Ride With Tank

RideOhio started in December of 2007. I built the site with Mark Moyer with the intention of finding more people to ride with and we certainly achieved that goal! Rather than a forum dedicated to a certain type of motorcycle or certain type of riding, we were just a forum for people who liked to ride motorcycles. I think we were a little too open and soon politics and propaganda began appearing endlessly on the forum. This, ironically, led to lots of people moving to Facebook instead of the forums. I say ironically because once there was no audience for the politics and propaganda on RideOhio they moved to Facebook and ruined it also! What took RideOhio off the internet was a software update on the server that hosted the forum. Since we were running a older version of Vbulletin it just would not work with the new server software, and since there were only a few active members left I did not see any reason to put in the amount of work it would take to get it back online. I could with relative ease create a new forum, but I honestly just don’t have much motivation to do that either.

As you can see, Ridewithtank is still online and going strong! I don’t think anyone reads it anymore and it has been a very long time since I put a update online. Motorcycles are a much smaller part of my life today. I am pretty much living a entirely new life than I had when I posted the last update. New job. New house. I am 200 pounds lighter today than I was the last time I posted. Last year I might have put more miles on my bicycle than my motorcycle. I absolutely spent more time on the bicycle than I spent on the motorcycle.

Probably the biggest topic on Ridewithtank was the Gap. Yes, the Gap is still there. Yes, I still frequent the Gap. Is it as nice as it used to be? Not at all. Not the same place at all. For the last 10 years pretty much the main reason I go there is to see friends. Getting a clean run in is almost impossible even for someone as slow as me. Fortunately I have found a replacement and the replacement is only 15 minutes from home. Its Nelson Ledges. Skidplate talked me into getting a Mini Cooper and a good friend talked me into taking it to a track day. I am having more fun with the Mini Cooper than I ever had with a motorcycle!

So that is just a brief update on my current status. I’m not sure if I will ever do another update to this site, but I just didn’t want to leave it hanging and abandoned!

Yesterday we rode from home to near Fancy Gap, Virginia.  It was a pretty uneventful ride, so that is all I have to say about it.

Today the real fun started.  We spent the day riding the parkway from Fancy Gap to Asheville.  I’ve already posted plenty of parkway pictures, so I’m not even going to bother this time.  The mountains are hundreds of millions years old, they have not changed much since last year.

Right now the Rhododendron are blooming so I took a picture.

My favorite spot on the parkway is Mt. Mitchell.  We enjoyed the sights there, and then enjoyed a delicious trout.

I really do love riding the parkway.  It really is the most pleasant and visually spectacular ride you can take on a motorcycle.  If I rode it 1,000 times I would still love it.

What I am not loving is all these “Adventure Riders” I am seeing out there.  Now I know that I ride an adventure bike myself, but I am not trying to convince anybody that I am an adventure rider.  I know some real adventure riders.  They are not like normal people.  They are hard core.

The adventure riders I am seeing everywhere are fakes.  Pretenders.  They ride around with gas cans strapped to their bikes.  They have all kinds of crap that the internet told them they needed bolted to their bikes.  They ride around standing on their foot pegs because they saw Ewan McGregor do it.  Their bikes and gear is spotless and shiny.  Nothing is scratched, their adventure clothes look like they were purchased that morning.  They smell like they showered very recently, and their hair is perfect.  Their odometers only need four digits.

Now I know most 0f these guys, if they read this, are going to get all upset and send me nasty emails.  They are gonna tell me how hard core they are, but I’m not going to believe it.  Real adventure riders would not give a flying crap what a clown like me thinks of them, so if you are reading this and getting pissed off you can consider yourself a pretender!

I’ll be the first to admit it.  I was pretty lazy last year.  I did not give the site very much attention last year, but I promise to do better this year.

There are some changes this year.  For one, not all of my adventures are going to be on two wheels.  We have adopted a convertible that will allow me to extend my season a bit.  It will give me a few more months of adventure each year, and has already made a trip to Atlantic City.  The really cool part is the car has a hard top, so with the top up it is just like a regular car, but when you press a button the top disappears!

Atlantic City was a great time!  It was cold and rainy most of the time, but that did not matter much because there was lots to do indoors!  Atlantic City seems pretty comfortable with public intoxication, so I got along pretty well there.

Foggy view from my room

So basically what I found out is that I enjoy drinking and gambling.  We stayed at the Trump Plaza, and Trump seems to hate me, but I got along well with his people.  They kept taking my money but they seemed to feel bad about it.  I don’t blame them, they were not taking my money, they were giving most of it to Trump.  I never found one single person who had ever met Trump before.  Not even anyone who has been in the same room with him.  Trump needs to come back to the ground floor once in a while to meet his people.

Trump also seems pretty fascinated with himself.  Everything said Trump.  Trump this, Trump that.  Trump, Trump, Trump.  The guy must really love himself.  I doubt he would be interested in staying in one of his rooms.  The room was too warm, had too little light, one light did not even work, and it looked like it was decorated by a prostitute from the 60’s.

The Boardwalk entrance

There are people on the Boardwalk who push carts that you can ride in.  I never rode in one, but I did have the pleasure of seeing a very drunken cart pusher abandon his card and rider.  He shouted some obscenities and stumbled into the casino.  Eventually, the cops showed up asking whose cart it was.  One of his buddies covered for him and said it was his and pused it up the Boardwalk.  The drunk guy came  out of the casino and saw this, then started screaming at him and went running/stumbling aftewr him.  This resulted in another large group of cops appearing, but I could not stay for the whole show because I was very cold and needed a vodka refill.

A typical Atlantic City cart

We also made a stop at Pats King of Steaks in Philadelphia to see what all that fuss was about.  There was a really long line, but it moved very fast due to their strict rules, and it was very tasty.

Proof we were actually there

The line goes around the building, but it moves very fast!

The Rules

The object of our desire.

This weekend I will be making my first trip to the Gap, so I am really looking forward to that!  There will be Fiddy racing, pancakes, MotoGP, and who knows what else!

Since this was my last full day here until next spring, I forced myself out of bed early and got underway to the overlook well before sunrise.  It was very cold and windy this morning, but there were several other bikes out before sunrise.  Robert eventually joined me at the Overlook getting one last ride in before he left for home.

Robert, Keisha, and I had a sad breakfast together.  They were not ready to go home, but had no choice.  It seems that I am always the last one to leave, and every time somebody heads for home it is sad.  First to go was Dan, then Mark and his squid buddies, now Robert and Keisha.

i spent the day riding back and forth and hanging out with lots of different folks.  The place was absolutely packed.  As can be expected when you have a crowd that large, many had no clue about letting faster traffic by and parades of epic proportions were formed as a result.  Several lane crossers invaded my side of the road, but I managed to not hit any of them.

Towards evening there was a tragic accident when a well respected local lost the front end and went down hard.  He was flown out with a suspected broken back.

I still don’t know when I will leave tomorrow or where I will spend the night tomorrow.  I am just going to play it by ear and try to work around the weather.