Ridin'Ard (The h is silent)

Today merits a blog post, even though it was just a local OFO day. (Out fucking off) Over 7 hours in the saddle and my techno playlist didn't run out. Indeed, I apparently have over 19 hours of techno. 👍🏻 Some background. Yesterday I tried out my new helmet on a longer ride which had to be cut short bc it just hurt too much. I am an XS, but this one was just too small. We were 10 min from ice cream but I just wanted to go home. This is very abnormal. Ice cream is our main objective when riding. I was also hungry and forgot to take tylenol when we decided to head home, so, you know -- ideal conditions. As we got to our street, Jaron continued on to go to the store. I was on the KTM and it's been behaving better now that I've had so much training on my G650GS with the preload cranked all the way up. We actually measured the seat height with a level and a measuring tape and they are within a quarter inch of each other. So I had not dropped the KTM since I started riding it a...

Miles today: 195 Today we packed up and left our cottage and headed home. The rally was great, but we really appreciated being able to sleep in until 8:15.  At bkst we talked with another rider who recommended some roads that were actually already on our route, so we made sure not to miss them when we had to re-route about an hour out. Always fun doing that in the heat.  The gas station we finally stopped at only had premium, so Julie got 1.5 gallons of premium since her tank was about to go on reserve.  Today it was hot and humid. Julie was dragging and realized she had not had any electrolytes, so did that at 5pm while we were figuring out where to stay. We found a motel in Lake George, NY and are having Vietnamese for dinner.  Jaron picked up a freerider on our way to get ice cream. We thought maybe he was waiting to get back to his point of embarkation to part company, but he came all the way back to our cabin with us, over 1.5 mi walking. Jaron is going to hang ...

Miles today: ~100?  Today Jaron joined me on the women's intermediate ride. Another early morning (remember, this is fun). Julie secured the optimal spot right behind the same ride leader again. It's been great getting useful feedback from her. I wasn't sure if it would work out that way, but when we pulled in this morning she said "right here, you'll be right behind me again." 😁  This ride leader puts the difficult roads on the morning route and the easier stuff after lunch. We started out and came to a "class 4" aka unmaintained road that had rock ledges, she said about 6 inches. I rode the brakes the whole way and definitely felt my ABS clicking on & off and was doing quite a bit of sliding. It was exhilarating and kinda terrifying. Since Jaron was with me, he got to hear my external monologue over the intercom (shitballs was my word of the day today). I made it through that section and then I heard Jaron go down behind me. I stopped on a dow...

Miles today: ~125 Today Julie got up at 6:30 for a women's ride and Jaron did laundry. Because this is how we have fun. Jaron also demo'd a Tiger 1200 Rally Pro as he is getting BPO (Bike Paid Off) syndrome. When he met up with me in the evening he said he went on a dangerous demo. He didn't look hurt or scuffed up so I was like...financially dangerous?  Here is our riders' meeting around the portajohn, lol.  Julie's ride was great and uneventful. I opted for the more "spirited" wave and ended up right behind the same ride leader as yesterday again. On Wednesday at the warm-up ride I'd let her know the pace for the gravel & dirt roads was a little fast for me, but I felt a lot better by the end, plus I had training yesterday, so I felt like that was the right wave for me today and it was. Apparently today she was intentionally getting me more comfortable with speed on the easy dirt and gravel roads. When I dropped back, she would drop back and slow...

Miles today: 60 This morning Jaron woke up at 0600 for his 0730 riders meeting. Because this is fun. Julie slept in until 0700. Again -- we're having fun.  Julie attended Level 2 training with the women's program, and it was great. There were 12 female students and 2 female instructors. I got a new perspective from a new instructor, made some new friends, and -- Did. Not. Drop. My. Bike. Not once! All day! So weird. I am getting better at correcting imbalances with my upper body rather than attempting to do so with my feet. I'm also stronger now that I'm working out. And maybe I'm actually starting to get the hang of this offroad shit. Because the grass was wet all morning, and wet grass is not normally my friend.  I went down the road for some non-fried lunch and got a deli sandwich and some potato salad from a general store. I found a rock in the parking lot to sit on and enjoyed the mental break from all of that stimulation.  I got some really good feedback in th...

Miles today: ~80 Today, Jaron went to Manchester to get his new phone and Julie had an afternoon warm-up ride with the women's program at DirtDaze. We had a relaxed morning and then headed out for our respective days.  The warm-up ride was perfect. Not stressful, so I could actually think to apply some of my training. Unfortunately it started raining on us and we had to skip our ice cream stop. ☹️ I'd forgotten to get gas before I came and unfortunately had also forgotten to reset my tripometer the last time I filled up so I didn't know exactly how empty my tank was, but I knew it was pretty low. Fortunately someone had about half a gallon for me and then when I filled up later the bike took almost 2.7 gallons, which is the point at which my fuel light would have come on. The ride was beautiful and uneventful. We stopped at a couple of public parks and got to know each other among our small group. There was the leader, 2 sweeps, photographer, and 2 participants. The Level 1...

Miles today:  We headed north for breakfast in Lake George and could definitely feel the New Yorker efficiency here. Order before you sit down. Step over here. Wait here for the coffee. Tell me when on the creamer. And there was an Asian family in several tables next to us and they were googling menu items, which was adorable bc that's exactly what I do when I get ethnic cuisine!  It rained on us off and on all day, nothing to...write home about, ha ha. It cooled the temperature down which was nice. The roads were great, and some slowpoke vans and trucks pulled over to let us pass.  Checked in at Silver Maple Lodge in Fairlee, VT where we have a cottage for 5 nights. Julie did a quick load of laundry at the laundromat a literal 2 min walk away, and we headed out for dinner. It turns out that the Chinese restaurant no longer does dine-in due to COVID, and you have to call to order. 🙄 I guess I'll have to call to verify that from now on! We didn't have lunch today since w...

Miles today: 258 We didn't sleep great due to crappy AC and woke up at 7:30 (eeew) and got packed up. Breakfast was down the street at a bakery that had legit breakfast sandwiches. It was a pretty big bakery but had an odd setup. You order inside but pick up food outside thru a window, which didn't look like a pickup window from the outside. Seating was outside and portajohns were in the parking lot, but there was a sink inside that customers could use to wash their hands. The coffee was good and breakfast was filling, and Julie got a mini strawberry rhubard pie to go which will end up being dessert tonight.  This morning we unfortunately had to join some rush hour traffic probably inbound to NYC. We stayed about an hour north of NYC in a small town. Our morning ride was good and uneventful otherwise. We took breaks at a river park and state forest picnic area.  Come lunchtime we stopped at Buns and Cones. I mean, those are two of my favorite things, amiright? It was a diner ...

Miles today: 248 We ACTUALLY LEFT HOME BEFORE NOON today. Like, actually. Amazing.  We decided on this trip only 2.5 weeks ago. Julie was not going to be able to take off in August because of a project, but it came early, so we are headed to the DirtDaze East adventure motorcycle rally and Julie will participate in the women's program and Jaron will go to the regular rally. So Julie will get some training rides and a training day! We went to this rally in 2019:  http://ridinard.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-road-of-thousand-f-bombs.html?m=1 We are sadly not camping on this trip due to the last minute nature of it. If this is a rally we are going to go to again or travel this area again, I will need to research where the good campsites are.  I finally figured out how to route my hydration pack hose because...reasons.  The first couple of hours were interstate, until Harrisburg, PA. Julie got the hungries and found somewhere off the highway to stop for lunch. It turned out ...

Amy & I have been wanting to go motorcycle camping, and nearly a month after her birthday our calendars were able to finally collide. Reeds Gap State Park in Pennsylvania has been on Julie's list of intriguing campgrounds, so it was a plan. Then Amy met some friends at her ADV class and we decided to invite more women and add a 2nd site for our group.  Of course I couldn't have tested all of my hammock components when I bought them last summer. So I spent last week doing that in a frenzy. I was really feeling like this was a lot of work to get ready for such a short trip. Then the weather forecast was in the upper 90's all weekend and people started getting concerned. THEN a short notice short term project came up at work and my boss asked if I could work that weekend. I said that unfortunately I could not because I was leading a retreat. 🤣 (which was true!!) So, there were lots of obstacles to this trip.  I was able to ride up with Ingrid who I'd met at the MD Ri...

Miles Friday: 192 Today we are headed back to Penmerryl Farm B&B for our last night on the road. We took 39 again and basically retraced our route, which was really pretty and twisty. I was listening to cello rock today and totally got in the zone.  The weather was really nice. Clear and not too hot.  We had lunch at Dirtbean in Marlington, WV again and they recognized us (and asked if we were from around here). We said no, but we'd been here before and were on our way home.  We made really good time and got to Staunton, VA at like 4:30. We got ice cream and then an early dinner after much debate. Unfortunately it started raining while we were eating so we had to scramble back to our bikes in the rain and ride the rest of the way (20 min) in wet helmets and gloves.  We got to Penmerryl Farm and our host Blair remembered us and asked how our trip was. So we caught up with him and waited for the rain to subside before bringing our stuff to our room.  Miles Sat...

Miles Thursday: 171 Today Jaron felt better so we planned a route to hit some Butler G1-rates roads around Beckley. There were a lot of roads lined with sheer cliffs and it was super pretty.  We had lunch at Subway and then ice cream at Dairy Queen, where they let us in to the lobby to order but we couldn't sit inside due to staff shortages. It was raining so the cashier set up an umbrella for us, and none of it made any sense but it was nice of him.  We found the G1-rated road. There were a couple of points where you came around a turn to see literally four sets of signs for the next four turns. Hard to know what to look at! So you just looked at the road.  A bridge was closed, so Jaron had to identify a detour. Julie goes, man, we'll have to do the G1 section again. It turns out the detour did not require us to backtrack, but now Julie wanted to just to do the cool section of road again. So we did it again and I did the entire thing in 2nd gear and actually left Jaron b...

Miles Wednesday: 279  Julie was out solo today since Jaron decided to ice and compress his bruise on his hip which was more like a hematoma. I broke the rule today and  went over 200 miles.  I got stuck in Charleston and ended up on a less than exciting road to my first waypoint, Chief Logan State Park. I got there at about 2:00 and realized I was hungry for lunch. So I found a restaurant next to a gas station and executed a little bit of motorcycle privilege and pulled around the front walk of the restaurant to park facing out to make it easy to pull im to the gas station. A waitress came out and asked if I wanted to order anything at the window and I said I was planning to come in for lunch. I had a club sandwich and my waitress called me baby.  It was hot and I went thru a lot of ice in my little 1L hydration pack.  So I've mentioned that this bike is really buzzy bc it's a 1-cylinder "thumper." My phone mount is powered and runs thru my headlight so I like t...

Miles Monday: 197 We headed out from Wildberry Hollow Farm in an attempt to get out before the rain came. Our first stop was Audra State Park which Julie has read about. It was really pretty and there were a lot of campsites right on the river. But it's a really popular place with 65 sites and is even full during the week, so it may be a bit crowded for Julie's tastes but it IS really pretty, and they even have laundry!  Not much to say about the rest or the day. It was really rainy and cold all day. We made it to the Historic Glen Ferris Inn where we will be staying for a couple of nights.  Miles Tuesday: 114 After a late breakfast post-sleeping in, we set out for some rides in New River Gorge. Julie programmed all of the drives from Scenic Driving: West Virginia in to the Rever app for this trip. There was a side trip 3 mi down a dirt road and back. Julie was considering skipping it bc the roads were wet from last night's rain, but dammit I just took offroad training so ...

Miles Saturday: 173 Saturday it was calling for rain in the afternoon & on Sunday, so we decided to pull chocks from camping and head up to my dad's Wildberry Hollow Farm. We had some parts shipped there for Julie's bike and wanted to get up to see him anyways. There is no cell service around Green Bank bc of the no radio zone, to avoid interference with the radio telescopes. So, this has been the trip of no cell service. We were prepared to some extent from having downloaded routes and maps, but weather info is always helpful. We had also not gotten a chance to update Julie's dad that we were coming. We went to a gas station that had a payphone but it wouldn't take any quarters. Julie went inside to ask about it and the attendant let her use the phone.  Seneca State Forest is seriously my favorite campground. It has a pump well and firewood for sale and 2 dead-end campsites. There were a couple of vanlifers there this time and it was very quiet. 👍🏻 We decided to ...

Miles Friday: 124 Friday we got packed up and rode down to breakfast so we could get on the road and make it to our SETI tour at Green Bank National Radio Astronomy Observatory. They do these like once a month and they happened to have one the day we were going camping in that area. We got our boxed lunches from Capon Springs and got going.  We got to Green Bank with plenty of time to eat our lunches and had some time to look around in the exhibit hall before our tour.  We'd had to upload details about our vaccination dates in order to register for the tour, and masks were required on the bus and inside the telescopes. It was hawt on that bus.  But! We got to go inside two telescopes and outside of three, including "the" Green Bank Telescope (GBT) which is 100 meters across. The first telescope was no longer operational but was significant for the SETI project. The second telescope was bigger and was still operational. SETI is no longer funded by the government but is sup...