Ridin'Ard (The h is silent)

Miles today: 245 Hours in the saddle: 4:29 We watched MotoGP again with camper meals and camper coffee (much better than Maxwell Ho). Packed up and got headed home. Jaron planned out our stops again which was great. Our first stop was gas in Green Bank, and then we had Subway for lunch again, in Front Royal this time. I'm pretty sure we've been to every Subway along this route. A little girl started crying when we walked in with our helmets on. Her mom said look, she's a regular person with her hair braided just like you have. It was adorbs.  Guess what! I didn't drop my bike once on this trip. Not in the stop & go traffic on the way out or back in, not on any of the stop sign intersections up or downhill, not in any parking lots. Riding this bike is a completely different experience now being strong.  It was hotter'n fuck today tho, y'all -- between 89 & 95 most of the time we were riding.  At our last stop as we were girding our loins for the last 1:15...

Miles today: 222.5 Hours in the saddle: 6-8ish?  Today was seriously a perfect riding day. For all the pissing and moaning about the awful rain yesterday, we could not have asked for better weather. Jaron did some route planning the night before.   We got up at 7 and Julie made camper meals and both Maxwell Ho coffee packets (still inadequate). (Julie actually added a packet of 2014-expired SBUX Via to her 2nd cup to improve it.) We watched the MotoGP sprint at 9 before setting out along some excellent roads. We got lunch at a super cute a sandwich place and then continued on to Hawk's Nest State Park for ice cream.  Our choice was a sundae or banana split. We both requested banana splits, but the banana was whole. Jaron did cut his in half for a proper split. Julie's strawberry syrup contained actual strawberries! We took a different route back and had Julie lead, bc my focus was flagging after lunch. I didn't sleep great just from being in a new location, etc. Afte...

Miles today: 245 Hours in the saddle: 6:47 Julie's soundtrack: Fast & Furious 1-10 Jaron's soundtrack: his own thoughts Today we finally left after 2 wks of rest. Jaron got bronchitis, then Julie got whatever gave him the bronchitis (but minus the bronchitis). Super shitty timing for being sick instead of going on OUR FIRST MOTORCYCLE TRIP IN 3 YEARS. Boooooooo.  So this morning when Julie was killing time playing the NYTimes Spelling Bee waiting on Jaron who was watching MotoGP practice, she said what the fuck am I doing with my life right now? And announced to Jaron that she was leaving in 30 min.  First we hit some unexpected (unmapped) traffic on the beltway at 10am on a Friday. That's ok, we're having fun. It clears up and we continue on. Great. Then it starts raining. That's ok, we knew there would be a little rain off & on today. We get to our first stop and close vents/change gloves. Still raining. Fine. Now there's stop & go traffic on 66W f...

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...

Miles Wednesday: 196 Julie had convinced Jaron to lock his topcase while camping in case a bear decided to whack it until it popped open. Usually he just rides with it partially latched and the road vibrations pop it open every now and then. So, Jaron had to unlock his topcase this morning. We had a leisurely breakfast bc we weren't in such a goddamn hurry to break camp, since we only needed to go 4 hrs.  We set out and headed for Capon Springs & Farms, a cute privately owned unincorporated town which is a resort centered around the spring water. It's a little carbonated and contains trace amounts of lithium. Julie had girls' weekend here a few weeks ago and liked it so much that she made this reservation to come back before leaving.  We spent most of our day on highway 28 which had more gentle curves and a higher speed limit than 39 did yesterday. The weather was beautiful. We stopped at the same picnic area for a pit stop. We are trying to use more parks than gas stat...

Miles Tuesday: 138 Just woke up while camping at Summit Lake in WV. I'll have to catch you up on my ADV class last weekend and associated shenanigans later.  Yesterday Jaron & rolled out from Penmerryl Farm B&B after breakfast & packing, like maybe 10:30, with a pretty unambitious day planned. We went along twisty 39 to the Huntersville Arch aka Devil's Backbone, a rock formation, and then to get lunch at Dirtbean in Marlinton, WV. We actually missed Devil's Backbone on the first pass and turned on a state park road and turned around in a campground with a gravel loop where Julie put her new skills to use.  Updated with Jaron's good pics: After lunch we got to Summit Lake campground by 4:00 and took our time picking out a campsite. This is my kind of campground. Really quiet with only a few people here on a Tuesday. Jaron noted that the kids here were allowed to play by themselves on bikes and catching creatures in the lake with only distant supervision.  By...