plates (at a Heuriger) and they were delicious. We had a beautiful view of the sunset on Seneca Lake. Now we are waiting out some unexpected rain outside the closed restaurant -- we did not bring our rain gear.  Tomorrow we check out of Belhurst castle and start heading home. 😞 I'm not ready to go home. 

Miles today: 250.6 Miles so far: 690 Things I forgot to mention yesterday: We make a point of bringing all of our stuff in in one trip now that we have this super functional motorcycle luggage with all kinds of carry straps and backpack straps. Jaron ended up wearing his helmet in so that he had enough hands for his luggage.  Also, we saw a billboard and a turnoff for the Pompous Ass winery on the way here yesterday. Ya know, I've heard that New Yorkers are direct.  We spontaneously went to Niagara Falls instead of the hike we had planned on. That is, instead of seeing 12 waterfalls, we decided to go see the big one. We got tickets for the Maid of the Mist, the boat tour of Niagara Falls. They handed out these blue ponchos as we boarded and they were flapping all over the place so Julie didn't want to wear hers. So she got soaked, but everything I was wearing is quick-dry. It was really cool getting to be in the middle of horseshoe falls.  After that we went on the obser...

Miles today: 130ish Miles so far: 240?  We had a leisurely morning and rolled out at 12:06. We have really been lucking out on the weather. We keep missing the rain. We crossed the NY/PA state line on 14, which we took most of the way today.  Lunch at 3:00 was at the  FLX Wienery , recommended by one of Julie's coworkers. It was as ridiculous as one might expect from a gourmet hot dog stand. It didn't look like much from the outside. Inside, you picked your toppings and then one of your choice of 5 wieners. Wiener puns abounded. 'Twas delicious.  We took a break in York, PA where we saw this cool vending machine. Julie sat on the milk crate next to it. I love milk crates.  We rolled up to  Belhurst Castle  by 5:00 and are chilling in our room. We will stroll the grounds and find a cool place to read. We had a huge lunch late so will be getting something light for dinner at like 9:00 at one of the restaurants here. 

Miles today: 80-something plus 2 on foot Miles so far: 280-something The Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania is actually the Pine Creek River Gorge and the state parks that surround it. It's 50 mi long and 1300 ft deep. I saw it in a travel book and it was on the way to our destination, so we decided to check it out. No one we talked to had ever heard about it and there were not any services nearby, so I kept warning that it could be a total bust. After much ado figuring out the right trail, we went to the trailhead for a 1 mi hike down and back up instead of the 3 mi hike Julie had read about because this park had paved parking. I *hate* gravel. It was a pretty ride about an hour and some change away.  There were a lot of motorcycles there. Some guys came over to look at Julie's bike. I never put logos back on it after getting it painted, so it's common for people to ask which make and model it is. We talked with them for a little while. And we saw my purple motorcycle buddy. ...

Miles so far: 200.7 Miles today: 200.7 We left at 9:38 this morning and arrived in Williamsport, PA at 5:00 (just in time for supper). We have extra time and it's daylight. So weird.  The rain gave us a break, but we since we had a long way to go today, we spent the first half of our ride on interstates and didn't try to be too creative with our route.  Oh, one other trip preparation item I forgot to mention: tire pressure. The Motorcycle Safety Foundation says that your tires are the most important part on your entire bike, because they are the only part that touches the road. BMW has a pretty cool design such that the valve stem is shorter and faces out, so his tires are waaayyy easier to check than mine. But Jaron wouldn't let me check his tires before our North Carolina trip in April. Then we went camping in June which was not a long trip, so I'm not sure I checked my tires either for that one. I insisted this time and found his front tire to be 10 psi low and ...

We're taking a week-long trip to the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania and then up to the finger lakes in upstate New York. We are staying at a castle in NY. I put this trip together while flipping thru a travel book a couple of months ago.  Preparations have been underway for 2 days now. Jaron figured out how to remove the padding from our helmets and washed them on delicate and put them back together. We have both been noticing the stinky stank for a while now. After we get back, we'll do it again and wash our armor suits, too.  Most importantly, Julie painted the skull license plate bolts and put them in to service. There is a "before" picture, a picture of them drying on a baking rack, and a picture of it mounted and gleaming purple in one eye. :P This is the most Julie has loaded on to this bike. This is about the same amount that Jaron took when we went camping for our anniversary.  We will head out in some pretty heavy rain tomorrow and are headed towards bluer skie...

We clocked 361 miles this weekend and got home at 6:30 (left at 1:00). Today it was in the mid-90's for most of the day, so we took a lot of breaks. We just had snacks for lunch because neither of us felt like eating a meal and riding in that goddamn heat. I did not feel the wind through my mesh suit most of the day because it was so hot. I can't believe I used to wear jeans and a rain jacket with vents in that shit.  Speaking of food, we ended up having chocolate for dinner last night and skipping dinner. Then this morning for breakfast we had Thai noodles with beef, because our breakfast was not a backpacker meal after all. It was a skillet meal in a foil pouch, the bastards.  One of our breaks was at Black Hill Regional Park. We thought it would just be something off the road where we could stretch our legs, but the entrance was like a mile long and there were several nature centers. It was quite a park, especially for being off some random non-major road.  Jaron go...

Since we are staying two nights, we did not have to make or break camp today. We chilled this morning while the campsite cleared out and then went to check out Paw Paw tunnel. The path to it was closed, so we went around the barrier to go anyway. The tunnel itself had a more substantial fence around it, so we let it be but did climb the forbidden stairs to go above the tunnel entrance.  We went to Berkeley Springs for lunch and then did some googling for ideas of other things to do or see. Jaron got a gigantic plate of meat. It was ridiculous. Like 8 oz each of brisket and pulled pork. Then we split a slice of lemon meringue pie. Anyway, a Roman bath is in Berkeley Springs and is kind of a big deal. They say George Washington himself came there. It was built in 1815. So I think hey, there's no shower at our campsite, maybe a hot spring bath is just the ticket. So that's what we did. They clean the room out with bleach spray in between guests and then fill up a 750 gallon...tub?...

Uploading pictures while I have cell service.  My suit in my chair.  From the top of Paw Paw tunnel. We weren't allowed up there.  Bicycles in the site next to ours.  The Bivy sack that we store gear in. 

States: 3 Miles: 165.4 We rolled out today at 1:30, a record. We wanted to beat DC Friday traffic and were stressing about that. As it was, there was enough traffic to justify taking the ICC (tollroad) to get out across town.  Navigation is an issue because we want to go off-highway, and Google will re-route you even after you have set the route the way you want it. Jaron was using walking directions on Google Maps at first a while back, until it became problematic with directions going the wrong way on a 1-way street and such. Then Google Maps added a bicycle option which worked alright but got confused when we would not get on bike trails. Now we are trying "avoid highways", but this resulted in us not going thru any towns, which resulted in some serious hangriness by midafternoon. After several turnarounds and stops on the shoulder, we ended up stopping at a McDonald's. This was my one visit for this decade. I gotta say, they've come a long way since I last set fo...

We went on a quick camping trip for Julie's birthday last weekend. We went to Cunningham Falls near Thurmont, MD. It was beautiful and the riding was great. We rode thru a lot of farmland.  How do you fit camping gear on a motorcycle? In an A-bag with tow straps!  How do you keep your kick stand from sinking in wet packed gravel? With a rock! 

Miles today: 248.0 Total miles: 925.5 Bridges: 10 Tunnels: 2 Departure: 11:30 am Arrival: 7:30 pm We blew off the 10:00 am check out this morning and decided that 11:00 was much more reasonable. Today we went from Virginia Beach to home via the DelMarVa peninsula. It was a long day. We joked about making it even longer in order to get the trip total over 1,000 miles. The day's odometer read 0.3 by the time we exited the parking garage. Before we hit the Chesapeake Bay crossing, Julie went in to a gas station to buy drinks & used the restroom in my helmet, then realized I had to take it off in order to drink. They didn't have any straws, damnit. We saw a purple big rig! It was almost the same purple as my bike. Also, lots of chicken must be processed on the DelMarVa peninsula. We passed both Tyson's & Perdue plants plus another less recognizable brand I can't remember. I've gotta say, we didn't get any rain in 6 days. The weather was 50-80...

Miles today: 215.2 Miles so far: 677.5 Bridges: 7+? Departure: 11:00 Arrival: 6:00 Parking garage: Level 5 We made it to Virginia Beach and will go home tomorrow via the DelMarVa peninsula IOT (in order to) avoid Friday evening DC traffic.  Today we took 17 north. It was ok, scenic at parts but almost a highway. In fact, there were several signs indicating that we were on the future I-87. We cruised at 60-70 mph in to a strong headwind. It turns out Julie's ass needs a break from her urban cruiser about every hour.  Breakfast at the Harborlight B&B was delicious. They brought it to our room, there was no dining room, so that was fancy. Here is a picture of our view from the B&B this morning.  We stopped for lunch at 2:00 at some locally owned fried place. Apparently Jaron got super hangry yesterday on the ferry and then there were no places to stop afterwards, so he was only mildly hangry today so we stopped at the first place we saw on the exit.  A...